Diary Prequel Package — page 136

Joe Wilson was smeared by outing his CIA wife in order to get back at him for disagreeing with the evidence used for going to war with Iraq. Nov. 3, 2005 - Top secret meeting at EEOB regarding conduct of certain experiments in the area of developing countermeasures. Cannot elaborate because of top secret nature of discussions. More press regarding Pandemic flu plan. Nov. 4, 2005 - Tesitified before the House Government reform Committee with Tom Davis Chairing. Same cast = MOL, me, Julie, Raub, Gellin. This was a tougher Hearing in that this Committee is generally tough. Both the Republicans and Democrats gave some heat to us. As usual, the tough ones (Chris Shays, Dan Barton, Henry Waxman) were quite deferential to me and so I did fine. Dennis Kucinich made a spectacle of himself by pushing MOL on the issue of taking over Roche's patent for Tamiflu. Kucinich wanted a government takeover and MOL argued that this would be a disincentive for companies to ever make scarce products (MOL is absolutely correct). Nov. 5, 2005 - Met Senator Bill Frist at the St. Alban's - St.Stephen's/St Agnes football game (2:30 PM) at St. Albans field. Beautiful Fall afternoon. Temperature = 70 and totally sunny. St. Albans won 42-20. Frist's son Brian plays for St. Albans (junior year - special teams and safety). Frist discussed a whole range of issues, particularly pandemic flu. He wanted my opinion on the budget bill for flu ($7.1 Billion). Also, ran into Tim Russert at the game. He told me that he wanted me for "Meet the Press" to talk about bird flu within the next couple of weeks. Nov. 8, 2007 - Testified before the House Commerce and Energy Committee (Joe Barton, Chair). MOL, Julie, me, Bill Raub. Topic = pandemic flu. Somewhat different twist. Much discussion about funding. Some Republicans such as Barton feel that we should not have an emergency supplement, but that we should have offsets. This is contrary to what House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis said at the Appropriations Hearing (see above). He feels that it should be new money. Nov. 9, 2005 - Spirited Hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Pandemic Flu. I testified along with Julie G., Andrew Natsios (USAID), and Paula Dobriansky (DoS). Committee chaired by Paul Lugar. Present at Hearing were Sens. Dodd, Biden, Obama, Sarbannes (all Dems.) They kept pushing Julie and me about "who is in charge?" We explained that it is primarily a health issue and in this regard, Sec. Leavitt is in charge. In the sense that the issue may involve multiple Agencies, this is coordinated through the Homeland Security Council and Fran Townsend is in charge. They did not like the latter and were pushing for a "Flu Czar". We said that this was a bad idea. There was a lot of animated back and forth. After the Hearing, I met with Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, President of Iceland. He was referred to me by Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA). He is sponsoring an Icelandic Drug Co ("Actavis") that makes generics for HIV drugs and he wants to get Iceland involved in helping out with global AIDS by making 3-in-1 drugs available free to some countries and sold at minimal prices to others. He wanted my advice. I strongly suggested that he contact PEPFAR in the form of Mark Dybul. I also suggested that he