Diary Prequel Package — page 171

CIA, Counter-terrorist people, Defense intelligence people, etc. Subject was how do we protect against drug resistant anthrax and vaccine resistant anthrax. Mar. 8, 2008 - Busy and nice social evening. Dropped in briefly to the NCS Annual Spring Festival "Casino Night" at the Athletic Center. Said hello to the usual suspects and then went to the Newseum at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate the 65th Birthday of Gerry Sigal. Beautiful setting with bay window view of the Capitol Dome. Great food, drink and dancing. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame at our table. Elias and Nadia Zerhouni were dancing away with us on the dance floor. DC was beautiful with crisp cold weather (upper 20s) and clear sky. Mar. 10, 2008 - Another in a long string of Global Health initiative meetings at the White House (EEOB 374) led by Dan Price (see above) with Gary Edson, Mark Dybul, Patrick Marcham, Mike Magan, Paul Brown, Dana DeRuiter. Mainly discussed Dan plans for the upcoming G-8 meeting in Japan (he is USG Sherpa). Issues are NTDs, heath workforce, HIV, Malaria, and TB. I was there representing the malaria and TB initiatives (see above). Apparently Josh Bolten is enthusiastic about both, but HHS is not supporting it since their priority in a bad budget year is pandemic flu and biodefense. Nonetheless, I am still going to these meetings and pushing the TB and Malaria agenda . I can do this since Dan Price (with Josh Bolten's approval) is including me in the process even though the HHS is against it. Mar. 19, 2008 - A most amazing and unique evening. Michael Gerson (former Bush speech-writer and advisor) and current Washington Post columnist (see other discussions above) invited Chris and me to his house for a private dinner with President and Laura Bush. Other guests were Fred and Barbara Barnes (Fred is Executive Editor of The Weekly Standard , Bill and Hara Haley (Bill is pastor of a DC Church and is interested in AIDS in Africa), and Mike and his wife Dawn. Dinner was at Mike's home at 2412 Crest Street, Alexandria. It was somewhat surreal, but incredibly enjoyable. The occasion was just that Mike is good friends with the POTUS and when he had breakfast with the POTUS a few weeks ago he asked the POTUS if he would like to have dinner over his house some time with a few friends. The POTUS gladly accepted and said that he almost never goes out to private dinners at people's homes because no one ever asks him, likely because they would reasonably assume that he would not accept. Evening started at 7:00 PM. We had to get their earlier (^:45 PM) since the secret service closed the roads (395) to make way for the motorcade. We had about 45 minutes of cocktail hour (POTUS had non-alcoholic beer). Very friendly chatting about a variety of subjects. My long-time impressions of the POTUS held true that he is a very warm, funny and considerate, self-effacing person. Laura was great also. Laura and the POTUS specifically thanked me for saying such nice things about him and Laura at Jenna Bush's event at the State Department (see Mar. 3 above). POTUS said that Jenna saw him and Laura that night and told them how kind I was to them in explaining the POTUS role in PEPFAR. He sounded very sincere in thanking me for "making my daughter proud of me". Dinner was terrific with nice wines, tomato soup, steak/potatoes, salad with bacon, and fruit dessert. At dinner we discussed frankly a wide variety of topics including: War in