Update: White House crashers' attorney :'they did nothing wrong'

"They just went to a party. They didn't do anything wrong," Paul Morrison, a Virginia attorney who has represented Michaele and Tareq Salahi in the past, told The Associated Press.

A Secret Service investigation of the security breach, now under way, will help determine whether Morrison is right about the lack of legal liability. But the main focus was on the agency itself.

Edward Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, acknowledged the officers at the checkpoint involved in clearance for the state dinner for visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not follow proper procedure when the Salahis arrived and it was determined they had not been invited.

But he declined to reveal anything the Secret Service knows about what happened next.

During President George W. Bush's administration, it was standard procedure to have someone from the White House social office at the gate for state dinners and other events with large groups of visitors, according to a former senior Bush aide who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to be seen as criticizing the Obama White House.