Virginia socialites Michaele, left, and Tareq Salahi, above at Tuesday's state dinner, were not invited to the White House event. (Bill O'leary/the Washington Post)
Posted on 11/25/2009 6:25:14 PM PST by kristinn
Tareq and Michaele Salahi
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"Honored to be at the White House for the state dinner in honor of India with President Obama and our First Lady!" one of them wrote on their joint Facebook page at 9:08 p.m.
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While the White House offered no official explanation, it appears to be the first time in modern history that anyone has crashed a White House state dinner. The uninvited guests were in the same room as President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, although it is unknown whether they met the Obamas and the guest of honor.
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Donovan said a preliminary internal investigation Wednesday identified "a Secret Service checkpoint which did not follow proper procedure to ensure these two individuals were on the invited guest list." He declined to give further details. An administration official said the White House will conduct its own review.
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Later, they posted pictures that seem to chart their course through the night: Michaele posing with Marines outside near the White House doors, and with Katie Couric and Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) inside the mansion. In the East Room, the Salahis both cozied up to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his wife, Michelle.
But the best was yet to come: Once inside the dinner tent, they got pictures that appeared to show them with ABC's Robin Roberts, Bollywood composer AR Rahman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Obama Chief of Staff Emanuel (identified as "Ron" in the couple's Facebook photo caption) and two with a grinning vice president. The photos end there -- no shots of the Salahis sitting at a table, their seatmates or the post-dinner entertainment.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Our enemies are chortling at their good fortune that our country is run by such fools.
Is this ANOTHER half brother, by chance?
Employee actions allways reflect on the boss....oh....silly me..that was only when Bush was in office....
I’m sure the gatecrashers were as thoroughly wanded and bomb-sniffed as every other attendee. What would be hilarious, and at the same time, infuriating, would be if the crashers turned out to be minorities or members of the ROP and the USSS didn’t push the issue out of political correctness.
Oh, man. Those security personnel will soon be posted in Khandahar for training. Screwed the pooch but good.
You'd have to be insane to want to be anywhere’s near that room full of idiots.
If they meant harm it would be trivial for them to have a small wooden pipe and a couple of small poisoned darts. Michaele could have even stuck the darts into her dress and nobody would understand what they are. No metal or bomb detector can detect those. They were within feet from the Indian PM. It was a huge security lapse.
Posted this earlier on another thread ... seating at this type of WH function is carefully arranged. If these two individuals managed to get in ... their departure, prior to seating, would most certainly been noticed. Me thinks this is BS ... show me the pictures.
With all the protocol gaffes and now this security lapse, one wonders what other “lapses” have occurred since Jan 2009.
Ah, but I doubt anything in Zero’s administration measures up to the open trashing of security that we witnessed under the Clintons.
(See “Unlimited Access” by Gary Aldrich for more information on that.
As I said on another thread, Tareq Salahi is probably a fellow traveler of Obama’s. It’s quite possible the USSS let security slip because of political correctness.
Two other breaches:
An unknown Kenyan and a Wookiee also slipped through...
I haven't been able to find out where he was born.
That is the clue there is something fishy. The WH staff may have handled one check point instead of the Secret Service for some reason best known to themselves. Interesting!!!
Aspiring reality-TV stars crash White House state dinner
Pre 9/11 mentality.
I would say BIG DEAL.
They ought to really throw the book at those two tresspassers on OUR soil at OUR White House...and White House better have a full review of procedures, that's all I can say. They ought to know also that it is a matter of time before somebody tries something in midtown Manhattan with KSM.
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