alleges that when the story first exploded cheryl cook called her three times and demanded she resign and cheryl cook said it was at the urging of the white house. secretary vilsack and white house officials have denied that but cheryl cook hasn t come forward to answer one single question on this matter. we spent the entire day trying to track her down. in the afternoon, my colleague dan lothian pressed robert gibbs on whether the white house would make cook available. i would point you over to the usda on that. don t know whether you talked to usda. the person who supposedly said that the white house dan, if you want to reach the under secretary or deputy secretary, again call the department of agriculture. you hear on the overhead intercom robert gibbs is still doing his daily briefing. he just told dan lothian if you want to reach cheryl cook, robert gibbs just said in the briefing for the second day in a row that if any reporters want to talk to her we should call
that s one of those mysteries because again we ve gotten such little information. when you look at shirley sherrod, one of the things we ve clearly learned about her in recent days, you notice her words were kind to cheryl cook. she s not a bomb thrower. she hasn t been throwing out wild allegations but consistently she s said based on those three hurried phone calls from cheryl cook she got the clear, distinct impression that the white house was pressing for her to go. again this is not some partisan allegation. why the white house and agriculture department just won t put this to rest is a real mystery at this point. again, as she said about cheryl cook, shirley herself, she was the messenger, this was not her message. again you are trying to tackle whose message was it then. if we could just talk to cheryl cook we might get some answers. you can expect heat was probably coming down on her, too. ed henry, thanks. this weekend we are taking a walk in her shoes. an intimate loo
over to the press office. can you help us? let me see. i can let me take your information down. reporter: later in the afternoon i got a call back from another press person who left me a voice mail shedding no new light on cook s contact with the white house. i think we ve been pretty clear about what their involvement was and wasn t. obviously we informed them of what was going on because that s what we do on a daily basis. then in terms of their request or anything else, this is our decision here at usda. reporter: then suddenly a possibly break-through. my producer shawnthat shepherd has just gotten what we believe is the direct line for cheryl cook, as well as her cell numbers. your call is being forwarded to an automated voice system. the voice mailbox belonging to cheryl cook is full. to disconnect press 1. to enter another number, press.
resignation immediately on her blackberry. cook may be able to answer a lot of questions, including how far up the ladder this whole thing really went. our ed henry is digging deeper for us this morning. you literally needed your running shoes yesterday because you were chase down this story. we were trying to track it down. it is interesting because the obama administration obviously talks a lot about transparency but when it comes to those very questions you are talking about, these contacts between agriculture officials and white house officials in those key hours on monday right before shirley sherrod was pushed out, all of a sudden they don t want to talk. in the saga of shirley sherrod, there s only one mystery left to be solved. where is cheryl cook? cheryl cook works here at the agriculture department as a top aide to secretary tom vilsack. s on monday when the story first exploded, cheryl cook called her three times and demanded she resign and cheryl cook said it was at th
it wasn t i really, truly do believe it was not her message. cheryl is a great person. i would definitely want to see her be able to continue the work she was doing at usda. so i would hope that this attention on her would not cause them to do the same thing they did to me, you know, boot her out, get rid of that as if it is a sore that needs to be dealt with. she s doing some great work at usda. very kind words from her. and as we talk to her yesterday, the only person she really thinks she wants to exact some sort of retribution from or justice from, whatever words you want to use, the guy who posted her video in the first place, ed. yeah. she s also left open the possibility of maybe a legal suit against him. we ll see how that plays out, andrew breitbart. cheryl cook may just be caught in the middle here.