Leslie Cockburn

Leslie Corkill Redlich Cockburn (/ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn; born September 2, 1952) is an American writer and filmmaker who has covered a wide variety of international stories in almost every part of the globe.

Leslie Cockburn (née Leslie Corkill Redlich) was born in San Mateo, San Mateo County, California, and raised in Hillsborough. She is the daughter of Christopher Rudolph Redlich, a shipping magnate.

Leslie attended the Santa Catalina School for Girls. She then studied at Yale. Afterwards, she went on to earn a master's degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. While living in London she began to work for NBC News. Among her early reports was an interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In 1978 Cockburn moved to CBS. As a New York-based producer for the network in the 1980s she covered, among other topics, the U.S.-directed Contra War against Nicaragua. Her 1984 report, “The Dirty War,” for which she traveled through regions of Nicaragua that were officially off-limits as being too dangerous for journalists to visit, revealed the Contras' horrifying record of routine atrocities against the civilian population. In subsequent reports she laid out the degree to which Contras were heavily involved in the narcotics business as well as the first full account of the role of White House aide Colonel Oliver North in directing the whole Contra war.

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