Describing the gatecrashing by a socialite couple into his first state dinner as a 'screwup', an angry US President Barack Obama has vowed that no more uninvited guests will be getting into the White House. Hitting out at the socialite couple--Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele--who showed up at the dinner for the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh uninvited, Obama said, "What I know is what everybody knows. Which is that these people should not have gotten through the gate".
The US President also expressed his unhappiness with his social secretary Desiree Rogers, the White House official who sat down to dinner with the dignitaries, unaware that her staff had allowed the breach. "I was unhappy with everybody who was involved in the process. And so, it was a screwup... It won't happen again," Obama said in an interview to CBS television.
The uninvited couple were pictured shaking hands at a lineup with the president during the dinner with Singh standing by his side to welcome guests to the exclusive dinner on the White House lawns. The Salahis got past several checkpoints and into the White House, where they also mingled with top-level officials at the November 24 state dinner. Mark Sullivan, director of the Secret Service -- the branch in charge of the president's security -- accepted responsibility for the fiasco during a congressional hearing into the scandal.
Lawmakers have now subpoenaed the couple to appear before them on January 20. Obama said he had been seriously angered by the security breach at the exclusive dinner and vowed: "That's why it won't happen again." Copies of emails showed the Salahis pushed hard for an invitation to the glamorous event, attended by some of the country's top politicians and celebrities, but apparently turned up without one. The socialite couple claimed in a television interview that they were invited guests. But they are expected to invoke their constitutional right to keep mum at the congressional hearing.
Image: US President Barack Obama greets Michaele Salahi and her husband Tareq during a state dinner.
Photograph: Reuters
