Additional State Dinner Party Opens New Weak Links in White House Security (1/4/2010)

Additional State Dinner Party Crasher Opens New Weak Links in White House Security

January 4, 2010

Following reports today of a party crasher in addition to the Salahis at the president's first state dinner in November, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said she believes that the hearing held by Chairman Bennie Thompson and the House Homeland Security Committee has caused the Secret Service to take extraordinary steps to back-check the attendees. When Norton, a member of the committee, queried Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan at the hearing about how the Secret Service even knew that the Salahis had been at the state dinner, he responded that he learned it from the Salahis' Facebook page. Norton responded that she therefore could not credit the Secret Service testimony that no other uninvited people were in attendance. "I commend the Secret Service for discovering a third uninvited person, but just as important will be understanding how this breach occurred," Norton said. As this release went out, Norton received a call from Director Sullivan and expects to speak with him soon. She said that she was sure Chairman Thompson and the committee will pursue this new discovery, but that it may have been inadvertent, while the Salahis' was more clearly a planned crash." Reports say that this person came with the official Indian delegation. Still, Norton said the names of all the members of the official Indian delegation "should have been on the official guest list, and anyone, official or not, should have been stopped by the Secret Service if not listed." Norton noted that this discovery amounts to yet another way to get into the White House -- travel or slip in with a high level delegation, opening a new hole in the White House security system.

Besides the Secret Service, which is under the jurisdiction of the Homeland Security Committee, the new discovery also may implicate the State Department, which normally handles such delegations. "The State Department is not a security agency," Norton said. "This incident, along with the terror attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab may well show that the State Department is a weak link in U.S. security."