It was supposed to be a perfectly orchestrated evening of glamour and fine food, including vegetables from the first lady’s garden. Instead Michelle and Barack Obama’s first state dinner at the White House will be remembered for its gatecrashers.

The White House has been forced to admit that Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the Virginian couple auditioning for a television reality show, not only brazenly walked through layers of security to attend the event but actually met the president.

A photograph released by the White House showed Michaele shaking hands with a beaming Obama as her husband looked on. It prompted an abject apology from the secret service.

“The failing is ours,” admitted Mark Sullivan, director of the secret service. According to its internal investigation, the Salahis should have been turned away at the first checkpoint when their names did not appear on the list of 400 attending the banquet for Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister.

Instead they were waved on and passed a second checkpoint to enter the East Wing.

The Salahis were waved through by agents assigned to protect the man who is more at threat than anyone else on the planet.

Guests were sent an engraved invitation the week before the event and asked to RSVP to a recorded telephone line with their name, social security number and date of birth for criminal checks. Those who attended described chaotic scenes about 7.30pm with agents having only a small head-torch to view their photo IDs.

The Salahis, who are clearly not short of chutzpah, are fortysomething socialites described by friends as “unabashedly pursuing the spotlight”. Salahi has played polo with the Prince of Wales and they are pictured with him on their Facebook page. The couple managed to persuade the Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy to speak at their wedding, which they described as “the wedding of the century”, with 28 bridesmaids and 46 chefs.

According to the paper, the couple are in financial trouble arising from a bitter family feud over a winery in Virginia founded by Salahi’s parents. Earlier this year the winery filed for bankruptcy.

Perhaps for financial reasons, the pair had been auditioning for a reality show called The Real Housewives of Washington DC. They were followed by a film crew from the show when they arrived at the White House.

They managed to spend 90 minutes at the event, during which they shook hands with both the president and his wife and posed for photos with the vice-president, Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. They posted the pictures on their Facebook page.

Salahi has suggested that their names appeared on a list because of his role as captain of the America’s Cup polo team, which will be playing India next year.

In an email to the Bloomberg news agency, the couple’s lawyer, Paul Gardner, claimed: “My clients were cleared by the White House to be there.” The White House insists they were not on the list.

The last word might rest with Salahi’s mother, Corinne. She told reporters yesterday: “I think they need a spanking.”

(Source: Times Online UK)