Obama's one-time pastor Wright says president 'threw me under the bus'

NEW YORK -- The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that he is "toxic" to the Obama administration and that the president "threw me under the bus."

In his strongest language to date about the administration's 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.

"No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am 'toxic' in terms of the Obama administration," Wright wrote to the president of an Erie nonprofit group earlier this year.

"I am 'radioactive,' Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!" he wrote.

The White House didn't respond to requests for comment this week about Wright's remarks. Several phone messages left by the AP for Wright at the Trinity United Church of Christ, where he is listed as a pastor emeritus, were not returned.

Then-Sen. Obama cut ties with Wright when his more incendiary remarks became an Internet sensation in the spring of 2008. At a National Press Club appearance in April 2008, he claimed the federal government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested Obama was putting his pastor at arm's length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced Wright as "divisive and destructive" and later cut ties to the pastor altogether and left Wright's church.

The letter was sent Feb. 18 to Joseph Prischak, the president of Africa 6000 International in Erie. Wright subsequently agreed to write a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the group's behalf to try to get access to millions of dollars.