GLOBAL PANEL - PRESS RELEASES

When German-born Marcus Samuel Ellenbogen was a little boy visiting New York with his parents in the 1970s, the rising World Trade Center was, in Marc's words, "getting ready to be bigger than the Empire State Building. I told my mother: 'When I am president of the United States, I'll make sure that the Empire State Building is the biggest building in the world.'" Marc's Heidelberg birthplace didn't rule out his White House potential, for his father, Paul, was a naturalized U.S. citizen who had served as a naval officer in the Pacific in World War II and on a war-crimes tribunal in Japan before returning to his native land to negotiate Germany's entry into NATO. Even though Marc was born in a German hospital, it was considered U.S. territory because his father was serving the government overseas. Like many of us, Marc Ellenbogen, now in his thirties, has scaled down his expectations. Over drinks at Pravda, he remarked: "I think secretary of state in 10 years would be a good aim." If so, the road to Foggy Bottom (the district of Washington in which the State Department is headquartered) will have led via Pardubice and Prague as well as the Gary Hart (1984), Joseph Lieberman and Michael Dukakis (1988), Mario Cuomo (1988 and 1992) and Al Gore political campaigns.

Dishwasher to intern

Educated at U.S. Department of Defense schools in Germany and Syracuse University in upstate New York, Marc spent summers washing dishes in the NATO Officers Club at U.S. Army European headquarters in Heidelberg: "When I finished up one night, there was this distinguished-looking gentleman sitting at the bar, so I asked him: 'Can I buy you a Scotch?' And he said: 'Are you old enough to buy me a Scotch?' "We started talking and he gave me his card, which I stuck in my shirt. Later, I saw he'd written on the back side: 'Please call me when you're in New York.' I turned the card over and it said: R. Lee Rogers, President ITT Corporation. He offered me a summer internship while doing graduate work." At Syracuse, Marc served as a volunteer in Democrat Mario Cuomo's winning campaign for governor of New York state in 1982. Two years later, he joined Gary Hart's presidential campaign, which aborted after the Colorado senator's yacht fling with a model. In 1988, Ellenbogen was asked to write public policy papers for a difficult U.S. Senate candidate in Connecticut, where Joseph Lieberman's orthodox Judaism had already cost him the governorship. "Back in 1986," Ellenbogen explains, "Lieberman was about to be chosen Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor - as (Governor) Ella Grasso's running mate. But the state Democratic convention was on a Saturday and Lieberman chose not to come on the Sabbath. So somebody else got the nomination and, when Grasso died in office, became governor of Connecticut." In 1988, Ellenbogen helped engineer Lieberman's upset victory over Republican Senator Lowell Weicker. Though working closely with Lieberman, Marc never met the candidate's Czech-born bride, Hadassah. But the year 2000 finds Ellenbogen and 14 members of the international consultancy that bears his initials, M.S.E. Group, working as paid "troubleshooters" in key electoral states for the Gore-Lieberman campaign, which Marc says "will be won or lost in New York and California." Mr. M.S.E. anticipated the ticket early: "When (Senator) John McCain dropped out of the Republican race last spring, I sent Al Gore an e -mail saying: 'Dear Mr. Vice President: Why don't you pick John McCain as your running mate? And if not, why don't you do something creative, something dramatic - e.g., select Senator Lieberman?'" - who'd been the first Democrat to criticize President Bill Clinton's behavior in office. Ellenbogen leads three parallel lives: in academia, public policy and business. Currently a visiting fellow at Magdalen College of Oxford University, he is writing a book called As Down to Earth as Arrogance Gets: The Politics of the 1990s. His CV reads: "I work in the gray area between private and public; academic, state and business; profit and not-for-profit - filling in gaps, making connections, creating something out of nothing. My web is my network. Like a spider, I catch what is in my net. But unlike the spider, I nurture and care for it. I weave my webs - and they hold. ... "The Czech Republic rewarded me for this. It gave me something I couldn't find in my other lives. It took care of me when life had treated me badly; it healed my wounds." He had moved up rapidly in the ITT hierarchy. But then there was a power play at the top and he was the loser. In 1991, ITT kicked him upstairs and out of sight - promoted to "a big desk with nothing to do" in Mannheim, Germany. At the same time, his marriage was coming apart. (His ex-wife and their son died two years ago in a car crash in Canada.) His mother was dying of cancer. Once in Europe, he learned that, with help from the U.S. Peace Corps, a technical college in east Bohemia was transforming into a full-fledged, internationally oriented University of Pardubice, and advertising for someone to set up faculties of business and social sciences. He was invited to participate in the creation: chartering a foundation, funding a faculty, enabling accreditation, and teaching a seminar in Graduate Research and Writing.

The 200,000 km commute

He commuted by car for three-day visits. In 1993, the year he left ITT, he drove 200,000 kilometers (almost 125,000 miles). His 4,000 Kc (then dollar 160) monthly salary barely paid for gas. In 1995, he founded M.S.E. in Ludwigshafen; they privatized German hospitals and advised Gerhard Schroeder in his winning 1998 campaign for chancellor. Ellenbogen opened an M.S.E. branch in Prague in 1997, but not until last year did he take an apartment here. That was when he founded the Prague Society for International Cooperation, a think tank to serve as "infrastructure enabling the good Czechs I was meeting here to work with foreigners who have some knowledge of the country - not fly-by-nights - to help them rise to the greatness that's in them." Among the Prague Society's directors are former Minister Without Portfolio Pavel Bratinka; Ivan Bohacek, editor of the natural sciences journal Vesmir (Universe); New Zealand Consul Vera Egermayer; educator Barbara Day and former United Artists president Norbert Auerbach. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate F.W. de Klerk, former president of South Africa, is its honorary chairman. On Oct. 16, the Prague Society gave its first Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award (named after Marc's mother) to the conducting corps of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra: chief conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, permanent conductor Vladimir Valek, and principal guest conductors Sir Charles Mackerras and Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi. The 150,000 Kc prize will be go young musician the conductors choose - to develop his or her talent through further training, travel abroad or the purchase of an instrument. Alan Levy's e-mail address is alevy@praguepost.cz.

Vital Statistics:

Born: Heidelberg, Germany, 1963, U.S. citizen
Education: Syracuse University, New York, Bachelor of Arts, 1984; Master of International Relations, 1989
Founder of M.S.E. Group consultants, 1995; The Prague Society, 1999