Monday, 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. August 26 – Sept. 5 – Much discussion about pre-emptively attacking Iraq to neutralize them before they use or get capacity for ”weapons” of mass desctruction. This is pushing our HHS team to be ready to vaccinate the USA population. Our plan for ”staged” smallpox vaccination of immediate first responders to broad first responders to voluntary vaccination of general public is ready to go. We are waiting for word from the White House to roll out the plan.