Was the 'Lone Nut' That Climbed Over the Fence and Ran Into the White House Really a Message to Obama from the Military-Industrial Complex?

Interesting conspiracy theory. There is no smoking gun, but odd military connections to the Secret Service "lapses" over the Obama presidential years. I wasn't aware of this but Russ Baker reports:

Here’s a crazy story that has gotten little attention in the United States: During Barack Obama’s recent visit to Canberra, the Australian capital, a reporter happened upon a classified booklet containing security information about the presidential trip.

The highly sensitive booklet was…lying in a gutter.

What in the world can that be about?

We’ll come back to that in a bit, but first, let’s consider how a political leader such as Obama would react to such an incident, which was reported in an Australian newspaper.

In all probability, he would assume it was the result of spectacular carelessness. These cases surface from time to time, as when a scientist leaves top secret papers in the back seat of a taxi cab. But, knowing the complex machinations of the political and spook worlds, it would be understandable if, for a brief second, Obama might at least contemplate the possibility that such a “blunder” could be deliberate.

And he would realize that if it were deliberate, someone would either be trying to cause him harm, or to send a message of some sort.

Baker then goes on to discuss George Bush and the military and adds this:

 The military angle brings to mind yet another event that shook up Obama and gave him a reason to worry about his safety and the quality of the protection he’s given.

In a well-known incident in 2009, shortly after he took office, a couple managed to get into a White House state dinner without an invitation, and got so close to Obama they were able to get their picture taken with him. Michaele and Tareq Salahi were characterized as essentially harmless publicity hounds, but Obama took the breach seriously. 

As the Washington Post reported at the time:

On the eve of the president’s major speech on Afghanistan policy, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday was inundated by reporters’ questions about the Salahis and the security breach at the state dinner.
“Look, the reason there’s an investigation is the president and the White House has asked for that to happen,” Gibbs told reporters…. “So I think, suffice to say, the president is rightly concerned about what happened last week.”

So were others. Here’s ABC News’s website, at the time:

“What concerns me the most is that someone was able to walk in off the street to a White House event, without the proper credentials, without the proper vetting, and get next to the president,” said Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The Secret Service, red-faced, later apologized for sloppy procedures that enabled the couple to pass through two checkpoints.

Curiously, there were again military connections—two of them. For one thing, the Salahis had been encouraged via e-mails to believe they might gain access to the White House by Michele S. Jones, special assistant to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates—and Pentagon liaison to the White House.

As reported by the Washington Post:

The e-mails apparently do not contradict that version of events, but are described as having given the Salahis the confidence to get dressed up, mingle with some of the most powerful Washington players and post snapshots of their presence at the party on their Facebook page.
The e-mail exchange is said to include assurances from Jones that she was trying to score an official invitation, complete with seats at the dinner, for the couple. By the time they arrived in line, the couple believed that Jones had succeeded in getting them approved only for the cocktail reception and a handshake with the president, sources said.

Jones presumably had pull with the White House. A high-ranking African-American military backer of Obama, she’d delivered a speech on his behalf at the 2008 Democratic convention. How she came to be hired as Gates’s special assistant is not clear. It’s an intriguing issue—as is the very fact that Obama had asked Gates, who served as George W. Bush’s defense secretary, to stay on as his. Gates had a long track record as a Bush family retainer, serving as CIA director under George HW Bush and then as chief of the elder Bush’s presidential library in College Station, Texas; he also served on corporate boards with Bush connections.

Why did Gates’s assistant even know the Salahis? She declined to say.

James Huang considers these Baker observations in light of the 'lone nut' that climbed over the fence and ran into the White House, here.

(ht LewRockwell.com)