Virginia couple crashes White House dinner, Secret Service baffled
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(from metro.co.uk) In a flowing, sari-esque red dress and a smart tux, Michaele and Tareq Salahi didn’t look out of place at Barack Obama’s White House state dinner. The couple mingled easily with the likes of vice-president Joe Biden, Washington mayor Adrian Fenty and CBS News presenter Katie Couric. They even took pictures of themselves with Indra Nooyi, the boss of Pepsi, and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. The only problem was the pair were not actually on the 300-strong guest list for the dinner in honour of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh.
In fact, the couple were wannabe reality TV stars who boasted of their party-crashing antics on Facebook, including posting pictures of themselves with the great and the good of Washington.
They never made it to the sit-down dinner but the US Secret Service is now looking into its procedures to see how the couple were able to go unnoticed for as long as they did.
However, the service insisted that Mr Obama and his guests were never in any physical danger because the couple from Virginia would have gone through all the security screenings that every invited guest did.
The Salahis are well-known in the Virginia polo-playing set and are being considered for a reality show, Real Housewives of DC.
In an interview with US channel CBS in September, Mrs Salahi said: ‘President Obama has made it very accessible for anyone to visit the White House, so that’s like a big thing right now.’
And it looks like she has proved how true that is, although they could face a potential trespass charge for their troubles on Tuesday night.
Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said: ‘An initial finding has identified one of our checkpoints that did not follow proper procedures to ensure that the two individuals were on the invited guests list.
I want to stress that these individuals went through magnetometers and several other levels of screenings just as all of the guests attending the dinner did.
‘We don’t rely on just magnetometers or the level of screenings – we have our agents with our protectees at all times.’
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(from metro.co.uk)
