Washington:
Desiree Rogers, President Barack Obama's social secretary, will not testify on Capitol Hill about how a couple of aspiring reality television show contestants crashed a state dinner, the White House said on Wednesday.
"I think you know that, based on separation of powers, staff here doesn't go to testify in front of Congress," Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters at his regular briefing. "She won't - she will not be testifying in front of Congress."
The House Homeland Security Committee will conduct a hearing on Thursday into the security lapse. Rep. Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the panel, had wanted Rogers to testify and criticized the administration for not allowing her to be a witness.
He called Rogers' decision not to testify "stonewalling" that would cause an "unnecessary confrontation with Congress."
"I don't want the Secret Service to be taking the hit here; what went wrong was the responsibility of the White House," King said. The director of the Secret Services, Mark Sullivan, is the only witness confirmed for the hearing. King said he thought it would be unlikely that Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who made it into the dinner for the prime minister of India, would appear.
"They'd be crazy to testify," King said. "Their story, if they testify, would just not hold up."
The White House also said on Wednesday that from now on, a representative of the social secretary's office would be at Secret Service checkpoints for major social events. The White House deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, issued a directive to the staff on Wednesday.
"After reviewing our actions, it is clear that the White House did not do everything we could have done to assist the United States Secret Service in ensuring that only invited guests enter the complex," Messina wrote in the memo, posted on the White House website.
"White House staff was walking back and forth outside between the check points helping guests and were available to the Secret Service throughout the evening, but clearly we can do more, and we will do more."