Career
Born Philip Merrill Levine, he was a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Business School. At Cornell, he was managing editor of The Cornell Daily Sun and a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He was president and CEO of Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc., which publishes Washingtonian magazine, the Annapolis Capital, and five other Maryland newspapers. His wife, Eleanor, succeeded him as chairman of the company which they sold after his death to Landmark Communications; their daughter Catherine Merrill Williams took over as president and publisher of the Washingtonian.
Merrill served as counselor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 1981 to 1983; as a member of the Defense Policy Board from 1983 to 1990 and again from 2001 to 2003; and as Assistant Secretary General for Defence Support at NATO Headquarters in Brussels from 1990 to 1992 under President George H. W. Bush. He was appointed to chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States by George W. Bush, serving from 2002 to 2005. He represented the United States in negotiations on the Law of the Sea Conference, the International Telecommunications Union and various disarmament and exchange agreements with the former Soviet Union. For many years he chaired the White House Fellow Commissions regional panels. Merrill also served on President George H.W. Bush's Gulf War Air Power Survey and President Reagan's Commission on Cost Control in the Federal Government.
He served as a long time trustee of the Aspen Institute (and long time executive board member), the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, and Cornell University. He was Chairman of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and a U.S. Director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). He also served on the Department of Defense Business Board, the University of Maryland Board of Visitors, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) board and the Advanced Physics Laboratories board.
In 1988, he received the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award from the then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the highest civilian honor given by the United States Department of Defense.
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