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Posted By Christopher Francis – email

WASHINGTON (CBS/AP) – The White House revealed Friday evening that the Virginia couple that crashed a high-profile White House dinner this week met President Obama in a receiving line.

This comes as the head of the Secret Service said Friday that the incident “embarrassed” his agency. In a statement, the agency’s director took responsibility for the couple’s maneuvering around the people charged with protecting the president by saying “that failing is ours.”

“The Secret Service is deeply concerned and embarrassed by the circumstances surrounding the State Dinner,” Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan said in a statement released Friday afternoon.

Sullivan said in his statement that the agency verified that Michaele and Tareq Salahi were not on the guest list for Mr. Obama’s first state dinner Tuesday and that “protocols were not followed at an initial checkpoint.”

“Although these individuals went through magnetometers and other levels of screening, they should have been prohibited from entering the event entirely,” Sullivan said. “That failing is ours.”

The Secret Service may begin a criminal investigation against the couple who crashed the high-profile dinner, an agency spokesman said earlier Friday.

Jim Mackin said the possible turn toward criminal charges is one reason the Secret Service has kept mum about what happened when the Salahis arrived at the security checkpoint Tuesday. They were not on the guest list for the dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Nobody disputes that the two, candidates for a reality TV show, were allowed through security. The Secret Service acknowledges that its procedures weren’t followed.

Still unknown is the story that the uninvited guests spun to the security officers that persuaded them to allow the couple through. That likely would play a role in any criminal charges.

“As this moves closer to a criminal investigation there’s less that we can say,” Mackin said. “I don’t want to jeopardize what could be a criminal investigation. We’re not leaving any option off the table at this point.”

It was not immediately clear what charges would be pursued. The Salahis lawyer, Paul Gardner, posted a comment on their Facebook page saying, “My clients were cleared by the White House, to be there.”

He said more information would be forthcoming.

Attempts to reach Gardner on Friday were not immediately successful.

Michaele Salahi’s hairdresser at the Georgetown salon where she scheduled a last-minute appointment hours before the dinner said she asked to look at the invitation to the White House event, but never saw it.

“She was so excited. She told me that she got it in the mail and it was just an amazing feeling and they couldn’t wait and in fact they called the White House, I believe, to make sure that she was going to be dressed appropriately,” Peggy Ioakim said Friday.  Salahi wore a red sari to the dinner.

Bravo Media, meanwhile, confirmed that on the day of the dinner Michaele Salahi was being filmed around Washington and while she prepared for the dinner by a film crew connected with the network’s reality show, “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” because she is being considered for the upcoming TV program.

“Half Yard’s cameras were not inside the White House. They filmed the couple preparing for the event,” Johanna Fuentes, Bravo Media’s vice president, communications, said in an e-mail late Thursday. She said the Salahis “informed Half Yard that they were invited (to the dinner), the producers had no reason to believe otherwise.”

Fuentes referred further questions to the Virginia couple’s lawyer and their publicist.

The White House refused comment on the Salahis and referred all calls to the Secret Service.

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