WASHINGTON (MCT) — The Virginia couple who crashed this week’s state dinner at the White House met face to face with President Barack Obama in the event’s receiving line, officials acknowledged Friday, as the Secret Service began investigating whether the couple broke any criminal laws in getting inside without an official invitation.

A Secret Service spokesman confirmed the agency is conducting a two-pronged inquiry establishing whether the couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, engaged in any “misconduct,” while also determining how the president’s bodyguards came to let them inside.

In a picture released by the White House on Friday, Michaele Salahi is shown clasping Obama’s hand as the president greets guests in the Blue Room. Both are smiling. Her husband is shown looking on.

Pictures posted on Michaele Salahi’s Facebook page also showed the couple standing next to a smiling Vice President Joe Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

The acknowledgment that the pair had stood next to the president is likely to inflame calls for formal reviews of the incident. Even before the revelation, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., had called for a congressional hearing on the issue.

Although the couple went through a metal detector, that is not sufficient to protect the president and White House officials, King said. A determined terrorist could have smuggled in biological weapons or used knives and forks to inflict harm, he said.

“If these had been terrorists or psychopaths who had Anthrax or training in the martial arts, and who were arm in arm with the vice president and Cabinet officials, they could in a matter of seconds have killed someone,” King said.

At no point during the party was the breach discovered and the couple removed; they left on their own, officials said.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan said: “The Secret Service is deeply concerned and embarrassed by the circumstances surrounding the state dinner …” He went on to say the couple “should have been prohibited from entering the event entirely. That failing is ours.”

Spokesman Jim Mackin said the agency will review exactly what the couple told the Secret Service when they showed up at the White House for the party in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Legal experts said the Salahis could face exposure if they made false statements in the course of gaining entrance to the party.

As part of the inquiry, investigators will interview the Secret Service agents and White House staff who were at the dinner and will look at visitor logs and footage from security cameras.

Though the investigation may take days, the Secret Service already has admitted a breakdown in procedure. In his statement, Sullivan said preliminary findings show that at one checkpoint, no one verified whether the Salahis were on the guest list.

“The first thing we have to do is to identify what took place and ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Mackin said. “The second is to (see whether) the actions of the individuals involved included any misconduct.”

An attorney for the Salahis did not return a call for comment Friday.

The incident is all the more surprising since the White House is one of the world’s most carefully secured buildings. People wanting to get in are routinely turned away by immovable Secret Service agents checking names against computerized lists of invited guests.

King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said he has asked Secret Service to give a classified briefing next week. He also wants a congressional hearing devoted to the episode.

The Secret Service typically does not detail its methods. But in his statement, Sullivan said the magnetometer was only one of multiple “levels of screening.”

Another open question is the involvement of White House staff. The White House’s social secretary, Desiree Rogers, told The Associated Press there was no one from her office at the checkpoint.

Both King and a former Secret Service officer said a White House civilian aide should have been present to help monitor the arriving guests.

Joseph J. Funk, a veteran former Secret Service agent who oversaw presidential security details at events including state dinners, said the information that has come out so far raises questions about the conduct of the White House personnel as well as the Secret Service.

He said such state dinners are fluid affairs, with names coming on and off the guest list at the last minute due to cancellations and emergencies. White House officials can — and often do — approve such changes even as the event gets under way, he said.

But to prevent security breaches and the potential embarrassment of holding up a VIP, the White House has for years posted representatives at each security checkpoint so that they can instruct agents on how to handle people who show up unexpectedly and insist that they are on the list, Funk said.

“If they didn’t have someone there, they should have,” Funk said of the White House. “And if they did have someone there, then they made the mistake.”

The White House said Rogers would not comment.