Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
Washington, Jan 11 (IANS) The “third White House crasher”, who attended President Barack Obama’s state dinner for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asserted Monday that he got an invitation in the mail, but could not show any piece of paper relating to the Nov 24 event with his name on it.

“I was invited. I actually got an invitation in the mail. I have the actual invite,” Washington businessman Carlos Allen said repeatedly in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America”. Pressed, he couldn’t produce any piece of paper including a table assignment card with his name on it.

Allen’x attorney A. Scott Bolden said: “Whether you believe that he had an invitation or a place card or not,” he became an invitee at some point in the evening.

“He asked a White House staffer, ‘Where do I sit,’ and a White House staff steered him to that seat,” Bolden said. “Doesn’t sound like Carlos Allen is a criminal trespasser. He’s a cooperative witness with the Secret Service, and we’ll see how this plays out.”

Allen said he’d gone to nearby Willard hotel where he joined the Indian delegation after failing to gain admittance at either of two Secret Service-guarded gates at the White House.

“It was cold. It was raining. I had a cough, I had a cold,” he said, adding that he found well-dressed people lined up in a lobby when he arrived at the Hotel Willard, where Manmohan Singh was staying.

“I started seeing a lot of people in the hallway. As I was looking around, everyone was looking good,” he said. “They said, ‘It’s time to go to the White House.’

“So I got in line with everybody else. I basically had my invite… I went up to the Secret Service individual. He basically wanded me. He checked to make sure that I had nothing wrong … and I basically walked in.”

Allen explained that he removed a Web posting about the dinner because he was concerned about “a frenzy” surrounding the Salahis, the celebrity hounding couple who too got in without an invitation.

Unlike Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who shook hands with both Obama and Manmohan Singh and were photographed with several other dignitaries, Allen never got close to the president or his guest.

“Their faces were everywhere,” he said of the Salahis, ” and my focus was to do good things. … I didn’t want to embarrass anyone. I did not want to embarrass my president.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)