A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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March 13, 2007 - Briefed Vice President Cheney today in his WH office on second floor. Beautiful "pre-Spring" day with temps around 50 and sunny skies. He wanted briefing on Pandemic flu and biodefense. I included a discussion about HIV/AIDS particularly the great success of PEPFAR since I wanted him to know that this Administration has done more than anyone in the world for Global AIDS. The briefing was as usual for the VP and me, i.e. very friendly and expressing multiple times how pleased he was to get briefed by me since he enjoys it so much. Also in the room were David Addington (Chief-of-Staff), Bruce Miller (Chief for Biodefense), Steve...? And Scott Deitchman.
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March 16, 2007 - Have been preparing for a briefing of the POTUS on pandemic flu preparedness. Interesting evolution of process. The HSC staff (Joel Bagnell and Rajeev Venkaaya) want us (HHS) to present a major discussion of "gaps" in stockpiling and others want us to just update the POTUS. Friendly tension going on. Today, we (me, Bill Raub, Bruce Gellin and Eric Hargan - Deputy Secretary) briefed the Deputies in EEOB 208 in preparation to brief the Principals and then the POTUS. Among them were junior staffers from WH as well as Rajeev, Joel Bagnell, Bruce Miller, Scott Deitchman, Jeff Runge. Continued disagreement about what the Secretary (MOL) will ultimately present to the POTUS.
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March 19, 2007 - MOL, Bill Raub and I briefed the principals today in final preparation for the POTUS briefing. Present were Fran Townsend, Michael Chertoff, Joel Kaplan (now Deputy Chief-of-Staff to Josh Bolten), Joel Bagnell, Bruce Miller, other cabinet people. Briefing went better than on March 16. We are about ready to brief the POTUS.
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March 20, 2007 - Dinner at the Mellon Auditorium on Constitution Avenue, N.W. (13th Street) for Research! America. Usual DC Glitterati. At my table was Susan Dentzer (Newshour), Sam and Jan Donaldson, Tenley Albright, Paul Rogers. Awardees were Don Seldin, Joe Goldstein, Mike Brown, Mike Wallace, Sen. Orin Hatch among others. George Stephanopoulos was MC and I spent time catching up with him (knew him from Clinton White House days). Was a coldish night outside. Chris and Meg and Ali went off to California (Big Sur/Monterey) for Spring break. Wish I could have gone, but POTUS briefing tomorrow.
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2007-03-21 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
March 21, 2007 - Briefing of POTUS today at 2:30 - 3:30 PM in Roosevelt Room on Pandemic Flu preparedness. Secretary Leavitt, Bill Raub and I briefed him. I did most of the formal briefing on state of the threat, vaccines, antivirals and diagnostics. Bill spoke on community mitigation strategy and the stockpile. MOL spoke on overall responsibility of the USG versus states. Present were the POTUS, VP, Karl Rove, Josh Bolten, Joel Kaplan, Dan Bartlett, Fran Townsend, Candi Wolff, Mike Chertoff, Paula Dobriansky (Undersecretary of State), several people from Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rajeev Venkayya, Joel Bagnell. Briefing went very well. POTUS was as usual very friendly and deferential to me. Was at times serious and at times jocular with his characteristic joking around. When he came into the room, he looked at me and said "Fauci, glad to see you Tony. I see we have the first team here today". It was the first day of Spring and it was unseasonably cold out and cloudy.
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March 29, 2007 - Very interesting day. First, Megan received notification that she is accepted at Columbia, Barnard, and Yale with waiting list at Harvard and Dartmouth. Her top choices are Columbia and Dartmouth and so she will wait to hear more from Dartmouth before making choice. Went to a reception given by National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) given at a private home in Georgetown (3032 - N Street, N.W.) in honor of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Got to meet him again and chat. Did not previously know this, but his mother is an Italian American. Ran into my old idol from Brooklyn - Ken Aspromonte (brother of Bobby Aspromonte also my idol from the old days), baseball great from Lafayette High School and Brooklyn sandlot baseball who then played in Major Leagues. He was born and raised in Bensonhurst like me and we shared some warm discussions. Beautiful Spring evening. After the reception went to Café Milano and had dinner with the NIAF Board of Trustees. Towards the end of the dinner, got up to go to men's room and ran into Franco Nuschese, owner of Café Milano (who has always been very warm towards me). He insisted on taking me into a private party in the restaurant that he was throwing for prominent blacks in DC and the nation. I immediately ran into Secretary of State Condi Rice and Colin Powell who were very warm and engaging with me. This was particularly true of Colin Powell who threw his arms around me and gave me a bear hug with a kiss on the cheek. Over the past couple of years, I have gotten to be friendlier and friendlier with Colin, having seen him at various functions such as Sam Donaldson's Christmas Party, etc. All in all, a good evening.
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April 17, 2007 - Scooter Libby contacted me and asked that I write a letter to Judge Reggie Walton via Scooter's lawyer William Jeffress to serve as a character reference for Scooter. Scooter has been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson CIA leak (see above). He is appealing the 1 by case but may be sentenced to jail before his appeal is heard. The purpose of the letter is to try and keep Scooter out of jail during the appeal. I wrote him a very supportive letter.
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April 18, 2007 - Testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security together with Gerry Parker, Jesse Goodman (FDA) and Jeff Runge (DHS) on the successes and failures of Bioshield. Committee chaired by Jim Langevin. Hearing called because several of the companies that were trying for Bioshield procurement contracts had failed, i.e. Vaxgen for rPA and Hollois Eden for Neumune (to protect and regenerate BM after radiation). Richard Hollis testified against the USG and Dr. Davis from HGS (that makes AbThrax - monoclonal antibody against anthrax toxin) testified favorably towards the USG. Hollis looked like a whiner and the Hearing went fine. It is clear that Bennie Thompson, the overall Chair is in the pocket of the lobbyists as his questions reflected a "presumption" of failure on the part of DHHS and BioShield.
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April 20, 2007 - Briefed Joel Bagnell and Rajeev Venkayya at the WH on the rolling out of justification for classified research. Some friendly tension between Joel and me in that they wanted us (CDC, FDA, HHS, NIH to sign off on the roll-out document and there was a phrase in there that did not clarify that we do not do classified research. It asked us to justify with all of our research why it should be unclassified making the default position that everything should be classified. I had them change it to read that we should explain why it is not classified as opposed to justifying it as being unclassified. We came to an agreement.