Desiree Rogers Won't Testify: White House Claims Executive Privilege in Crashergate Inquiry; Obama Cronies Circle Wagons as Damage Mounts!

NBC News Chicago has the story, "Desiree Rogers Won't Testify: The White House Social Secretary Won't Be Questioned Over Her Crashergate Role":

Citing separation of powers concerns, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary, will not give testimony on the Crashergate scandal before a House committee tomorrow.

"Based on separation of powers," Gibbs said, "staff here do not go to testify in front of Congress."

Gibbs added that the White House has done an assessment of the problems that occured during Obama's first state dinner and that changes had been made "as of last night."

"The first family was quite pleased with her performance," Gibbs said.

Some observers, however, have fingered Rogers as the one most responsible for letting Michele and Tareq Salahi slip by security at the front gate of the White House.

That's for sure.

See also, the New York Times, "Separation of Powers Cited for W.H. Social Secretary," and the Astute Bloggers, "BREAKING: WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO SEND REP TO CONGRESS TO TESTIFY ABOUT PARTY-CRASHERS: What in the HELL is Obama hiding?"

The buzz now is that Ms. Rogers -- who's an Obama political appointee from the Chicago machine -- has taken center stage in the the Salahi gatecrashing scandal on the eve of congressional hearings. Mediaite has a dramatic piece as well, "Will Desiree Rogers Be The White House’s Next Van Jones?" The Salahis' unauthorized intrusion, as noted there, is "an extremely serious breach of White House security that could have endangered the President's life."

Congressional investigators want to know why the White House failed to station social office staff at the receiving lines with Secret Service personnel. But Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is playing down the significance of the security breach.

It turns out that Ms. Rogers -- whose modus operandi is to create an "open, inclusive White House" that's designe "for all people" -- has stripped some of the rigorous safety protocols from social office procedures, and she herself has abandoned the hands-on administrative leadership of staffers in previous administrations. As the NBC report indicates, for example, Bush-holdover Cathy Hargraves "was personally responsible for overseeing the invitations of state dinner guests and keeping track of their RSVPs. She also physically stood at the gate during functions and cross-checked names against a master list." In fact, on the night of state dinner, Ms. Rogers was not staffing entrances to the White House, but was herself "attending the state dinner she helped organized," according to the Washington Examiner. As noted at that entry:

By Washington's assuredly grim, outmoded cultural and social standards, Rogers is too flashy, to heat-seeking, too high-profile and too New York City for this town! If she did her job perfectly, all that posing in Prada might be tolerated. But now it looks like she screwed up, so Rogers is going to have to pay big.

Well, maybe not, actually. So far, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, Ms. Rogers' has the confidence of senior officials in the White House, "Desiree Not Losing White House Gig":

A Desiree drubbing? So whose head will roll in the brouhaha over the White House interlopers who managed to sneak into President Obama's state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?

• Answer: It ain't gonna be White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, according to White House senior adviser David Axelrod.

• "Absolutely not," Axelrod told Sneed. "There was a breakdown in screening procedures that can and will be addressed, and Desiree will do so, in conjunction with the Secret Service. The president appreciates the great job she has done."

• Translation: Nobody's gonna mess with first lady Michelle Obama's galpal clique, which includes Rogers, Valerie Jarrett and Michelle's chief of staff, Susan Sher, who not only work at the White House, but also live in the same apartment complex -- where they frequently get together after hours to share a glass of wine, chat and kvetch. "It's almost like a pajama party," said a source who knows the women.

But as Ms. Rogers' failures are potentially catastrophic, it remains to be seen how long her political support holds up inside the Oval Office.

Robin Givhan, at today's Washington Post, offers a devastating indictment of Ms. Rogers' leadership style, and by implication, the president's:

In recent years, social secretaries had always quashed their own public profiles, demurred from seeking the limelight, in service to their position and in deference to the first lady. Indeed, the names of the most recent social secretaries -- Cathy Fenton, Lea Berman and Amy Zantzinger probably ring no bells outside of Washington circles. Those who have more prominent profiles such as Ann Stock, who worked in the Clinton administration and now at the Kennedy Center, and Letitia Baldridge of the Kennedy years, waited until their post-White House years to step into the spotlight.

No one with a clipboard and walkie-talkie was standing sentry at the southeast gate when the Salahis arrived, identifying themselves as guests, according to the White House. Such velvet-rope vigilance is common everywhere from third-tier nightclubs to Seventh Avenue fashion shows and celebrity-drenched parties. And there's the matter of former White House staffer Cathy Hargraves, who predated the Obamas as in-house guest-list guru and abruptly quit in June, according to Newsweek, because she had been stripped of much of her responsibility by Rogers.

There was a new social sheriff in town and, for better or worse, she was one like no other.

The 50-year-old Rogers arrived in Washington this year to great fanfare, no small amount of it of her own making. She entered the East Wing in a whirlwind of media exposure. She was featured in the glossy pages of Vogue -- beating the first lady's appearance in the fashion bible by a month. For a profile in WSJ, the Wall Street Journal's slick magazine, stylists outfitted Rogers in luxury fashions from Prada and Jil Sander and she posed in the first lady's garden tossing a flirtatious smile over her shoulder.

Early in her tenure, Rogers made a trip to New York City during February's fashion week. She sat in the front row of runway shows such as Donna Karan and smiled for the flock of photographers who descended on the striking Obama gatekeeper with her pixie cut, stylish wardrobe and high-altitude heels. She dabbled in a world of hipsters and art scene know-it-alls in her attempt to bring a contemporary gleam to the White House. And she seemed to thrive on all the attention. She has come across as a big-picture manager, not one focused on details.

That's in contrast to her reputation at Peoples Energy. There, says her former boss Thomas Patrick, she was so intent on learning the customer relations business from the ground up that she put on a hard hat and went out into the field with the workers who managed the pipes.

None of this was surprising to longtime friends who knew her from her Chicago days, when she was a mover and shaker in the city's high-culture society circles, and who worried that Rogers was putting herself out in front of the public too fast and too furiously. They warned her of the ways of Washington, its desire for discretion, and urged to keep her profile low. In the nation's capital, no one need know whether the social secretary wore Nina Ricci or Halston, just that she was appropriately clothed.

But Rogers has never been an introvert. The New Orleans native has waved to the crowds from a perch atop a Mardi Gras float. In Chicago, she was known for her eclectic mix of guests at her dazzling parties. She has stood up to dance by herself in cocktail bars, as friends sat by and watched in amusement. She is a coquettish life-of-the-party.

She came to the White House having known the Obamas for two decades, an introduction precipitated by her ex-husband, who played basketball with Craig Robinson, the first lady's brother. Desirée Rogers was a prolific fundraiser for Obama's presidential campaign and had donated to his Senate run, though she did not contribute to his early campaigns for the Illinois state legislature.

Of all those inside the Obama inner circle, she is closest to Valerie Jarrett. Rogers, Jarrett and Linda Johnson Rice of Johnson Publishing, which owns Ebony magazine, were the three musketeers in Chicago, profiled by a local magazine as a fearsome threesome. It's the connection to Jarrett that is Rogers's protective cocoon as she straddles the line between the East Wing and the West.

"All this talk about Desirée being lifelong friends with the Obamas is bunk. She's there because of Valerie," says someone who has known Rogers for years but didn't want to be identified so as not to upset her.

Rogers is having to negotiate a new relationship with the Obamas, one made difficult by her own heat-seeking personality. She arrived at the White House as a friend and peer of the first couple. But her own social stature and wealth exceeded that of the Obamas for many years. Long before their ascent, she was a star in Chicago society, running with the city's elite.

"She and her former husband, and then she alone, were very important social figures in Chicago. She belonged to all of the A-list clubs and charities and certainly had a great understanding of how that world operated," says Patrick, retired chairman of Peoples Energy. "She was my tutor in that world."

The Obamas were the nice couple from the South Side. She was a cut above. And now she has a job in which she is expected to serve at their pleasure.

If Ms. Rogers is not much more than a Valerie Jarrett lackey, we'll soon see if she doesn't indeed end up gettting canned like Van Jones.

That's the least we should see, considering a breach of this magnitude.

Video Hat Tip: Los Angeles Examiner, "Obama Social Secretary Desiree Rogers Will Not Attend Committee on Homeland Security Hearing."