Third crasher wanted to dance with Michelle Obama, Hillary
By Arun Kumar, IANSFriday, January 15, 2010
WASHINGTON - Carlos Allen, the third White House crasher at President Barack Obama’s State Dinner for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, says he wanted to dance with Michelle Obama, and maybe Hillary Clinton, too.
“The only thing I regretted at the end of the night was that they didn’t have no dancing,” the Washington Post Saturday cited him as saying about the Nov 24 dinner that he allegedly attended without an official invitation.
He had “really wanted to shake it with Michelle Obama, and maybe Hillary Clinton, too,” said Allen. “With all due respect to President Obama, I know he can’t dance,” Allen said. “I wanted to show him up. . . . I can dance. Dancing is my thing.”
In an interview with the Post, Allen, 39, said he believed “HUSH”-”Help Us Support Humanity”-his online society magazine celebrating philanthropic efforts was his entree to the White House.
He said he wrote to the social secretary in October asking for a state dinner invitation, then got something in the mail that he thought was an official invitation. “I was happy but I wasn’t shocked because I get invited to a lot of things,” he said.
“I showed an invitation,” he insisted. “I got in with an invitation. I was seated with an invitation.”
When the Salahi story broke, Allen said he realised he also was not on the publicly released guest list, and pulled his
photos from the dinner off his web site and Facebook. Weeks later, he said, he got a call from the Secret Service.
He immediately volunteered that he had attended the state dinner - but they refused to believe him, he said. He said they told him to describe the White House, then told him he had it wrong.
“For 45 minutes they called me a liar,” he said. “I started believing that I didn’t go to the White House. I said,
‘Okay, you’re right, I did not go to the White House.’ ”
Two days later, he said, an agent called and said they’d made a mistake. He had now seen video of Allen walking into the White House. Allen’s lawyer says he is continuing to cooperate with the investigation.
