Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust (13 page)

Months later, on May 20, 2010, a car carrying the Salahis was stopped in the vicinity of the White House on the occasion of President Obama’s
second
state dinner. It was a fluke. A limo had been rented by the television show,
Inside Edition,
which was filming a lifestyle piece on the Salahis going to dinner in Georgetown with friends. Traveling in from their Virginia home, the logical route was over the 14
^th
Street Bridge, around the Ellipse area near the White House and on into the eastern most tip of Georgetown. The driver inadvertently ran a red light and was pulled over by the Secret Service. No harm, no foul, and the Salahis never got any closer to the White House than any other driver on the road.

Nonetheless, news stories abounded with leads like, “They just couldn’t stay away…” and “The Salahis, up to their old tricks.” Once again Gibbs had to face questions about the couple. He seemed flummoxed that he still had to respond to the subject but he told reporters that he had no information to suggest that the infamous pair was trying to get into the state dinner for the president of Mexico. Gibbs couldn’t let the topic pass without a swipe at the Salahis.

“It seems to me like their fifteen minutes of fame were up almost six months ago,” he said.

That the Obama Administration did not grab hold of the “White House Gate Crasher” story and get its accuracy under control from the get-go, leaves a multitude of nagging questions. Tops on the list of still unanswered questions: How
did
the Salahis get waved into the White House past multiple checkpoints, if they weren’t supposed to be there?

Twisting In the Wind

The personal aftermath of a national news frenzy is an ugly thing indeed. There’s what the public sees play out on television and in the newspapers, and then there’s what happens to the lock-and-load target’s private life. Every aspect of their past and present is open for cruel dissection: financial woes, family disputes, eating habits, clothing choices, and every personality quirk they ever displayed. And with the Salahis, there was plenty of carrion to feast upon.

The Salahis were excoriated on so many levels—some undeserved, some caused by their own reckless actions. But early on the morning after their White House visit they were still on a cloud, living like a modern day version of Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell III from the old
Gilligan’s Island
TV show. They were about to be shipwrecked by a massive storm yet they were oblivious, still calling each other “Lovey” and smiling about their adventure the night before. Neither one thought to turn on television news the next morning as Michaele hurried out the door to make a long-standing salon appointment back in DC.

It’s a smack-in-the-face lesson when new found fame morphs into notoriety.

Michaele arrived at the Dennis Roche Salon on K Street to find a Half Yard Productions/Bravo TV producer there. It was a surprise because on this day before Thanksgiving there was no filming scheduled. According to those in the salon, the producer began to beg Michaele to forgo her appointment and come immediately to the nearby Madison Hotel so they could shoot her “reaction to the big night last night!” Michaele demurred. She wasn’t feeling well, she told the female producer and, “It’s my day off. I’m wearing sweats and have no makeup on!”

The insistent producer promised a rare perk: wardrobe, hair and full makeup if Michaele would only come to the Madison. A car had already picked up Tareq and he was on his way into the city to join her for the interview.

After much prodding, Michaele reluctantly agreed to go to the hotel. Tareq was interviewed first—alone—about their visit to the White House. Then, after Michaele was made camera-ready, it was her turn to sit to be interviewed. Again, their Bravo/Half Yard confidentiality agreement precludes them from revealing exactly what they were asked. It wasn’t an unusual practice for the couple to be interviewed separately, so Tareq casually wandered down to the bar area to wait. On his way, he remembered to turn on his cell phone. It rang immediately.

“It was my best friend, Gregory,” Tareq says. “He didn’t even say hello—he just said, really urgently, ‘Wherever you are, grab Michaele and get to my house to hide right now!’ To hide? I didn’t know what he was talking about. I thought it was some kind of a joke.” Tareq quickly learned it was no joke as he took a few more steps into the bar, looked up at the television screen
and saw himself on CNN!
“People in the bar looked from the screen over to me, then back to the screen. It was surreal,” Tareq said. The volume on the TV set was down but the banner on the bottom made it clear, “White House Party Crashers.”

Tareq, his heart pounding and his mind spinning with thoughts, dashed upstairs to get his wife—she was not going to believe this!

By pounding on the door, Tareq finally got Michaele up and out of the interview chair much to the protestation of the TV producer. He pulled Michaele out of the room and hurriedly tried to explain the call from Gregory and what he had seen on TV while they dashed down a flight of stairs. Tareq spotted an empty conference room and they ducked inside. Tareq pulled out his cell phone and called their attorney, Paul Gardner. He was, after all, the man who had helped arrange things with White House liaison Michele Jones—he would certainly know what to do next.

“He told us to calm down. He said he’d call Michele Jones right away and get it all straightened out.” Gardner put them on hold and the Salahis say the next voice they heard over their speaker phone was Michele Jones when she joined them on the call.

“She was saying, ‘This is just a huge misunderstanding. The media has blown this way out of proportion. I am going to speak to the President if necessary, so don’t worry,’ and then she told us to ignore the media. Easy for her to say!” They hung up believing CNN would issue a correction any minute.

In their haste to reach out for help, the Salahis say they had left the conference room door open. During their call, they realized two Half Yard Production employees were crouched down on the nearby stairwell listening in. “It was unbelievable,” Michaele said. “Our heads were spinning about what was happening to us. We didn’t know the whole world was calling us names!”

But the TV production crew did and they wanted to get as much of the beleaguered couple on video tape before the Salahis figured it out and clammed up. Two sources close to the production crew reveal that early on the morning of November 25
^th
they got word that all Thanksgiving leave was cancelled with the phrase, “Houston, we have a problem!” The team was instructed to turn on CNN to become fully briefed on the “White House Party Crasher” theme and to corral the Salahis at all costs!

On their drive to Gregory’s house, Tareq and Michaele frantically discussed how their dream night could have turned so nightmarish. They couldn’t fully grasp what had happened at that early stage. Yet it seemed crystal clear that their TV production team had known about media reports labeling them as “Crashers,” and the producer hadn’t even bothered to fill them in! No wonder she was so insistent on interviewing them
that day
—
right then and there
! They felt betrayed by the setup, and the episode added to the Salahis’ growing mistrust of Half Yard Productions.

More than an hour later, safe inside Gregory’s house, CNN was still reporting the “Crashers” angle. The Salahis didn’t understand why no correction had been made. Tension mounted while they flipped the channels and kept seeing the same video of themselves, entering the East Room, Tareq in his tuxedo and Michaele in her sari. It was played over and over again. Any minute now, they thought, surely all this will be made right.

It never was. At one point, Michaele jumped off the couch in sheer frustration and announced to the room that she was going over to the White House, knock on the front security gate and say, “Hey, you looking for me? Because I’ve done nothing wrong! Here I am, ask me anything!” Tareq, along with Gregory and his wife, gently talked Michaele off that particular emotional cliff, although there were many more to come.

Tareq lost patience. Grabbing up his cell phone, he called Gardner again as Gregory, his wife and Michaele listened over the speaker phone.

“Tareq was saying to Gardner, ‘We were invited!’ And Gardner was saying, ‘Yes! You
were
invited!’” Gregory recounts. But when Tareq pressed his attorney on why Michelle Jones hadn’t yet issued a statement setting the media straight, Gregory said he was aghast at the response. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” said Gregory, recounting the conversation. “Gardner said, ‘Oh, I see how you are. A friend does a favor for you and you want to throw him under the bus! You want to throw Michele under the bus!?’”

Gregory remembers at that point he literally jumped back from the phone. Holding his hands up in the air, he wildly gestured for Tareq to hang up—and hang up immediately!

“I told him, man, this is serious. It’s pretty clear he’s not really on your side. It was hard to see my buddy get put through this.”

On Thanksgiving morning, November 26
^th
, the Salahis awoke in a sleep-deprived stupor. Neither one has very regular sleeping habits, and they rarely sleep at all on the nights before they travel. But this day they weren’t going anywhere. Even though it was Thanksgiving Day, the narrow dusty road outside their home was clogged with reporters and satellite trucks. A friend phoned to tell them there was a similar scene outside the gates of Oasis Vineyards, 15 miles away. On a day when families traditionally gather to visit, break bread and give thanks, Michaele and Tareq Salahi would spend the day hunkered down, peaking through the front window blinds and trying to cope with their strange new reality. Dinner consisted of what was in the cupboard, Tareq’s favorite canned chili or Spaghetti-O’s, vestiges of his boyhood meals. Michaele would make do with bowls of her sugary breakfast cereal.