I agree with you completely, but it's still not clear to me that what they did was illegal, or even unethical. And I'm not defending them on the basis of some subtle technicality, either. We don't throw party crashers in jail, at least not until they refuse a direct order to leave (that would be trespassing). I don't believe that the White House has special rules regarding intruders that penetrate the security cordon openly, without stealth, violence or fraud.

Something similar happened to me a few years back. My boss asked me to deliver an urgent message to some of our visitors, foreign dignitaries that were having lunch at a local private club. Dressed in business attire, I had no trouble at all "penetrating security", especially since I thought it was inconceivable that I was not allowed to just walk into what appeared to me to be a public facility on what I knew to be perfectly legitimate business. When I was "discovered", I was rapidly hustled out by plain-clothes security as if I were a common criminal. I was fortunate there were several of them, if I had been confronted by just one I might have been tempted to defend my right to be there with force.

It just goes to show you how a little self-confidence can often defeat the most elaborate security. The police and their surrogates are subservient and procedural animals, they tend to be helpless when faced with authoritative or unanticipated threats they haven't had the opportunity to rehearse thoroughly for.