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Racist Secret Service E-Mails

Entry 1:

A discrimination lawsuit filed by African-American employees against the Secret Service has dragged on for more than eight years, prompting the plaintiffs to accuse the government's lawyers of dragging their feet. Last week, a batch of  racist internal e-mails written to or by "at least 20" high-ranking agency supervisors was released by the government weeks after a court-imposed deadline. Samples of the e-mails (see below and the following four pages) demonstrate why the agency might have been reluctant to turn them over.

In 2003, Daniel Paulson, a Secret Service assistant director in the Office of Government Liaison and Public Affairs, sent a "Harlem Spelling Bee" (see below) to several recipients, including a deputy assistant director who has since retired. The e-mail contained mock "vocabulary words" from an imaginary fifth-grade "Ebonics homework assignment." Example: "Hotel—I gave my girlfriend crabs, and the hotel everybody."Another 2003 e-mail joked about killing the  Rev. Jesse Jackson  (Page 2); a third made joking reference to lynchings and large male genitalia (Page 3); and a fourth, this one from 2005, related a joke about robot golf caddies that, when painted black, "didn't show up for work … filed for welfare, and … robbed the pro shop" (Page 4). This last was sent to the head of the Cleveland field office.

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Meanwhile, in an exchange between the "Special Agent in Charge of the Dignitary Protective Division and a former GS-14 Special Agent," the two Secret Servicemen complained that "reverse racism and political correctness are destroying every aspect of American life" (Page 5).

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