Leslie Cockburn has directed and produced dozens of documentaries, both long and short form, on subjects ranging from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia and Central America to the war between the cartels in Colombia, the uprisings in Haiti, the Italian mafia, the chaos of post Soviet Russia and the radical Islamists in Pakistan and Yemen. She covered the financial collapse in the United States and the manipulation of oil prices. She has made several films on nuclear weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Her work has appeared on PBS Frontline, where she was a director, producer and correspondent, CBS News “60 Minutes” (Producer), CBS Reports (Producer/Director), and ABC News (Producer/Director). She has won the highest awards in American broadcast journalism, including two Emmys, two George Polks, two Columbia DuPonts and the Robert F. Kennedy Award.
Leslie has also written for Vanity Fair as a Contributing Editor on such subjects as the Red Princes in China and the Saddam family in Baghdad. She covered radical Islam in Saudi Arabia for the New Yorker, the drug cartels for Granta, and stories on Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton for British Vogue. She is the author of three books and co-author (with her husband Andrew Cockburn) of two more. She is currently revising a novel set in Afghanistan.
She was a Ferris a professor of Journalism at Princeton.
She is a graduate of Yale University (BA) and S.O.A.S., University of London (MA) and is a citizen of Ireland and the United States. She is the mother of three, Chloe Cockburn, Charlie Cockburn and Olivia Wilde.
