Diary Prequel Package — page 52

Edson and Jay Lefkowitz on Wednesday, July 31. I am going to have to relate to Gary the essence of my meeting with Kolbe and Flichner. August 1, 2002 - Met at the White House with Gary Edson, Jay Lefkowitz, and Margaret La Montagne Spellings to present the Dybul/Fauci plan for comprehensive treatment and prevention of HIV in African countries. This was in response to the original request by Josh Bolten and then the specific request by Gary Edson to put together a plan based on the "Mugyenyi Model " of Uganda (see July 17 above). Also present at the meeting was Terrell Halaska, Joe O'Neill, Mark Dybul, and Allen Gilbert. Gary, Jay and Margaret was extremely pleased and excited about the plan. They mentioned that we had done a "fabulous" job. They asked us to respond to about 5-6 questions in writing. Clearly they are going to run it by the President when he returns from his August vacation in Crawford, Texas. He may well want to make this a Presidential initiative similar to the MTCT proposal that we had put together for him. August 16, 2002 - Went back to White House to present the revised Global AIDS Plan to Gary Edson. Also present were Terrell Halaska, Mark Dybul and Joe O'Neill, Director of Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP). Gary again liked the revised plan and liked how we answered the questions that he and Margaret Spellings posed to us at the last meeting concerning: a) impact on Domestic AIDS issues; b) development of a sharp sound bite for the State of the Union Address in case it comes to that; c) relationship to Global AIDS Trust Fund; d) Inclusion of Russia, India, and China; e) reason why the Gates/Merck/Harvard/Univ of Penn initiative in Botswana has failed; f) administrative structure of the program. He asked me to revise the document by tightening it up to an Exec Summary, 5 pages of text and a group of tables. He wants us present it to Josh Bolten when Josh gets back from vacation next week. Mark and I can quickly make this revision. August 26, 2002 - Meeting at the White House with Gary Edson, Jay Lefkowitz, Margaret Spellings, Ken Thomas (ONAP), Jim Capretta, Robin Cleveland (OMB) and Mark Dybul. We presented the condensed version (see above) to Gary , Margaret, and Jay. Several minutes into the meeting Robin and Jim showed up and in a somewhat offhand manner without evening knowing the details of what we were presenting, Robin became very critical of the idea and the project. She actually parroted words that we had heard weeks ago from the Kolbe Committee (Charlie Flichner) about how they were very skeptical that we could actually get "twin pairs" of hospitals. Also, she questioned whether the Uganda model would work even though she knew virtually nothing about it. I kept my cool, was subliminally sharp in response to her, but was very pissed inside. Gary intervened and defended what we had done and indicated that we would come back to Robin with more details about the Uganda model etc. (which we had already done among us previously). Afterwards, Gary, Ken, Mark and I met for about 45 minutes in The Situation Room and discussed further revising of the documents. I would not be surprised if Robin leaked all of this to USAID and the House Foreign Ops Committee. I did not like the way she acted at the meeting and I do not trust her. She acted a bit disrespectful to us in my mind; however, I believe that this was not her intent and she was reflecting the questions that the House Foreign Ops Committee was asking her.