The Secret Service is under fire for racist and sexist e-mails, including one aimed at Chicago's Rev. Jesse Jackson. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the e-mails were just released by the Secret Service as part of a long-running civil rights suit filed by African American agents. They contain racist and sexist jokes and pictures. The one about the Rev. Jackson has now led to a demand for the release of any other insulting references to members of the Jackson family in Secret Service files.
Rev. Jackson's dealings with the Secret Service date back to his two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s. He actually asked for and was assigned protective details before other candidates back then. The Secret Service e-mail, CBS 2 obtained from a court filing in Washington, was titled "The Righteous Reverend," and jokes about the deaths of Jackson and his wife when a missile strikes their plane. The e-mail ends with, it "certainly wouldn't be a great loss and probably wouldn't be an accident either."
"This e-mail today tells me I have a lot less confidence in the secret Service than I did before it was exposed," said U.S. Rep Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)
Reacting to this and the other e-mails, a Secret Service spokesman told the New York Times: "We are deeply disappointed by any communication or action on the part of our employees that exhibits racial or other insensitivity."
When CBS 2 reached him by cell phone Tuesday afternoon, the Rev, Jackson said he wants all Secret Service communications which mention him, all the way back to the 1980's. Asked how his father took the comments, Jackson Jr. said, "Well, he wasn't quite as charged as Mrs. Jackson was. My mother wants to know what she has to do with this at all."
Like Jackson in 1983, Sen. Barack Obama also received early Secret Service protection, more than a year ago, when crowds at his events got very large. Rep. Jackson said he didn't question their commitment to protecting the probable Democratic nominee. "But suffice it to say that if supervisors at the Untied States Secret Service are passing around racially explicit e-mails and sexually explicit e-mails, there's a problem at the highest ranks of the Unites States Secret Service that deserves all of our attention," Jackson Jr. said.
He said he would use his position in Congress to investigate, and has also filed Freedom of Information Act requests for Secret Service documents. Referring to the one e-mail's joking about the assassination of his mother and father, Jackson Jr. said, "The Secret Service is charged with investigating threats, not initiating them."
Actually, the most damaging of the e-mails don't mention Jackson, or anyone else. They contain crude racial slurs or stereotypes and pornographic images. And while a Secret Service spokesperson claims "These e-mails are in no way a reflection of the agency or its policies or culture."
Rep. Jackson isn't convinced. "This gives you some sense, some insight, into what may be taking place there," he said. "The Congress of the United States has oversight responsibilities and we're going to be looking very carefully at what's going on there."
A Secret Service spokesperson says the 10 e-mails were discovered in a search of more than 20 million electronic documents over a 16-year period. More damaging, though, is who sent and received them: top brass, including the former Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Detail, as well as the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago field office.