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TV channels, crew banned from White House state dinner | The air of excitement and anticipation prevailing ahead of the White House State Dinner hosted by President Barack Obama and US First Lady Michelle Obama for visiting Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur was dampened by a blanket ban on televison channels and crew. Television channel anchors here were laughing in their bulletins about the whole secrecy element surrounding the event and what could have the reasons for keeping the media out. Only celebrity news anchors
like Katie Couric of CBS, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek and CNN, Brian Williams of
NBC and Sanjay Gupta of CNN made the cut for the high-powered do, but their crews
were not allowed. Earlier, the White House released the list of expected guests
for Tuesday night's state dinner. According to the Washington Post, among the
expected guests at the dinner would be Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani,
famed Hollywood director Steven Speilberg, Gayle King, Dr.Sanjay Gupta and David
Geffen. Among the others that were expected to attend the White House veggie garden
spoils hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for Indian
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister and his wife Gursharan Kaur,
were Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife Dr. Jill Biden Congressman
Gary Ackerman, Indian-American hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal, Deputy Chairman of
the Indian Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, David Axelrod and his wife
Susan Axelrod, Congressman Howard Berman and his wife Jane Berman, Robert O Blake,
Jr., Assistant Secretaryof State for South and Central Asian Affairs, New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland
Security and Deputy National Security Advisor for Counter-terrorism, Homeland
Security Council. William Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, General
James E Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Senator Bob Casey,
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Senator Satveer Chaudhry, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Swati Dandekar, Senator Chris Dodd, White House
Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman, Dr. Ashok
S Ganguly, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Michigan Governor Jennifer
Granholm, Attorney General Eric Holder, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Louisiana
Governor Bobby Jindal, National Security Adviser General James Jones, Senator
John Kerry, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, Indian-American author
Jhumpa Lahiri, US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke etc, were also expected to attend.
Kiran Mazumda-Shaw, Congressman Jim McDermott, Indian businessman Sunil Bharti
Mittal, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, Homeland
Secretary Janet Napolitano, Indian National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, USIBC
president and Pepisico Chairperson Indra Nooyi, Massachussets Governor Deval Patrick,
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, telecommunications and IT honcho
Sam Pitroda and Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao were also to attend. |
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