White House officials viewed former surgeon general Richard H. Carmona as a public relations tool, pushing him to make political appearances and promote the Bush administration’s agenda while he was in office, according to a series of executive branch e-mails released yesterday by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The 18 pages of e-mails back up Carmona’s testimony before a House committee in July that he routinely battled Bush appointees who sought to rewrite his speeches, send him on political trips, and suppress his reports on global health, prison health and other politically sensitive topics. President Bush and other administration officials rejected the accusation.

An e-mail on Feb. 6, 2006, includes a memo to Carmona from then-White House political director Sara Taylor requesting that he deliver the keynote speech to the Alabama Republican Council’s annual fundraiser in Birmingham on March 4 of that year. “WH would be grateful if you could do this event,” Jamie Burke, the White House liaison at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in her cover note.

Carmona replied that “this one may present a conflict since it appears to be a fundraiser and OGC [Office of General Counsel] has previously told me to stay away from those type of events.” He did not attend.

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