Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Received today the written version of the oral history that Victoria Harden collected from me a few months ago. See attached document. Fauci on biodefense 8-9-02.doc Oct. 30 – Nov. 1 – Multiple conversations and e-mail exchanges with Gary Edson regarding the AIDS Project (see above). I believe that finally we are getting this straight. Historically (see above), every time that we try to calculate the needed resources for a comprehensive program, Robin Cleveland (OMB) or someone else says that it will not fly (see note of Oct. 10, 2002). Now Gary calls me and says that our most recent package might be low-balling it since he recently read an article by Jeff Sachs in The Economist that we need $25 billion per year. I finally told Gary that I had had enough. The world is calling for $10 billion per year for 5 years with an increase to $15 billion per year by 2007. They all say that the USA commitment should be 35% of this or $3.5 billion per years for 5 years. I told Gary that this is what we should propose as the President’s initiative provided that the other countries put in the remaining 65% and that they use our implementation plan. I told Gary that he and Robin need to figure out how much of $3.5 billion per year we (USA) will have already been spending in order to determine the amount (% of $3.5 billion) that really would have to be new money. Finally, he agreed and now we can stop all of this ridiculous back and forth with Robin and him. We may be getting close to presenting this to the President. We just need to convince Josh Bolten