Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust by Diane Dimond

Author:Diane Dimond [Dimond, Diane]
Language: fra
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439273296
Amazon: 1439273294
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2010-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

The Fools on the Hill

The White House didn’t want any more nonsense news to surface about lack of security at the president’s residence. The Secret Service had been stung badly by the event (three of their agents were placed on indefinite suspension) and the agency certainly wanted the story to die down too. But within the membership of the House Homeland Security Committee there was a whole different kind of attitude. There was a big front page, top-of-the-newscast story going on and committee members wanted a piece of it. They wanted to appear as if they were fully engaged.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, obviously didn’t get the memo that the White House would rather the scandal go away. His panel had been making noise from the get-go about the Salahis coming to testify. Committee member Sheila Jackson Lee had already been quoted calling the Salahis “the perpetrators.” Her colleague on the committee, Eleanor Holmes Norton had declared, “Clearly they were outlaws before they crashed the White House.”

The Salahis’ attorney, Stephen Best, wrote a letter to Thompson informing him that his clients had been fully cooperative with the Secret Service and, given the ongoing federal investigation if subpoenaed to testify, they would be instructed to invoke their constitutional right to remain silent. Just about every lawyer in the land would have instructed the Salahis to do the same.

The committee’s attitude was, “the show must go on!” and preparations for the public hearings commenced—to be televised, of course.

On January 20, 2010, Tareq and Michaele Salahi responded to a congressional subpoena and had to sit through hours of scathing speeches and withering questions. Behind them was a row of seats reserved for Bravo TV executives, which remained empty. The Salahis invoked their constitutional right to remain silent time after time.

Chairman Thompson waxed poetic about the committee having a duty as overseer of homeland security to figure out “how two ordinary people were able to defeat the (White House) security system.” Maybe he’d forgotten that at the previous hearing Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan had admitted that it was solely his agency’s failure and responsibility.

Nonetheless, Congressman Charlie Dent’s speechifying on the day the Salahis appeared included blaming them for causing “public humiliation and embarrassment” for the Director of the Secret Service … “it’s because of your actions he had to come and be grilled by us like that.”

Representative Pete Olson of Texas scolded, “I want to make sure you realize what an incredible position you put our country in by crashing that state dinner. The terrorists are out there and they are trying to hurt us….you presented them with a text book of how to get in (to the White House.)” Apparently Olson hadn’t bothered to learn that the Salahis got in to the White House by showing valid passports and getting Secret Service permission to enter, not exactly the way a terrorist might go about it.

But no one acted more the buffoon that day than Congressman Bill Pascrell of New Jersey.

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