'Sick' Secret Service emails Jesse Jackson demands files

by David Edwards
Published: Wednesday May 14, 2008

Emails containing crude, racist and pornographic images "were just released by the Secret Service as part of a long-running civil rights suit filed by African American agents," CBS 2 in Chicago reports.

One of the emails joked about civil rights leader Jesse Jackson being killed by a missile.

"The Secret Service e-mail, WBBM-TV 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 station reports. "The e-mail ends with, it 'certainly wouldn't be a great loss and probably wouldn't be an accident either.'"

The report continues, "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. 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."

In response Jackson said, according to WBBM-TV, that he "wants all Secret Service communications which mention him, all the way back to the 1980's."

U.S. Rep Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) added, "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. 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.

The article continues, "He said he would use his position in Congress to investigate, and has also filed Freedom of Information Act requests for Secret Service documents."

Reacting to the story at the conservative Free Republic site, one user wrote, "Who cares what Jackson wants? Tell him to go back to the ghetto." No one else in the thread had any reaction to the comment.

CBS 2 has more details here.

This video is from CBS 2 Chicago, broadcast May 14, 2008.
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