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Desiree Rogers is under scrutiny for her office's role in the infamous security breakdown at the state dinner. A woman with a reputation as a consummate perfectionist is being criticized for dropping the ball — and, by some, for putting her own aggrandizement over her job. The White House social secretary under fire for her office's role in the security breakdown that let an invited couple into a state dinner once joked that she regularly allowed party crashers at White House events. Desiree Rogers made the claim in an interview with the trade magazine BizBash at the Creative Coalition's annual...

Bush dinner tastes sour for Obama - PMO decision to entertain former President causes hurt in Washington K.P. NAYAR Washington, Oct. 24: Preparations for Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington on November 24 have begun on a negative signal to the Obama administration with a decision by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to host former President George W. Bush for dinner at Singh’s residence at the end of this month. Bush is visiting New Delhi on October 30 and 31 at the invitation of an Indian newspaper and will speak at a conference organised in New Delhi on October 31 on...

The evidence clearly shows that the congressional investigation of the White House Gatecrashers is being controlled and limited. Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), now the subject of an Ethics Committee investigation, has made it clear that he wants to limit the investigation. Is he trying to protect White House officials with something to hide? Ignoring evidence of White House connections to the alleged gatecrashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, Thompson will not subpoena Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary who is a very close friend of Barack and Michelle Obama. As a result of the stonewalling and cover-up,...

Here’s what we know about how Carlos Allen, the latest White House party crasher, wound up at Barack Obama’s first state dinner: Five days before the event, Allen told a friend that he’d received an invitation from the White House to dine with the prime minister of India. In retrospect, it was an odd claim. Allen wasn’t famous, a big political donor, or Indian. He wasn’t even, it seemed, fully employed. Yet he gave no hint that he was surprised to have been invited. Nor was Allen’s friend surprised to hear it. Allen, she later said, seemed like the kind...

Why did the New York Times scrub out news that it broke about the White House-crashing couple’s ties to an organization that supports Islamic terrorism? Yes, Tareq Salahi, the male half of the couple who crashed the White House State Dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is a Palestinian and likely Muslim. And not only that he’s an activist Palestinian who is likely Muslim, and who is on the board of the Muslim-dominated American Task Force on Palestine...

WASHINGTON — The brazen reality TV hopefuls who managed to crash the White House state dinner earlier this week may face criminal charges, the Secret Service said today. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin says the agency is moving closer to beginning a criminal investigation. He says that’s one reason the Secret Service hasn’t yet explained what happened when Michaele and Tareq Salahi arrived at the security checkpoint Tuesday for the dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Mackin says there’s less the Secret Service can say as the probe moves closer to a criminal investigation. He says the agency isn’t...

(CNN) -- Former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers told CNN's Don Lemon on Saturday that she is excited about her new position as chief executive officer of a publishing company and that she has put the state dinner crasher scandal behind her. Rogers declined to comment about the Salahis, the couple whose party-crashing ways may have cost her the White House position. Nor did she want to discuss a reality show that features the Salahis and that recently showed footage of the couple with a police escort. Those images have sparked an investigation by police in Washington D.C., an...

Should we have seen this one coming? The watch Tareq Salahi turned over last week to satisfy a debt owed to a landscaper is a fake, according to court records and the jeweler asked to authenticate it. Ray Cosey told our colleague James Hohmann he knew the timepiece - said to be a fancy Patek Philippe, which can cost more than $15,000 - was a phony the second he saw it.... Cosey, in the business for 36 years, appraised it at about $100. Presumably, this shouldn't be a problem anymore for landscaper Mike Dunbar, who took the Salahis to court...

A random websurf today shows no shortage of prominent coverage in the Arabic language media including running commentary on the fiasco as well as in some cases detailed background explanations as to how the recent State Dinner security breach occured at the White House and uncleared people were able to come into close access with the President of the United States and visiting The Prime Minister of India.One such outlet is Arab Times in Arabic, located in the United States, but many other outlets are carrying it outside of the USA--including on some questionable sites. This appeared on Arabic...

WASHINGTON: This time, the picture is the story. After the Secret Service insisted that US president Barack Obama was never endangered by a security breach that allowed a couple to crash his first state dinner, the White House has released a photo showing that not only did the pair get close to Obama, they actually shook hands and talked to him. The revelation underscored the seriousness of the security breach and prompted an abject apology from the Secret Service. A White House spokesman said that the couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi of Virginia, met and shook hands with the president...

Ostensibly, White House party crashers Tareq Salahi and his wife could facilely be dismissed as another pair of publicity infatuated cretins. Commentators have been quick to compare them to the deranged Balloon Boy parents, desperate for fame at any price. Obamanutz devotes an entire chapter to the putrification of our pop culture that has spawned and enabled this kind of narcissism. Two strangers getting access to the President of the United States is disturbing enough by itself. We were told early on that Salahi is “half Palestinian.” That’s not the half of it. The Salahi’s are deeply in debt as...

State Dinner Crashers Picture With The President

It’s one of the most secure places on earth, but two Washington area socialites and reality TV wannabes were apparently able to get behind the gates at the White House and mingle with the crowd at the State Dinner in honor of India last night. The Washington Post has the dish on Tareq and Michaele Salahi, below: The First Lady’s office told ABC they would have no comment on the crashers and referred all inquiries to the Secret Service. Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan confirms that the agency is looking “into a report that two individuals not on the guest...