Paul Cellucci - Subsequent Career

Subsequent Career

On March 18, 2005, the day after Cellucci had resigned from his ambassadorship, Magna Entertainment Corporation announced they had hired Cellucci. Magna chairman Frank Stronach said Cellucci's role would be to help reform the U.S. regulations around horse racing.

In September 2005, Cellucci published a book called Unquiet Diplomacy, a memoir of his time as ambassador. In the book, he praises Canada as "a truly great nation", but also has some criticism for the governments of former Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.

The same month, shortly after an interview where U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins stirred controversy over comments he made on the case of Maher Arar, Cellucci gave an interview in which explained his position on the Arar case. While he was Ambassador, Cellucci had declined to participate into the inquiry into the Americans' "extraordinary rendition" of Arar to Syria and the possible role of Canadian officials in the rendition, being consistent with the Bush administration's position that nothing improper had been done. Cellucci's comments in the 2005 interview were seen as a rebuke to Wilkins. Cellucci acknowledged, "Part of the unfairness was that we took a Canadian citizen, shipped him to a third country without consulting with Canada," apparently exonerating Canadian officials. Cellucci did point out that as a result of the Canadian Government's protest about Arar, the United States and Canada exchanged letters, in which each undertook to notify the other country if either government was going to remove, involuntarily, a National of the other country to a third country. While each country retains all rights to do what is in its security interests, Cellucci believes that as a practical matter, this makes it highly unlikely that anything like the Arar situation will happen again.

The same interview revealed that Cellucci, as a private citizen, also had second thoughts about the stance he had taken as Ambassador on the Invasion of Iraq. During the lead-up to the Invasion of Iraq, Cellucci had put pressure on Canada to join in the invasion, based on the American and UK assertions that Saddam's administration possessed a dangerous arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction. But in 2005 Cellucci acknowledged: "We’re not always right, and on that particular one it looks like we weren’t right, although we know at some point in the past he did have these weapons."

Cellucci left Magna Entertainment in the Fall of 2006 and joined the Boston office of the law firm of McCarter & English, LLP, where he holds the title of Special Counsel.

In 2008, Cellucci has said that after thirty-five years in public service he had no intention of seeking further office, and that while he had no interest in serving as Vice President, he did not exclusively rule it out. He supported John McCain's candidacy for president in 2008.

On January 6, 2011, Cellucci announced that he has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, and that it is progressing relatively slowly.

Cellucci has responded to his diagnosis by leading an effort to raise $10 million for research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Cellucci joined UMMS Chancellor Michael F. Collins and UMMS neurologist Dr. Robert H. Brown Jr., who is leading Cellucci's treatment, before a Boston Red Sox game on May 19, 2011 at Fenway Park to announce the fundraising campaign. “I'm going to be talking to people from my old political network and I hope I can get some support there,” Cellucci said. “We have a lot of people through the social network and we can really reach out across this country.” On March 15, 2012, Biogen Idec announced it was donating $500,000 to the UMass ALS Champion Fund, a substantial part of the $1.3 million that the fund raised in its first year.