that speech was out there, not the full text. number two, secretary vilsack in an exclusive interview with cnn yesterday said he didn t speak to anyone at the white house, trying to shut the notion that the white house was driving this. but the agriculture department is a pretty big bureaucracy. tens of thousands of employees over there. whether it was cheryl cook or someone else shirley sherrod suggested it was this undersecretary at agriculture who told her the white house wanted her out. was it her or some other official just because vilsack had not talked to the white house, does not mean there was not other contact going on. that s a good point to make. it s not always linear contact. all through the administration, people have contact at various levels. it will be interesting to see at what level in the white house these discussions were taking place. i trust you and your colleagues will be asking robert gibbs about that. we ll check in with you again.
a lot of other people now rallying behind you, people who had abandoned you at the beginning. if the agriculture secretary were to come to you and say, shirley, we d like to have you back, what would you say? you know, i m just not so sure at this point. i really wonder in light of how i was treated over the last two days just what that relationship would be like for the future. can they move beyond this? let s go right to the white house briefing room. ed henry, our senior white house correspondent is there. we re waiting for the briefing to get under way any minute now. you think robert gibbs is going to start up with this, he s going to hit this hard right as he comes out? reporter: i think he anticipates that he s going to be pressed about it. he may have a brief statement as his way to deal with it. but he knows he s going to get into some hand-to-hand combat here and a lot of reporters are going to press him. this is our first opportunity to press any senior white house o
he said. he said they were able to hold them off for two hours when they called for help to the central police headquarters of the province. help did not come, six were killed squrks & two have gone missing, ali. atia, this is we have been talking about how this is becoming a much more violent time in afghanistan. what s the talk in afghanistan about how to deal with this? we just heard that hamid karzai said he wants control, security control over afghanistan by 2014. right at a time when it doesn t seem like they re closer to having more control over security in their country. that s a very good point, ali. 2014, as we all know, is just four years away, and we re right now in 2010, which is the deadliest year in the war in afghanistan since it began in 2001. but it should be noted, ali, that this year, this vil liens, these deaths that we re seeing, it was grimly predicted last year in the summer of 2009.
who is likely to replace him? speculation is it s the new public face of the clean-up, a gentleman named robert dudley, acquired by bp, much more familiar with the u.s. deep water drilling. he has been the one who has really been handling the publicity and the remarks on behalf of bp of late. so that s the possibility. tony hayward, we don t know whether or not he s leaving. but there is some speculation that it will be happening at some point in the near future. meanwhile, in louisiana, there is a rally under way at the moment. it s a rally against the government moratorium on drilling. it s being held in lafayette, louisiana. it s an interesting situation for them, because so many of these people have been all right, particularly those who are shrimpers, oystermen, fishermen, in the gulf of mexico. but many have now got work as part of the clean-you up from bp. in addition to that, over the