Gatecrashers steal limelight from Manmohan's state visit

By Arun Kumar, Washington, Nov 27 : First the dinner and now the party crashers - stealing the spotlight from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's just ended state visit, the US media is agog with how an American couple gatecrashed US President Barack Obama's dinner at the White House and what might have happened.

Politico, which focuses on the Washington political scene, turned its attention to how the alleged crasher couple at Obama's Tuesday night dinner in honour of Manmohan Singh "were being filmed by a camera crew for a reality television show as they prepared for their headline-grabbing caper".

The Bravo television network, which airs the "Real Housewives" series, confirmed Thursday that Michaele and Tareq Salahi were being followed by cameras from producers of the series on the same day the couple made it into the White House, but were not present for their entry.

"The cast of 'The Real Housewives of D.C.' has not been finalised," Bravo said in a statement to the New York Times. "Michaele Salahi is under consideration as a cast member, as such Half Yard Productions were filming the Salahis on that day. Half Yard was only aware that as per the Salahis they had been invited as guests."

A White House official, informed of Bravo's statement, said that was not the case. "We've already confirmed that they weren't invited," he was quoted as saying by the influential daily in a report running close to 1,200 words.

The Times said Secret Service had begun an inquiry into how the Salahis slipped past multiple layers of high-level White House security Tuesday night and managed to rub shoulders, literally, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Oscar winner composer A.R. Rahman and Pepsico's Indian American CEO Indra Nooyi among others.

Peter T. King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, called for a Congressional investigation. He said in an interview with the New York Times Thursday that he was shocked at the lack of security at the White House on Tuesday night. Since 2003, the Secret Service has been part of the Department of Homeland Security.

"Obviously, somebody dropped the ball," King was cited as saying. "I mean, you're talking about the president of the United States and the vice president and a powerful world leader, the prime minister of India."

"The fact they went through the magnometer is incidental," he said. "They could have had anthrax on them. They could have grabbed a knife from the dining room table." He added: "The next time it will be a far worse reality than a reality TV show."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post, which first wrote the story, in a 1,850 word report said the Salahis also seem to have staked out prime locations during President Obama's inauguration weekend, posting photos on Facebook that purportedly show them in the first family's glass-enclosed viewing area after a concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

Michaele Salahi spent nearly eight hours before the state dinner in a Georgetown salon setting, getting groomed for her big night out at the White House, though mostly getting filmed getting groomed, it said citing the CEO of Erwin Gomez Salon Thursday.

"It was a lot of schmoozing with the staff," said Packard-Gomez, explaining why a hair and makeup session lasted from nearly 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., extended by the crew's multiple takes and interviews with Salahi and the stylists. The talk of the day was Salahi's impending trip to the state dinner.

CNN trawled through court records to find the couple named in at least 16 different civil suits in Fauquier County, sometimes as plaintiffs, sometimes as defendants. The Salahis, it said, had left an extensive paper trail in federal bankruptcy and state court filings.

But the couple at the centre of the storm themselves remained silent. "Their counsel, Paul W. Gardner Esq., states emphatically that the Salahis' did not 'crash' this event. We look forward to setting the record straight very soon," their publicist Mahogany Jones told CNN.