Andrew Cockburn
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Andrew Cockburn | |
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Born | Andrew Myles Cockburn 7 January 1947 |
Alma mater | Worcester College, Oxford |
Occupation | Journalist |
Spouse(s) | |
Children | 3, including Olivia Wilde |
Parents |
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Andrew Myles Cockburn[1] (/ˈkɒkbɜːrn/ KOK-burn; born 7 January 1947) is a British journalist and the Washington, D.C., editor of Harper's Magazine.
Early life[]
Born in the London suburb of Willesden in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father was Communist author and journalist Claud Cockburn. His mother, Patricia Evangeline Anne (née Arbuthnot), was the granddaughter of British colonial administrator Henry Arthur Blake and British politician George Arbuthnot; she had written an autobiography, Figure of Eight.[2] Cockburn is a descendant of British-Jewish Whig politician and actor Ralph Bernal (1783–1854).[3][4] The Cockburns are related to Sir George Cockburn, 10th Baronet, who ordered the Burning of Washington in 1814.[5]
Cockburn was educated at Glenalmond College, Perthshire, and Worcester College, Oxford.
He has two brothers, Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) and Patrick Cockburn, also journalists, and two half-sisters. One sister, Sarah, was best known as the mystery writer Sarah Caudwell. The other sister, Claudia, was a disability activist and married Michael Flanders, half of the well-known performance double-act Flanders and Swann; the two children of this marriage are the journalists Laura Flanders and Stephanie Flanders, his half-nieces.
Career[]
Cockburn has written numerous books and articles, principally about national security. He has also produced numerous documentary films, principally in partnership with Leslie Cockburn, as well as co-produced the 1997 thriller The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, for DreamWorks. After an early career in British newspapers and television, he moved to the United States in 1979. His film The Red Army, produced for PBS in 1981, was the first in-depth report on the serious deficiencies of Soviet military power and won a Peabody Award. In 1982, he published the book The Threat – Inside the Soviet Military Machine (Random House), which examined the same topic in greater depth. He subsequently published many articles on the subject of US and Soviet military power as well as lecturing at numerous military bases, foreign policy forums, and colleges and innumerable television shows. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and subsequent revelation that his analysis of the Soviet military had been entirely correct rendered his subject otiose. He then began covering middle eastern subjects, including the 1991 documentary on the after-effects of the first Gulf war, The War We Left Behind, which he co-produced for PBS with his wife Leslie.
In 2009 he and Leslie Cockburn produced American Casino, a feature-length documentary on the financial crisis of 2007–2008. New Yorker critic David Denby called it "A terrific documentary... Everything is connected: the movie embodies chaos theory for social pessimists." Apart from his books he has written for National Geographic, the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, CounterPunch, Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, and the Dungarvan Observer. He is Washington Editor of Harper's Magazine.
In 2007, Cockburn wrote Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy (subtitled An American Disaster in the UK edition). In The New York Times, reviewer Jacob Heilbrunn called it "perceptive and engrossing." He is also known for writing "21st Century Slaves" for National Geographic. It was a groundbreaking article that shed light on the practice of modern-day slavery. Most recently, he authored Kill Chain – The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins (2015), which details the evolution of drone warfare, and the shift to assassination as the principal US military strategy. Kirkus Review called it "sharp-eyed and disturbing."
Personal life[]
In 1977, he married Leslie Corkhill Redlich in San Francisco. They have three children: Chloe Frances, Olivia, and Charles Philip.[6]
Bibliography[]
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Books[]
- The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine. New York: Random House, 1983. ISBN 0-394-52402-0.
- Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship, with Leslie Cockburn. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. ISBN 0-06-016444-1.
- One Point Safe, with Leslie Cockburn. New York: Doubleday, 1997. ISBN 0-385-48560-3.
- Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, with Patrick Cockburn. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. ISBN 0-06-019266-6.
- Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession, with Patrick Cockburn. New York: Verso Books, 2002.ISBN 1-85984-422-7.
- Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2007.ISBN 1-4165-3574-8.
- Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2015. ISBN 9780805099263.
Articles[]
- "The Defense Intellectual: Edward N. Luttwak". Grand Street, Vol. 6, No. 3, Spring 1987, pp. 161-174. doi:10.2307/25006996.
- "Swap Meet: Wall Street's War on the Volcker" (Letter from Washington). Harper's Magazine, Vol. 336, No. 2012, January 2018, pp. 37–43.
- "Like a Ball of Fire: Andrew Cockburn on Hypersonic Weaponry". London Review of Books, Vol. 42, No. 5, March 5 2020, pp. 31–32.
References[]
- ^ "Andrew Myles Cockburn". The Peerage. 22 July 2012.
- ^ "Patricia Evangeline Anne Arbuthnot". The Peerage. 22 July 2012.
- ^ Smalley, George Washburn; Escott, Thomas Hay Sweet (1904). Society in the New Reign. T.F. Unwin. pp. xii, 128, 145.
- ^ Cockburn, Claud (1981). Cockburn Sums Up: An Autobiography. Quartet Books. p. 135. ISBN 0704322668.
- ^ Sarah Booth Conroy (25 August 1991). "New Memories of an Old Flame". The Washington Post.
- ^ Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 120.
External links[]
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- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Nicaragua's New Day (2011)
- In the Land of the Dragon's Blood Tree (2010)
- "Frontline Club: Rumsfeld – the Man Behind the US Military Disaster" (11 May 2007)
- The Return of Judas (2006)
- The Kurds: Iraq's Resilient Minority (2005)
- Twenty-First Century Slaves (2004)
- The Shia of Iraq (2003)
- "Saddam's Last Act" (17 December 2003)
- "Tired, Terrified, Trigger-Happy" (2 December 2003)
- "Now the Blood Feud Begins" (26 July 2003)
- "Should We Attack Iraq Because We Can?" (4 November 2002)
- "Bono Betrays Ireland" (11 August 2002)
- "Diamonds: The Real Story" (2002)
- Andrew Cockburn interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (March 2015)
- 1947 births
- Living people
- Cockburn family
- English male journalists
- English people of Portuguese-Jewish descent
- English people of Scottish descent
- English people of Spanish-Jewish descent
- Harper's Magazine people
- Historians of the Iraq War
- Irish expatriates in the United States
- Irish journalists
- Irish people of Jewish descent
- Irish people of Scottish descent
- People educated at Glenalmond College