Tourists Let Into White House Breakfast

Ga. couple showed up on wrong day, hit buffet with Obamas
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 15, 2009 8:28 PM CST
Tourists Let Into White House Breakfast
Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the more famous White House gate-crashers.   (NBC Universal)

It wasn't a state dinner, and they didn't crash it on purpose. Still, a Georgia couple who showed up at the White House a day early for a tour somehow wound up at an invitation-only breakfast with President Obama. The White House and Secret Service said Harvey and Paula Darden went through the appropriate security screenings and were allowed int as a courtesy because there were no public tours that day, Nov. 11.

That explanation was news to Harvey Darden, 67, who thought they were simply starting their tour until they were ushered into the East Room, offered a buffet spread and told they'd be meeting the president. They approached a White House aide with their concern that they had veered off course but were told to "just go with the flow," Darden said. "I felt kind of funny because I was the only man in the room that wasn't dressed in a coat and tie," he added. "I was just a plain tourist." (More Harvey and Paula Darden stories.)

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