Heads will roll, but will the right ones tumble as White House State Dinner crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi part of ATFP

By Jeffrey Jolson

Sahali on Palestian board since removed

WASHINGTON, DC (Hollywood Today) – 11/27/09 – The couple that crashed a State Dinner at the White House had ties to the American Task Force on Palestine, Hollywood Today has confirmed.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who may have been there posing as a team from Bravo TV, (the husband-wife team has been auditioning for a role on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Washington D.C.”), so Bravo should either hire them as resourceful, or more likely turn over all correspondence to the Secret Service under threat of abetting potential terrorists and revoking Bravo’s FCC license – if the network was involved in the set-up.

The way it works, according to former White House press aide Edward Lozzi, is that the White House sets up the guest list well in advance. The Secret Service then vets the individuals. It is not a rock concert, you can’t sneak a peek at the guest list and use someone’s name or slip in a backdoor.

Already, various Arab groups are making the Salahis heroes of the anti-U.S. or anti-Israeli causes on the Internet.

So why were the Salahis allowed on the list? True, the Palestinian organization they both have ties to, the American Task Force on Palestine, claims only the most peaceful intents – so maybe the couple was invited by someone in the White House who believes this. We do not dispute AFTPs insistence of peaceful goals  without proof one way or another, yet in the recent past, the AFTP has been accused of America-bashing and promoting power-sharing with self-acknowledged terror group HAMAS.

So why is Tareq’s image on the ATFP webpage gone, as are most references to him and his wife? They are scuttling even faster than Bravo to distance themselves from what they may figure is a time bomb. The ATFP picture shows Tareq as a board member of their group a week ago. He has been deleted now.

So that leaves the Secret Service as first in line at the blame game.  They have launched a “comprehensive investigation” of its security measures after the two aspiring reality-TV stars crashed President Obama’s state dinner at the White House on Tuesday night.

The dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, led to Facebook photos of the Salahis with faces such as Vice President Joe Biden, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said initial results of the investigation showed that “our procedure wasn’t followed” at one security checkpoint, allowing the uninvited guests to enter.

That’s unlikely as photo IDs or perhaps even security clearance info is required everywhere, according to Lozzi and a current White House source.

“It’s not the Secret Service,” said Lozzi. “This was done through an office ahead of time. When big shots or reporters came through the system there were a lot of conferences about who was allowed at an event like this – and THEN the Secret Service vetted the list with names and Social Security numbers. This couple would not have gotten in otherwise. It could have been an advance press team or some department of political affairs that gave enough clearance to get near a guest check-in.”

Lozzi added “Let’s get something straight! The Secret Service did not screw up. As a former White House Aide who worked on the advance team for White House events and Presidential Events nationwide( 1990-1992), I am sorry to say that it was this very same team in the current Administration that screwed up. The White House employees provided the Secret Service with the names and social security numbers of the invited guests who are then back ground checked for criminal or risk factors only. That’s it! Secret Service did their job. White House employees failed miserably. They were duped by the Salahi’s who have broken both civil and federal criminal laws of fraud and trespass.”

Meanwhile the State Department is blaming the Secret Service. Yet Lozzi and HT’s other source maintain there must be an inside collaborator, perhaps one who believed in the Palestinian cause, or just thought it would be a great prank.

Donovan stressed that everyone at the party, including the gate-crashers, passed through rigorous safety checks.

“Everyone went through the other levels of security and the metal detectors,” Donovan said Thursday.

Once inside, the couple easily blended into the crowd of more than 300. Tareq, in a tuxedo, and Michaele, in flowing red sari, looked like the perfect Washington couple.

As for Bravo TVs potential aiding and abetting, they are leaning back on a broken three-legged stool. Earlier in the day, a camera crew shooting for “Real Housewives” had spent hours filming the couple as they prepared for the state dinner.

Johanna Fuentes, a Bravo Media vice president for communications, said in an e-mail to legitimate news groups that the Salahis told the show’s producer, contracted by Bravo, that they were invited, and the production company “had no reason to believe otherwise.”

Paul Morrison, a Virginia attorney who has represented the couple in the past but has not spoken to them since the dinner, told the Associated Press on Thursday that he did not think the Salahis had done anything illegal.

Yet Morrison said he had not been retained by the couple, Bravo or the Palestinian group.  ”I know them. I’m unaware of any reason they need representation right now.”

Well, someone does, and the pin-crashing sounds you hear are from the numerous heads that are rolling this instant at bowling alleys in D.C. and Hollywood.