By Arun Kumar
Washington, Jan 5 (IANS) A newly revealed third gatecrasher into President Barack Obama’s state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been identified as a Washington party promoter who entered the White House with the Indian delegation, according to the Washington Post.

The US Secret Service, which Monday confirmed that there was another uninvited guest at the Nov 24 White House state dinner besides the celebrity hounding gatecrashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi, has not officially released key details of the incident.

But an unnamed congressional source cited by the influential US daily identified the man as Carlos Allen, a D.C. party promoter who runs an event space in Mount Pleasant.

Unlike the Salahis, this newly revealed crasher got into the White House with the official Indian delegation, according to the Secret Service statement. Allen, a US citizen, was among the group of business leaders.

According to the congressional source cited by the Post, the third gatecrasher rode from the Indian embassy to the Willard Hotel, where Manmohan Singh and his delegation were staying, with the entourage of Indian officials.

But a spokesman for the Indian Embassy said that the crasher was not a member of the delegation and that the embassy did not arrange for his access.

However, the spokesman did not respond to requests for comment about how Allen got on the van to ferry the Indian CEOs to the White House - or if the embassy requested that the State Department add executives to the trip, the Post said.

The Post source saw Allen’s name in official e-mails and documents pertaining to the Secret Service probe. Allen, 39, did not respond Monday to repeated e-mails and phone messages, it said.

The Post said it spoke with him last month regarding a comment he made to a blogger about having attended the state dinner; in the brief exchange, he denied knowledge of anything to do with the dinner.

On his website, Allen promotes his event space as the “HushGalleria Mansion”. Like the Salahis, he has a knack for getting himself into photos with famous people: Gen. David Petraeus at one black-tie gala last October, rapper Drake and actor Jeremy Piven at other events featured on his Facebook page.

An acquaintance of Allen’s cited by the Post said Monday that she spotted photos of Allen, purportedly at the state dinner, on his Facebook page in the hours after the dinner, but that the photos later disappeared after the Salahi controversy broke.

The White House declined to comment about the breach, although an unnamed administration official cited by the Post said the White House has known about the third crasher since mid-December.

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