The first president Bush had a meeting earlier this year with O'Keefe about his ill-fated Space Exploration Initiative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/science/17NASA.html?ex=1072242000&en=89334b2a86e49384&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

"Two weeks before the Feb. 1 loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew, the space agency administrator, who had worked in the Pentagon during the former Bush administration, was in Texas and had lunch with his old boss.

One of the main items discussed was Mr. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative, a proposal he advanced to send humans to Mars during the 20th anniversary observance of the first Apollo moon landing. "He remembered this like it was yesterday," Mr. O'Keefe said, "he went on about how the decision was made and he remembered more detail than I ever would."

"In the end, we had this audacious policy but no one really went off to find out what it was going to take to achieve it and it fell flat," Mr. O'Keefe said, "He was just absolutely despondent over the fact and said `I got set up.' "