Diary Prequel Package — page 67

Dec. 23, 2002 - Critical meeting at the White House (see above). Attending were VP Cheney and Scooter Libby by teleconference from Jackson Hole; Stewart Simonson, Phil Russell, Kerry Weems (Budget, DHHS), Carol Kuntz, Noreen Hynes, Seth Carus, Nancy Dorm (Deputy Director OMB), Tom Reilly and Jim Capretta (OMB). Issue was that Scooter and the VP had asked Carol Kuntz a couple of days ago to put together a threat related proposal for a wide range of microbes with no concern for budget to be used for procurement of products. It should be program and need driven. Carol tasked me to do this with Phil Russell. I worked until late through the night of Dec. 22 fine-tuning this and learning it cold. The proposal went beyond MVA, rPA, and included botulism, plague, tularemia, Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers, pandemic flu, West Nile. Etc. The proposal came to $15 billion from FY'04 - '06. The OMB had agreed several days ago to creating a "Permanent and Indefinite (first it was definite) appropriations authority to purchase vaccines for BioT for a total of $4.2 billion. In typical OMB fashion, they were against any new spending. The intense interest of the VP was the reason why we were being listened to. Importantly, Carol Kuntz called OMB people to the meeting (Mitch Daniels was supposed to be there, but he was out of town) but did not warn them that they would be faced with a $15 billion exercise in front of the VP. I convinced Carol to let them know at least a few minutes before the meeting started. They were mortified and enraged that they were not warned in advance. As Nancy Dorm said, every time she sees me, it costs her billions of dollars. The VP called upon me to present the proposal. Nancy did not get it. She was tied down in process. She insisted that the original agreement was for vaccines only and not what she called "countermeasures" such as botulism antitoxin and Cidofovir, which were on the list. She did not understand that "Countermeasures" is the big umbrella under which are vaccines, antitoxins, etc. Also, she argued that we she not include in the purchasing authority anything that was not licensed. I proposed that we should include anything that was "licensable", i.e. on the way to license by the FDA, but perhaps months away because of the FDA process. The VP very clearly was on my side and did not hide it. He even said to Nancy " Do you expect me to go to the President and the American people and say that we cannot provide countermeasures against threats that we either know or strongly suspect that Iraq has because we do not want to broaden authorities and because the "process" will not allow it?" She then said that she would work with us to get something out. The VP was spectacular! It was a classic example of OMB not being able to get beyond process and missing the entire point of the concept. Amazingly, Nancy said that "look what happened with the smallpox vaccine. We bought it and now we are not even going to use it widely". She considers the smallpox vaccine situation, which was one of the great successes of the year to be a failure since many Americans would opt not to take it. She does not understand that the fact that we have it is critical. Amazing! The meeting ended with the VP clearly in my corner. My relationship with him, Scooter and the whole staff, particularly Carol is getting very strong. Dec. 24, 2002 - Nice surprise today. At 1:00 PM, I received a call in my office. I answered the phone since everyone else had left for the 1⁄2 day Christmas eve. On the other end someone sang the full verse of "Happy Birthday". It was Secretary Thompson calling from Wisconsin on a cell phone from a shopping center.