FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Friday, December 7, 2001
https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2001-12-07

Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks.
==============================================================================

DIARY ENTRY — Friday, December 7, 2001
Source: Diary Prequel, p. 40 of 2026.07.27_Diary-Prequel-.pdf
Words: 276
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Negotiated with Ed Sontag (Asst Secr. For Management at DHHS)
regarding restructuring and consolidation of the NIH from an administrative standpoint,
i.e. Budget, HR, Legislation, Procurement, Public Affairs, Grants Management, IT, etc. I
had an agreement with Tommy Thompson that Budget should be sacrosanct and should
stay in the ICDs as opposed to consolidating at the level of NIH. Ruth Kirschstein
(Acting Director, NIH) almost gave away the farm in the negotiations. I stepped in and
took over the meeting for NIH. Ruth was about to agree to give up 850 FTEs. I insisted
that we could not cut down by any more than 200. Sontag came down to 275; we agreed
upon 250. Also, Sontag was concerned that the new Clinical Research Center was
projected to be $142 million over. Ed asked how we were going to handle it and Ruth
said that this did not happen on her watch and that it was someone else’s fault at NIH and
she would see that this person (Steve Ficca) would be held responsible (?fired). She gave
no indication how she would handle the real problem except to say that she would take it
out of the IRP. I insisted that we would need major flexibility from the Department
regarding how we could make up this money and that we could not hurt the IRP so
abruptly and severely. Sontag agreed to help. Poor Ruth is in way over her head. I will
have to make some difficult decisions if I become NIH Director about keeping her on as
Deputy. I may need to appoint another Deputy and have her keep her title, but not her
responsibilities.