Monday, October 13, 2003

Went to White House ceremony (President’s speech) and reception to commemorate Columbus Day. The President specifically greeted me in his remarks saying how proud he was of how I was the General in the Global War on AIDS. After the ceremony, I ran into Josh Bolten in the hallway of the EEOB. He asked about my opinion of the controversy of $2 billion versus $3 billion in FY ’04 for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Bono has been giving the WH a hard time saying that the President was reneging on his promise when in fact he promised $15 billion over 5 years staring with $2 billion in ’04 (see above). He specifically asked my opinion of how Randy Tobias was doing as the new AIDS head of the program. He indicated that he did not think that there was anything wrong, but that he was getting the vague feeling that things were not moving along as aggressively as he thought that they would be. He asked me to quietly check it out.