Reporters, photographers and television camera operators traveling with the Obamas have been banned by the Secret Service from approaching the oceanfront estate in nearby Kailua where the family is vacationing. But an enterprising paparazzi photographer wearing a Hawaiian shirt apparently strolled along the beach, saw the Obamas, took out his long-lens camera and started shooting.
The photographer was less than 200 feet from the Obamas, said Frank Griffin, co-owner of Bauer-Griffin, the California-based paparazzi agency that snapped the shots. But the Secret Service agents guarding the property did not ask the photographer to leave the beach.
"There was tacit approval that he was able to shoot what he could shoot. It's a public beach," Griffin said in a telephone interview Monday with The Washington Post. He declined to identify the photographer, but said he is a contractor who lives in Hawaii and whose family has a house not far from the Obama's vacation property.
"The guy just walked along there. He had a camera in his hand. He wasn't hiding behind the bushes. He took some pictures. Everybody saw him. And then he walked off," Griffin said. "It was as simple as that."
Griffin added that the Secret Service "didn't seem to mind."
"He wasn't hiding behind the trees, he wasn't on a boat and he wasn't doing anything that we are used to doing," Griffin said.
While the incident with President Bush was hilarious, at least it was to me, it would not have been hilarious if a sitting US President would have gotten hurt, wounded, or killed. No one would have been laughing at that one.
The Secret Service job is to "not be surprised, stunned, or shocked" at anything, but to expect all the above and more. For a lonely photographer, who just happened to take a walk on the beach, to see the secret service and they see him, with his camera out, about 200 feet from the next First Family of this country, should bother many reading this.
The safety of the Obama Family is vital, important and should not be a laughing matter. And for the secret service to not worry about somebody walking along the beach with a camera as nothing, should worry many.
Again, a public beach, understood, so the Obamas just have to get used to what may seem like a "privacy" invasion. But for someone to be less than 200 feet from the Obamas, sorry it is scary and unacceptable.
I hope the SS is doing something about this forthcoming, because having to read about this and the non-nonchalant attitude of the SS, makes one pause.
Pics and link, here.
Michelle and the girls, here
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