State Dinner Crashers Met Obama

Michaele and Tareq Salahi arrived and entered as all the other guests to the White House State Dinner last Tuesday. The difference was, they allegedly were not invited.  According to a CBN News story, the couple not only entered the White House grounds, they also were in the receiving line in the Blue Room with Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for whose honor the dinner was held, and shook hands with President Obama, but no one took notice at this point.

The Secret Service insists the President was not endangered by a security breach that allowed the couple to enter.  However, there are appropriate measures being taken to ensure this sort of thing will not happen again.  Also, the Secret Service is possibly pursuing a criminal investigation of the Salahi's.

Secret Service Director, Mark Sullivan, made reference to the fact that his agency has screened more than 1.2 million visitors last year to the White House complex, and protected more than 10,000 sites for the President, Vice President, among others, but says, "Even with these successes, we need to be right 100% of the time."

The article also stated some interesting facts about the Salahi's themselves.  Apparently, Bravo Media has confirmed that Michaele Salahi is being considered to play a part in the new "The Real Housewives of D.C." reality show, and was being filmed by Half Yard Productions, the producer of the show, on the day of the dinner.  Half Yard Productions are claiming the Salahi's confirmed to them that they were invited to the State Dinner.  The production company took them at their word and filmed their preparations for the big event.

After researching further, the Salahi's apparently were previously photographed with the Obama's, or it appeared that way anyhow.  One photo taken just days before Obama took the oath of office, shows the Salahi's in a group shot with Obama and some of the musicians who performed at an inaugural concert, which was posted on the couple's Facebook page.  Other photos show the couple in the empty, glass-enclosed box from which the Obama's watched the concert with a caption that reads, "backstage with the Secret Service at the Lincoln Memorial during the Presidential Inauguration."

I guess there are still several questions to be answered involving this incident.  No one is sure what the couple told the officers at the checkpoint that allowed them to go through the security screening, but for some reason the officers that had the clipboard with the names on it, allowed them to proceed instead of calling someone from the White House staff or Secret Service to check out the problem.

This stunt is apparently a federal crime, and if pursued to the fullest extent, the Salahi's could face charges of knowingly and willfully falsifying statements on matters within the federal government's jurisdiction.

One problem is, with all this posted in the media, it looks to our enemies as if security in the United States is a joke.  Hopefully, this will just beef up security in all areas, but the reality is, the Secret Service cannot be perfect 100% of the time as they want to be.  I think they should try to be, however, they are human too, and should be allowed to make a mistake.  At least, in this particular instance, no one was hurt.