Saturday, January 24, 2009

Attended with Chris the Lido Civic Club Gala at the Capitol Hilton on 16th and K Streets, N.W. Have been going to these black tie Award Galas for a few years. It is where I met Gen. Peter Pace and Judge Sam Alito. Lido is an Italian American Civic Club with a long history in DC. It started giving awards almost 100 years ago to people like Fiorello LaGuardia, etc. This year the awardees were Gen. Pace (former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Deputy Mayor of DC Dan Tangherlini. It was good to meet Dan since I will soon be dealing with him and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty to launch a “Test and Treat program for AID in DC (more later). Also at the party were Major Fenty’s mother and father. She is an Italian-American and he is an African- American. Gen Pace is a truly nice man and accepted his award with a moving speech about his parents and grandparents and the men he served with in the marines from the time he was a rifle platoon leader in Viet Nam through Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Also seated at our table was an Army Sergeant (Joe Hauser) who had his right leg blown off in Balard, Iraq (where I had visited in 2003). Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend Shaha Riza (World Bank) were also at our table. Recall that there was a “social scandal” when Paul was head of the World Bank and had to leave because it was felt that he was showing favoritism to Shaha who was an employee and was also living with him. Paul and I reminisced about when we worked together on biodefense when he was Deputy Secretary at the Dept. of Defense.