Claire Sterling

Claire Sterling (née Neikind; October 21, 1919 – June 17, 1995) was an American author and journalist whose work focused on crime, political assassination, and terrorism. Her theories on Soviet bloc involvement in international terrorism and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, presented in The Terror Network and The Time of the Assassins, respectively, were politically influential and controversial.

Sterling was born in Queens, New York. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Brooklyn College, worked as a union organizer, and was briefly a member of the Young Communist League. After receiving a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1945, she became the Rome correspondent of "a fly-by-night American news agency." When it folded, she joined The Reporter, which she wrote for until it ceased publication in 1968. Sterling began writing her second book after losing her job at The Reporter; it was published in 1969. She also wrote for various newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Washington Post and Reader's Digest.

She married Thomas Sterling, a novelist, in 1951. After spending their honeymoon in Italy the two moved there, living in Rome for several decades. They had two children. She died of cancer at age 75, in a hospital in Arezzo.

Her first book, titled Our Goal was Palestine, was published by Victor Gollancz under her maiden name Claire Neikind in 1946, it is described as 'an American journalist writes of her experiences in a refugee ship.' She was at this time reportedly 'the Rome correspondent of the Overseas News Agency', which was a covert British propaganda operation run by British Security Co-ordination, set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) upon the authorisation of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

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