Voices from the Flats – Getting Punked by Fabulists in a Technological Society
[White House Marines and Michaele Salahi at the State Dinner]
Getting Punked by Fabulists in a Technological Society
By Donald Craig Mitchell
In The Technological Society, published in 1954, the French political scientist Jacques Ellul predicted that within a decade or two or three the relentlessly intertwining tentacles of technological systems would take over the world and that, when they did, maintaining the integrity of the systems would become more important than the fate of any human being the systems were intended to benefit. Ellul also predicted that, when that happened, the only form of government capable of maintaining the integrity of the systems would be fascism.
I think of Jacques Ellul and his prescience every time I run my belt and car keys through a metal detector, take my shoes off without waiting to be told to do so at airports, or read another New York Times article about Pinwale, Stellar Wind, or one of the other semi-secret programs the National Security Agency has created since 9-11 to monitor the telephone, email, and text messaging communications of tens of millions of United States citizens. And in the years ahead the intrusion of the national security state into every facet of day-to-day life in the US of A is going to get worse. Because when compared to Britain, where in London more than 10,000 closed-circuit television cameras installed on street corners keep an Orwellian eye focused 24-7 on the citizenry, America has a long way yet to go.
I am resigned to that. But I still have enough spunk left in me to appreciate the occasional slave revolt. Which is why my new heroes of the moment are Michaele and Tariq Salahi, the Virginia hunt country socialites who recently crashed the White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
If Mr. and Mrs. Salahi had not posted their photo opportunities with Joe Biden and Katie Couric on Facebook, their get-away would have been clean and the Secret Service would have been none the wiser. But Michaele, who has been jockeying to bring herself to the attention of the producers of the “Real Wives of D.C.” TV reality show, and Tariq, her scofflaw spouse, did not want to get away clean. What they wanted is what their Big Adventure has gotten them: an appearance on the NBC Today show, an invitation they turned down to appear on Larry King Live, a “representative” who is working to try to incite a six figure bidding war between the television networks for the exclusive right to an interview, and, best of all, their own skit at the opening of last weekend’s Saturday Night Live. How much more fun can there be?
But while the Salahis have been enjoying themselves, on Capitol Hill and inside the White House and the Secret Service there has been blow-back.
Last week the House Committee on Homeland Security hauled Mark Sullivan, the director of the Secret Service, into the dock to explain how Tariq, with Michaele on his arm, so easily breached the White House security perimeter. The Republican members of the Committee want Desiree Roberts, the White House social secretary, to take the fall because she demoted the member of her staff whose job during the George W. Bush administration had been to stand with a clip board at the east portico entrance to the White House and check off the names of guests invited to social events as they arrived. But so far the only confirmed scapegoats have been the three uniformed Secret Service agents who, with night coming on and rain drizzling and several hundred dressed to the nine guests backing up behind them, allowed Michaele and Tariq to two-step their way through the metal detectors and into the pre-dinner reception.
When he was asked how he thought that could have happened, Ralph Basham, who preceded Mark Sullivan as director of the Secret Service, said: “That individual agent apparently made a unilateral decision that that person doesn’t look like a threat and let’s not cause a back up in processing with the others in line.”
But that explanation does not explain why that agent made that decision. But the answer is as simple as it is age-old: as the photographs on her Facebook page document, Michaele Salahi is hot. And that evening with her blond hair cascading into her eyes and down below her shoulders and wearing a red sari to celebrate the Indian theme, she looked terrific. And I am willing to bet the mortgage that the three agents who allowed her through security even though she and her husband were not on the guest list were middle-aged.
That’s my theory because I once saw it happen.
For reasons serendipitous, between 1978 and 1980 former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and I were co-counsel in Washington, D.C., for the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) during the years Congress was considering H.R. 39, the bill it enacted in 1980 as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Stewart did the heavy political lifting. I was the thirtysomething who worked the halls of the Senate and House office buildings and kept in day-to-day touch with Committee staffs and the other lobbyists who were part of the swirl.
The fight over H.R. 39, which was terrific fun, pitted a consortium of national environmental organizations and the Carter Department of the Interior against the State of Alaska and the oil, mining, and timber industries over creating new national parks and wildlife refuges in Alaska and designating tens of millions of acres of Alaska as “wilderness” in which no economic development can occur. The fight ended on November 12, 1980 when the week after Ronald Reagan was elected to succeed Jimmy Carter as President, Representative Morris Udall, the chief sponsor of H.R. 39, begrudgingly urged the House to accept the version of the bill that Senator Henry Jackson, the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, had shepherded through the Senate.
A week or so later I received a telephone call from someone in the White House who informed me that President Carter would sign ANILCA into law on December 2 at a signing ceremony in the East Room. I also was told that twenty or thirty seats had been reserved for whomever AFN wanted to invite, and that I would be responsible for coordinating the logistics.
One of the reasons the fight over H.R. 39 was such fun was that thirty years ago I had the run of Capitol Hill. There were no metal detectors and I could travel through the tunnels underneath the Capitol Hill campus, as well as back and forth between the House and Senate chambers in the Capitol Building. And there was not all that much more security anywhere else in Washington, D.C. In front of the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue was clogged with traffic. And anyone who wanted to could walk the narrow path that runs between the White House and the Treasury Department.
Security was so lax at the Department of the Interior that after the “guards” got to know me, when friends who worked at the Department and I would return from lunch, the guards not only would wave me through without having to sign in, because they were with me, the guards also would wave my friends through without requiring them to show their Department of the Interior IDs.
In that security environment, to get the individuals on the AFN guest list for the ANILCA signing ceremony into the White House all I was required to do was provide the Secret Service with names and social security numbers. When he or she arrived at the White House, each individual on the list had to show his or her driver’s license. That was all there was to it.
An hour before the signing ceremony I stationed myself at the gate at the southwest entrance to the White House grounds in order to be on hand in case any of the individuals on the AFN guest list had any problems. It was a sunny and, for that time of the year, quite warm winter day and the two or three hundred guests who had been invited to the signing ceremony moved through the gate without incident. At the gate a guest would show his or her driver’s license to the guard who would check the guest’s name off his list. Then the guest would walk up the driveway to the White House and make his or her way, pretty much on his or her own, to the East Room.
That system worked great until Dee Olin arrived. Dee was the twenty-nine-year-old mayor of Ruby, a small Athabascan Indian village on the Yukon River. When Dee reached into her handbag for her wallet which contained her driver’s license she realized she had left her wallet in her hotel room. But tough luck. Even though the name Dee Olin was on his list and even though I vouched that the woman standing at the gate was known to me to be Dee Olin, the guard was insistent. No driver’s license, no entrance.
That is until Dee went to work on him. In 1980 Dee Olin, with her mane of black hair, almond eyes, and stop traffic body, was a stone cold Penelope Cruz-quality fox. But after five minutes of eyelash-batting and cajoling, while I could see him weakening, the guard remained reluctantly adamant. The rule was the rule. No identification no entrance.
Seemingly out of luck, Dee thought for a moment and then had an inspiration. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a copy of the Spring 1979 edition of The Alaska Journal, a quarterly arts magazine that marketed a romanticized view of life in the Alaska bush, principally to tourists. Dee thumbed through to page 11 and there it was: a four-page article, with photographs, profiling “Dee Olin Mayor of Ruby” who “battles with bureaucracy to improve the lives of Ruby’s 200-plus residents.” One photograph showed Dee having lunch with Bella Hammond, the Governor’s wife. Another was a full-page color photograph of Dee wearing a plaid shirt and beaded moose skin moccasins sitting on the bed in her cabin in Ruby petting a sled dog.
Dee gave the guard the copy of The Alaska Journal turned to the page that featured the color photograph. Then she said, “See, it’s me. Dee Olin.” The guard looked at the photograph, looked at Dee, looked back at the photograph, looked again at Dee and then said, “That’s you alright.” And then he let her through the gate. If Stuart Knight, the director of the Secret Service, had seen him do so, he would have cashiered the guard who succumbed so easily to Dee’s pheromonic charm on the spot.
Dee and I and everyone else who were invited had a terrific time at the signing ceremony and the reception that followed. And Dee (who unlike Michaele Salahi could have been carrying a hand gun or a buck knife in her handbag) did not attempt to assassinate Jimmy Carter by sprinkling him with anthrax as several pundits have suggested that Michaele could have done if she had wanted to assassinate Barack Obama (and if she had known how to manufacture anthrax and if she had had access to a laboratory in which to do so).
That was then. Even I understand that now is now. But it’s still a shame that the national security state is wrapped so hard around the axle that it cannot take a joke. The joke is that the Secret Service got punked by two fabulists. And so what? In 1997, 2001, and 2003 the Very Reverend Richard “the Handshake” Weaver, a whack job preacher, crashed two presidential inaugurations and a National Prayer Breakfast to shake hands with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. And Dick Tuck spent forty years punking Richard Nixon. Including, so urban legend has it, by hiring an elderly woman wearing a Nixon for President button who the evening after the Kennedy-Nixon television debate, and with the Secret Service looking on, hugged Milhous on camera as she cheerfully counseled: “Don’t worry son. He beat you last night, but you’ll get him next time.”
But rather than the Secret Service chalking off the Salahis’ Big Adventure to experience, news sources are reporting that the Department of Justice may charge Michaele and Tareq with a felony for having committed the crime of fibbing to the three officers who let them through their checkpoint. If they are charged, watching CNN in his cave in the mountains of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden undoubtedly will chortle over what, beyond his wildest expectation, his nineteen guys armed with box-cutters have frightened America into doing to itself. But bin Laden would be claiming too much credit.
Because as Jacques Ellul explained in The Technological Society, no technological system can allow its integrity to be breached. Not for any reason. Not by anyone. Unfortunately for Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the guys with the box cutters hurried things along.
Salamis according to Mrs palin, I should be in bed.:)
It was the sari the squeaked them over the edge. I’m certain of it.
Much of what has been said here is true but unfortunately sir, Bin Laden is STILL walking around able to be jovial at our constant blunders. And because we have allowed ourselves to be drawn into the traps detailed in The Technological Society, we have not yet come to Ellul’s proposed end point. BUT, we have come to a point where folks like Michaele and Tareq Salahi, need to spend some time behind bars for violating national security – as the current environment has defined it.
The Secret Service guards AND THEIR DIRECTOR need to be booted out on their respective rear-ends and replaced by someone who takes this issue a bit more seriously than has been displayed. Once again, not dissolving in the pool of fascism described in your reference material but a bit more attuned to the environment we have unfortunately made for ourselves. I wish we were back in the times that you described earlier and your experience with Ms. Olin…but we’re not. Your speculation that “The joke is that the Secret Service got punked by two fabulists” is unfortunately NOT a joke and I’m afraid those days of national naivete are done.
If Michaele and Tareq Salahi are allowed to continue their public display of “we did, our lawyer says we can keep it up, we need to get paid for it and you can’t do anything about it” stunts, then our Nations’ security credibility is shot.
Mr. Mitchell has such a big brain, it takes me a couple of tries of re-reading to understand his writing. I appreciate his complicated writing though, this is a wild-ride I can get on board with.
Error: the White House social secretary is Desiree Rogers (not Roberts).
Under her maiden name Desiree Glapion, she was my first roommate in college. That makes me feel so famous! And I didn’t even have to crash the party to feel that way!
Personally, I think Ms. Salahi should have been turned away at the door for showing extreme poor taste in choice of attire. To my mind, it is just plain RUDE to dress in “the costume” of another culture as if that (or any) culture’s time-honored traditions and history are something that can be co-opted.
How incredibly RUDE to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, for Ms. Salahi – a woman with NO ties to India- to wear a (pseudo)sari; how incredibly embarassing for our nation that she would be so presumptuous and so disrespectful of our nation’s honored guests. Would she have worn a kimono with all the attendant accoutrements if she’d been crashing a State Dinner honoring the Emperor of Japan? Probably. Would ‘the media’ have tsk-tsked her for wearing something totally inappropriate? Who knows.
I’m sorry, but this is one of my MAJOR gripes with ‘real Americans’ and how some seem to feel that the rest of the world –unless clad in ‘American’ clothes– wears “costumes”… not ‘traditional clothing’ or anything else: costumes. Like at Halloween.
I, personally, find it most offensive when clothing and/or attire specific to a culture is worn as ‘cutesy’ by someone with no historic and/or cultural ties to it.
(Adding: And, no, I have no ‘native’ Alaskan blood, but I am a sourdough who finds the photos of SP in the grocery store with baby T offensive. She may have been governor of the state, but her wearing the “costume” of some of the state’s citizens, I found, just obnoxious as all get out. Had she shown the least indication that she understood the culture and plight of those with rightful claim to native heritage (other than the toss-off of “Well, Todd’s grandmother…”) I might feel differently. As it is, though…)
Yeah, yahoos co-opting for cutsey’s sake the traditional clothing of another culture just chafes my buttockal area. Chafes it no end.
Whew! Glad that’s off my chest. beth.
The incident is serious because of the the hatred shown towards this President. At first, it’s kind of funny but then, it’s not. The death threats are numerous, the propaganda against him is mounting and Scarah isn’t helping with her ‘death panels’/'hanging with terrorists’ speeches.
The secret service needs to learn from this and next time tell the guests, i’m sorry but I need to verify your identity and let them wait.
I’m sorry, but in this case I must disagree with you.
Dee Olin was invited. The Salahis were not.
The Salahis were party crashers. That is rude behavior. And choosing to be rude to the President of the United States is not something to be dismissed, let alone rewarded. Their behavior disrespected the office. This was not about meeting the President. This was a publicity stunt for personal gain. They want a spot on a reality show and for that they ridiculed the White House. And bragged about it.
If it were in my power I would see to it they not only never got their spot on Housewives of D.C. but that they never got their six figure deal and there would be no appearance on Larry King, The Today Show or any other show. They should be shunned; more than Octomom. I’m all for them being prosecuted. Let them become publicity pariahs to the very media they’re hoping to attract.
I do not think this is something to be laughed off. I don’t find it funny at all.
Should hackers be rewarded because they punked the credit card company or military department they hacked into? Should thieves be rewarded for exposing a weakness in security systems? Should muggers be congratulated because they’ve proved how ineffectual our police system is at preventing crime?
Dee Olin was invited.
The Salahis were not.
Dee Olin didn’t lie.
The Salahis did nothing but lie.
Big difference.
As you said, totally different times. Cute story.
But I’m very disappointed in you.
To clarify, “you” being Donald Craig Mitchell, the author of the article.
No you, AKM.
The two who crashed the White House dinner posed no security threat, yet they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as if they were vicious, violent criminals.
Yet the Americans responsible for actually torturing and murdering dozens of innocents at secret prisons will never be prosecuted for their crimes.
I’ve read this article twice and I still don’t get the point. Heroes? You have to be kidding. Technology? I’d argue sex, just like Palin uses hers. I also think the magazine id was sufficient. Again, what is the point of this article?
These two should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.Asa Bet said this could have been a disaster and it could have been a way for our enemies to see if they could not do just what has been done. Now they know from this and ms palin that a wink and a smile can get you what you want.I have to say thanks for nothing Ms palin
“…her blond hair cascading into her eyes and down below her shoulders and wearing a red sari…
Michaele Salahi is hot.”….”Dee Olin with her mane of black hair, almond eyes, and stop traffic body, was a stone cold Penelope Cruz-quality fox.”……”And I am willing to bet the mortgage that the three agents who allowed her through security ……were middle-aged.”
….And I am willing to bet that you are middle-aged, too, Mr. Mitchell. You almost make the case for excusing those poor SS schmucks for caving on their responsibilities with your excellent attention to sensuous detail…..but not quite.
I personally see nothing to admire in the Salahi’s self-aggrandizing “slave revolt” when we have a President in the White House who is currently experiencing a 400X increase in serious death threats over previous presidents. Furthermore….if “long, blond hair cascading into eyes” renders a Secret Security guard impotent to do his sworn duty, then some tough female SS guards need to kick some ass to get assigned to the White House detail.
I see more danger in the increasing obsession in this country with “celebrity” over true achievement than I do with scary technological tentacles creating an Orwellian fascist state. Sarah Palin and the Salahi’s are just some of the latest examples of this shallow celebrity phenomenon. Dazzle the dumb public with shiny objects and sound-bites so that they are no longer interested in or understand the critical issues….and thus are more easily manipulated and controlled. It’s already happening….
A well written and interesting piece… that I don’t agree with.
Equating the Salahis’ stunt with a “spunky” revolt against the techo-security state? No, just not buying that. For a pair of publicity hunters to play a game with the President’s safety is, frankly, unforgivable. And to them, it was a game. This also has essentially nothing to do with the techno-security state. Protecting a country’s leader from harm is a necessity that predates it. By a few millennia. Nice try, though.
As for an age-old explanation, how about, they just wanted to see what they could get away with, then bragged about it like miscreants have done since the beginning of time.
Talking about security.
Last night I got a phone call from my daughter-in-law in Melbourne Australia.
My son who is a Dr. of Science was in Israel for a conference. Was flying out to London, when he was pulled aside by security taken to a booth and grilled for an hour. He was carrying a lap top and a Ipod. I won’t go into the full details.The end of the story is that they took the case and put it in a bag the laptop in another bag and the cords in another to be put in the belly of the plane. When he asked about his Ipod,They told him it would follow on another plane the next day. I laughed when his wife told me he’ll never go back to Israel
I reckon the Salahi’s would never have got anywhere new their President.
near [sorry typo]
There are moments to punk and moments not to punk. This is definitely a bad moment. It was poor judgement. For the sake of 5-minute fame and gain.
No heroes. Just sad.
I fail to see the humor in 2 people proving that the safety of our President (and other attendees) is so easily at risk. What is the difference between the Salahi’s and a terrorist/assasin doing a ‘dry’ run to find ways to breach security?
So it’s called being punked until whomever actually robs the bank or crashes a plane into a building?
Sorry Mr Mitchell but your article infuriates me on so many levels and I am shaking mad.
Beth, I agree: Native traditional clothing is not a costume. When I lived in India (in the time of the dinosaurs) it was considered an affront for a non-indian woman to wear either sari or salwar camis, unless she was married to a native indian. To consider traditional dress from any culture a costume is an arrogance born of the sense of superiority of the old colonialist arrogance.
To this day I wear a “dirndl”, the bavarian traditional dress, when I have an Oktober Fest gathering. I always feel a bit funny, though: The different regions have variants of the style, and being a northern German, I know that I am not quite authentic to my “tribe”. We surely are strange creatures…
#13 North_of_the_Range: Succinctly said… and I totally agree.
It was not a sari that Mrs. Salahi wore, but another form of Indian dress, as was explained to me by a friend: it was also the color that brides typically wear. It was an offensive outting by the Salahis in every way, if not an illegal one.
In this devisive political culture which Mrs. Palin’s words, as confusing as they are at times, encourages, I worry for the safety of President Obama and other heads of our government. I did not find this amusing at all, but rather a disgusting display of shallowness and hubris.
I agree with North of the Range – these two are not heroes in any way, shape or form, but Mr Mitchell does bring up a couple of interesting comments. He says ” she was hot”, he also comments on Dee’s appearence. We all know that part of the only reason that Queen Quitter is making any mileage is because she looks pretty. She has been on a national magazine cover described as hot. Change her looks to … (fill in the blank) … and the attention level wouldn’t be close to what she’s getting now. It’s obvious that her intelligence is below the elementary school level so she might as well use her looks that are above the high school average level. She and the two women mentioned in the article use their looks to their advantage. So in a way Mr Mitchell points out that it doesn’t matter what new techno-wiz security thing comes out, as long as there is a man that runs the security machine, the pretty women will always be able to get by somehow.
Viewing this incident through yet another lens, I look to see if someone’s behavior “doesn’t make sense” and if not, there is often more to the story. It seems that this couple has exhibited sociopathic behavior traits:
•Glib and superficial—they must be, to talk their way past the Secret Service.
•Egocentric and grandiose—who has a wedding with 1,836 guests?
•Lack of remorse or guilt—they were thrown out of a party in September, and then crashed the White House party two months later.
•Deceitful and manipulative—fake cheerleader, fake Victoria’s Secret model and fake Miss USA.
•Need for excitement—why else would they try to secure a role on the reality TV show, Real Wives of D.C.?
•Lack of responsibility—they obviously felt no need to pay their bills.
The references to each behavior are explained in depth in this article:
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2009/12/07/sociopathic-traits-in-the-white-house-party-crashers
With all the threats that the Secret Service get regarding the First Family, it is unbelievable that anybody pretending to be serious could fail to be concerned about such a security breach. This op-ed: epic fail.
A great post.
It’s such a sad state of life when the rethugs, specifically Bush/Cheney/Rove/Mr. 9.11 Giuliani, etc., have made the whole entire Country scared of everyone and everything in it.
I mean, c’mon, whatever is going to happen, will happen. It’s not like the Obama Administration intentionally ignored the PDB, daily by the way.
If the terrorists want to get us, I’m sure they’ll find a way around any of this extra extraordinary set-up which is beyond good security.
The terrorists have done their job. And then some. Everyone is scared. Nobody seems to trust anyone anymore. They helped to crash the economy. And the worst thing they did was to help keep rethugs in power after 9/11. If it were the Dems in power, 9/11 would may not of even happened. Thirty years of rethug foreign policy really, really pissed bin Laden off. And if Palin ever even gets near the nuclear codes………her dreams of the Second Coming will most likely be realized.
Lisain TX,
They got past the entrance, but what do you want to bet that they and everyone else still had to go through the metal detector, shoes, maybe body search, and what ever else is protocol?
I don’t think they had much of a chance of hurting anyone there.
You never know though, do you?
Making it all public, making a big deal of it, was probably not a wise thing to do. It gives the rightwing nutjobs ideas. (because the cannot think of any on their own).
Sorry for all of these posts. But I just had to do this last one.
“•Glib and superficial—they must be, to talk their way past the Secret Service.
•Egocentric and grandiose—who has a wedding with 1,836 guests?
•Lack of remorse or guilt—they were thrown out of a party in September, and then crashed the White House party two months later.
•Deceitful and manipulative—fake cheerleader, fake Victoria’s Secret model and fake Miss USA.
•Need for excitement—why else would they try to secure a role on the reality TV show, Real Wives of D.C.?
•Lack of responsibility—they obviously felt no need to pay their bills.”
Who does this remind you of? If she weren’t too busy trying to mess with the ‘opposition researchers’?
Sorry, I have to disagree with your assessment. The dress was an affront, if not quite a sari.
And I’ll bet all the people these grifters owe money to consider them VERY dangerous. Involved in 16 lawsuits, both as plaintiffs and defendants, and Tarek even sued his own mother.
These people don’t deserve any consideration, although they might get it, since there have been thousands of threats against this president. Sometimes danger comes in pretty forms, although these 2 were nothing but attractive nuisances who should have been closed down and thrown out.
I don’t know if it is in the food or the drink, but something is contributing to
massive ego development in some of the people in our country. Just like the obesity epidemic, it is deadly. The dismissive attitude and lack of respect that these people showed, not just the President and his Indian guest, but all of the attendees at the party is loathsome.
Everyone had to go through a metal detector but that was it as far as security goes. They could have had an airborne toxin on them or casually walked up to a table taking a knife off said table and stabbed someone. Really anything could have happened. Not funny AT ALL.
Living in the DC area the Salahi’s are ALL over the news and not in a good way. These two are a couple of low-life grifters pretending to be socialites. They have numerous lawsuits against them for failure to pay for services such as catering for their parties to basic electrical work needed on their home. They even gave an expensive (yet non-working) watch to their Lexus dealer to stop having their car towed for nonpayment.
Okay, I was wrong about giving an expensive watch to their Lexus dealer.
It was their landscaper that was suing for nonpayment. Now, The Washington Post reports that the watch has been deemed a fake. Surprise surprise! If the watch was geniune it would have fetched around $15,000. A jeweler estimated the value of the fake as around $100.00.
That’s not or beside the point. Any of the guests could have brought toxins in through the metal detector or taken a knife off a table.
They weren’t invited.
They weren’t vetted in advance.
Their very act of gate crashing was rude, disrespectful, self-serving. They didn’t do it to meet the president. They did it to get a spot on a reality TV show. How crass. They shouldn’t be rewarded for this behavior.
I’m all for hauling them to court and punishing them with whatever the law allows. Fines. Jail time. I’m OK with either or both. Let it serve as a lesson to the next person who wants to brag on their Facebook page using our President to score ego points.
I have mixed feelings about this. I do not regard the Salahis as heroes, because (1) making fun of security is not as innocent an activity as it was when I was a child, and (2) they clearly didn’t do it just to be “mavericky” — they did it expecting to make bank off of the media fallout.
On the other hand, as it turned out, they were not an active terrorist threat. In fact, they may have served as a volunteer “penetration team” and reminded the Secret Service that even attractive blondes could be threats. Prosecuting them to the maximum extent permitted by law would pretty much send the message “we’re going to ruin your lives because you made us look silly and incompetent”. This would be a bad thing.
I presume that DC (or federal) law has the usual provisions that prohibit felons from benefiting financially from their felony. In this case, I would like to see a plea bargain that would impose only the direct punishment that would have been imposed if the Secret Service had actually turned the Salahis away; plus a binding agreement that they will not accept any compensation for any telling of their story (with more stringent penalties if they do).
“That’s not or beside the point. Any of the guests could have brought toxins in through the metal detector or taken a knife off a table.
They weren’t invited.
They weren’t vetted in advance.”
Well, that’s my point. They were NOT VETTED. Sure anyone could have taken a knife off the table, but the fact that every other guest was vetted makes that quite unlikely. The fact that these two were not vetted, raises the possibility.