Taxpayers Attend Obama State Dinner
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The agency charged with protecting the US President and other high-level officials is conducting a comprehensive review of the security breach on Tuesday at the dinner in honour of the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh.
The Washington Post first reported that a Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who live in Virginia, were not on the official guest list but managed to crash the White House party.
It said they did not have seats allocated in the South Lawn tent where the dinner was held and the White House has asked the Secret Service for a full review of what happened.
"An initial finding has identified one of our checkpoints that did not follow proper procedures to ensure that the two individuals that were named in the Washington Post story were on the invited guests list," said Edwin Donovan, a US Secret Service spokesman.
But he said no-one at the dinner was ever in danger.
"I want to stress that these individuals went through magnetometers [metal detectors] and several other levels of screenings just as all of the guests attending the dinner did," he said.
November 27, 2009
Copyright © 2009 The Telegraph