Outgoing

Desiree Rogers: I Didn’t Let Them In

Says gatecrashers were not her fault.

White House social secretary Desiree Rogers may be resigning, but first she’s trying to clear her name. Rogers received most of the blame for the gate-crasher incident that allowed Tareq and Michaele Salahi into President Obama’s first State Dinner uninvited. “It’s wrong,” Rogers tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Everyone is saying the same thing, and it's wrong." Rogers says that reports that she did not place a member of her staff at the main entrance alongside Secret Service are plainly untrue. Rogers says the Secret Service was supposed to tell her staff member about any persons on the list; the person from her staff would then check to see whether or not they should have been on it.