Tuesday, December 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 ½ 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. discussed the need to establish a BAT team or biological anti-terrorist team to be available to the President for advice and service in the event of a catastrophic attack. Present was among many others: Julie Gerberding, David Franz, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, Josh Lederberg, Richard Danzig, Bill Patrick. Entire attendee list is in my files. Jan. 13 or 14, 2003 – Meeting in the West Wing (Ward Room) of the White House with Kristen Silverberg, Ken Bernard, Carol Kuntz, Amy Jensen, Sally Canfield (DHS), Jim Capretta, Tom Reilly, Richard Falkenrath, Stewart Simonson and others from WH communications to continue to fashion the precise language of the Project Bioshield (authorities, Procurement, FDA regs) in preparation for getting this into the President’s State of the Union (SOTU) address . We wrangled a bit about the precise language. We will meet again in 2 days to finalize it.