20th Anniversary: All politics are local: When Prague hosted NATO

Today, he is a national celebrity and the author of what might be Europe's only best-selling book on economics, but in November 2002 he nearly ruined my life.

Tomáš Sedláček, then an economic adviser to President Václav Havel, told me what time to show up for what I deemed the most important international event Prague had ever hosted, attended by 40 heads of state, including U.S. President George W. Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerard Schröder.

It was the Prague NATO Summit, and I was privileged to be covering the future of global security and world peace for The Prague Post, among some 3,000 other journalists. The theme was whether a slimmed-down but more efficient NATO would survive and flourish, who was going to pay for that and which former Eastern bloc members would be let in.

In other words, like everything else in life, it was really all about Slovakia.

In a sleepless week, I memorized every possible strategic weapon, military budget and security conflict that NATO was or wasn't prepared for. The takeaway: The Americans wanted Europeans to pay up.

But at 8 a.m. on a November morning when central Prague's residents were confined to their homes by the hovering helicopters, there was only one lesson I was considering: Economists don't know how to tell time. (To be fair, Mr. Sedláček, still the light of my life, has always claimed I heard him wrong.)

I was standing a few hundred meters from Prague Castle, where Bush and Havel were to hold forth on trans-Atlantic relations, but I was banished by police. They said I should go home because I was an hour late for press call.

I sobbed and stomped, but they were adamant.

Behind their blockade, as I swore into the wind at Mr. Sedláček (whose job did not include advising confused reporters on scheduling), a tiny figure emerged from behind the blockade.

It was a so-called low-level secretary who knew my voice from the phone, during my countless and futile attempts to get comment from the castle on subjects ranging from corruption to sheep droppings.

The 5-foot-tall young woman slithered in between a corridor of guardians, grabbed my hand, and said, "Run!" (A few other reporter stragglers took advantage and broke into a dash.)

We nearly flew to the castle, and as we hit further burly secret service agents in the interior, my Havel angel hinted that as it was her country and her castle, she had some say. (I always think of this when I hear foreigners describe Czech women as passive).

She pushed me through a miffed U.S. security detail. We somehow managed to join the hundred or so journalists who then waited three hours in an airless room for Bush and Co. to appear, with my head of state jovially engaging reporters like a buoyant fraternity chief next to the intellectually superior Havel, who looked ready for a nap. Condi Rice and Colin Powell tittered with laughter at every Bush mispronunciation. The European press crew was ready to vomit. 

I thought the U.S. leader was quite likable in person, which earned me the hatred of just about everyone in the Czech capital for at least a month.

The lesson of my castle penetration, namely that luck and persistence are just as important as a big brand name, defined my summit experience.

Working for a local paper produced on a shoestring, I was humbled at the chance to analyze NATO's purported transformation and did not expect to rub shoulders with VIPs.

Yet in the Congress Center where the summit was held, I infiltrated a gaggle of top German journalists who were stalking Schröder.

As they politely waited for him to speak, I rudely asked about his relations with Bush. He noticed me and pulled me into his next television interview, much to the dismay of the cursing German reporters, who called me dirty names I pretended not to understand.

Then there was the Italian deputy spokesman for NATO, besieged by pointed challenges from famous military writers, who sometimes provided them with hasty, unfriendly replies.

But my novice status inspired pity, and he patiently and repeatedly answered my insanely basic queries about the NATO budget.

Perhaps significantly for a cash-strapped American reporter, with a bit of posturing, I discovered how to invade the White House press corps hospitality suite at the Hilton without arrest so that I could eat waffles, a food I had not seen for two years.

Today, I am a contributor to USA Today and The New York Times. People tell me that dropping the names of these publications can get big shots to return phone calls or e-mails when they ordinarily wouldn't bother.

But a brand, at least for me, is not a measure of importance.

The article I wrote for The Prague Post, "Ready to pay," on NATO funding, was cited by the Congressional Research Service in its report on NATO's future to the U.S. Congress, and it's even mentioned in WikiLeaks.

And that November week, I felt like working for The Prague Post gave me more access, not less, to a milestone in the development of global security.

- The author served a variety of editorial roles for The Prague Post from 2001 to 2005. She presently writes on Central and Eastern Europe for The New York Times, USA Today and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She also teaches international reporting at New York University in Prague. 

Dinah A. Spritzer can be reached at
news@praguepost.com