The Story That Won’t Go Away (and Why It Shouldn’t)

Today I saw a story on my Yahoo homepage about a third party crasher getting into the White House state dinner last November. The Secret Service hasn’t released the party crasher’s name yet, but has said that it was a male with the Indian delegation and that he didn’t get close to the President or First Lady.

When this story broke, I got very interested in the details behind it and not because I am a huge fan of The Real Housewives series, polo, or Virginia wine (I wouldn’t be caught dead near any of those three things). As I mentioned in my first post, I spent the first part of my enlistment serving as part of the Marine Security Company at Camp David. I worked a lot with the Secret Service and developed a respect for their professionalism and skill. I also know and served with one of the Marines that was photographed with the Salahis. When information about how the Salahis got into the White House started to emerge and when the White House started to try and throw the Secret Service under the bus, naturally I got a little suspicious about the story the White House was putting out about how the Salahis got in.

Lets first go over some things about the Salahis that haven’t been widely reported.

1. Tareq Salahi was a member of the Virginia Wine Board and eventually was appointed its chairman by Governor Warner. When Tim Kaine was elected governor of Virginia, he appointed Salahi a member of the state’s tourism board in the hopes that Salahi would help attract wine tourists to the state and that Virginia would develop the equivalent of California’s Napa Valley. Tim Kaine’s inaugural committee even bought $25k worth of wine from Salahi’s now bankrupt vineyard. Salahi also has donated money to both Republican and Democratic politicians in Virginia. Its no secret that Tim Kaine helped Obama win Virigina (and the Presidency) in 2008 and Kaine is now chairman of the DNC.

2. The Salahis were organizing a polo event with the Indian Embassy and were at a reception at the Indian Embassy two months prior to the incident at the White House. Obviously they would have known a lot of the staff at the Indian Embassy.

3. Tareq Salahi is a board member of a Palestinian “peace group” that has hosted powerful Democratic and Republican politicians.

Take these facts into account and its obvious that the Salahis aren’t just social climbers. They have some very real connections in DC, especially in some powerful Democratic circles. So what does this have to do with the Secret Service and what happened at the White House state dinner? Having worked security at VIP events in the DC area, I can tell you that at these events a lot of pressure is put on the security personnel not to “offend” the wrong people by “inconveniencing” them with time-consuming security procedures.  Usually at events like this, members of the social staff put out a list of guests and there is usually a member of the social staff at each security checkpoint, nominally there to greet guests but really there to make sure the Secret Service, Marines, Capitol police, or whoever don’t piss off anybody important.

So here is what I really think happened: the Salahis show up with all the cameras and hoopla and walk up to the first checkpoint (I guess Katie Couric was there too). The Secret Service has a guest list and they aren’t on the one the Uniform Division has (the people responsible for perimeter security at the White House and other Presidential events). They check with the social staff (which probably included people from the Indian Embassy who had to have known the Salahis) and either they have a list with the Salahis on it (and the White House won’t admit it) or they assume that the Salahis had to have been invited and don’t want to risk offending them (and most importantly their friends). So the social staff tells the SS to let them in (or threatens them if they don’t) and the rest of the story everybody knows by now.

There is no “smoking gun” to prove that this is what happened at the checkpoint. But most of the blame is being placed on the Secret Service that is unfair to them. The real story here is how the Obama White House is throwing three Secret Service Officers under the bus in order to protect their social staff, most importantly the head social secretary Desiree Rogers.

So much for looking out for the little guys…

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Politics