Diary Prequel Package — page 172

Iraq; his recent trip to Africa; his dealing with various Heads of State; the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing and why he really must attend despite the current misbehavior of China in brutally suppressing the Tibetan call for freedom. He told a great story of when former Prince and now King of Saudi Arabia visited him at his ranch in Crawford and negotiations about the Israel/Palestine problem came up. They reached an impasse since the POTUS thought that the Prince was being frankly anti-Semitic and the discussions stalled. The POTUS would not yield on one point and the Prince announced that he was leaving. POTUS sent in Colin Powell to convince him not to but Colin cane back and told POTUS "Boss, I am getting nowhere with him; you have to step in". The POTUS visited the Prince, perceived the "chilly" atmosphere in the room and said before we discuss anything, let me tell you what my religion has done for me. The prince agreed and then the POTUS asked the Prince to talk about what the Prince's religion means to him. This warmed up the chill and POTUS took him out on his pickup truck to tour the ranch alone. As they were talking about the problem, a turkey hen jumped up in front of the truck and just stayed in the road. The POTUS said that he had never seen a turkey on the road before. POTUS explained what a turkey was and how Ben Franklin almost got the turkey to be the National bird, but the bald eagle won out. The Prince said that in his country god often speaks to people through birds and this is clearly a sign from god. After that, the negotiations flourished and POTUS and the king have been the best of friends. The conversation also included discussions about us and our families. The POTUS and Laura were very interested in Jenny's thesis on women in the criminal justice system. I explained what she was doing and how she decided on this topic. He seemed very connected and empathetic to the problems of young girls getting caught up in the system. He also expressed concern that black leaders are not speaking up more about black men abandoning their children after they have them leading to the incredible statistics of outof-wedlock pregnancies among blacks. POTUS also thinks that the Dems will go into the convention with Obama ahead and that it will be a behind closed doors brokered convention. He said, "if it is a behind closed doors convention, there is no chance that Obama will out-maneuver the Clinton machine. She will be the nominee, split the party and McCain will win. After dinner we all went over an Photo album of the POTUS and First Lady's recent visit to Africa. The President left at about 9:25 PM in a 6 to 8 car motorcade. All in all it was an incredibly memorable evening. Earlier in the day I briefed Ms. Sandra Roelofs, the First Lady of Georgia. She is Dutch and a nursing student. She was interested is speaking to me because she had heard about my AIDS work. We spoke of TB, AIDS and other IDs. She had earlier in the day had lunch with Laura and Jenna Bush. Actually, Laura mentioned this to me at Gerson's house. Mar. 25, 2008 - I organized and ran what might be an historic meeting today on the future of HIV Vaccine Research. Ever since the disappointing results from the STEP trial (Merck ad5 prime-boost - see above), there has been increasing pressure within ourselves and in the scientific and certain activist communities to re-evaluate whether we should turn the knob of support more towards basic discovery as opposed to clinical trials