Diary Prequel Package — page 101

for Iraq. The Press center was adjacent to the Hotel. I spent most of the time in the White House press unit with White House staff led by Pamela Stevens, Paul Morrell, Jim Wilkinson, Barry Bennett (Deputy of Communications, G8 Summit Planning Organization, Colby Cooper, Dana Perino, M.C. Koch, Jana..?, Corey..? and others. It was exciting to be there and I ran into virtually all of my reporter friends on the White House Press Corps including among others, David Gregory, Terry Moran, Norah O'Donnell, Ann Compton, Bill Plant, John Roberts. I had a great interview with an AP reporter Scott Lindlaw, whom I had not met before. The initiatives were very well received. However, as I have seen before, unpredictable events shape everything. Former President Ronald Reagan and died a few days before and the press was totally saturated with Reagan history and funeral news to the point that the G8 issues were literally pushed from the front page. I appeared on TV only one time on CNN and that was for an interview with Anderson Cooper on my impressions of Reagan's legacy on AIDS, particularly during the early years when he did not even mention AIDS publicly. I stated on camera that the criticism of this silence on the part of the activists was certainly justified; however, the activists are being too harsh (Larry Kramer wrote a piece calling him worse than Hitler) since many things occurred behind the scenes that were good. For Example he allowed me to go out and be proactive and speak on behalf of the gay constituents. Also, Surgeon General Koop was allowed to mail his report to every household in the USA. I also got some press with interview in foreign TV such as VOA, Al Jazeera, Canada National TV, BBC, etc. Also, a few mentions of my briefings in WSJ, and many papers that picked up the major AP story by Scott Lindlaw. Otherwise, there was much less press for the G8 in general and for me than would have occurred had not Reagan died. June 18, 2004 - Attended a farewell party at the White House for Gary Edson. He is leaving NSC to work in the campaign. His main job will be to prepare the POTUS for the debates with Kerry. I was the only non-WH person at the reception that was hosted by Condi Rice and Steve Hadley of NSC. In her praising of Gary for his work, she mentioned 2 accomplishments among many: 1) the millennium account, and 2) the PEPFAR. When she spoke of the PEPFAR, she caught my eye and said, "Oh Tony Fauci is here; they were the team that did this. Tony was the brains and Gary was the brawn". July 9, 2004 - 2 meetings in West Wing. First was a top secret briefing of Fran Townsend, the new Director of the Homeland Sceurity Council. She replaced Gen. John Gordon who retired in June (see above). Present at the briefing were Ken Bernard, Bob Kadlec, Larry Kerr, Kate Spitler (CIA) and some others. Purpose was to brief Fran on the experiments that were being proposed regarding genetically engineered monkeypox virus to duplicate what was shown in the mousepox model where inserting the IL-4 gene into mousepox made it lethal and elusive for both vaccine and therapy. Debate was whether to do experiments and whether to classify them. Purpose of doing experiments was to determine whether the mousepox work also applied to the monkeypox. In addition, if it did, then we needed to develop countermeasurs such as anti-IL-4 drugs. Fran was extremely complimentary to me saying that above all people, she wanted to know what my opinion was and she wanted me to explain the details and implications of the experiments.