Claire Sterling

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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.[1][2][3] 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.

Life

Sterling was born in Queens, New York City. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Brooklyn College, worked as a union organizer.[1][4] 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."[1] When it folded, she joined The Reporter, which she wrote for until it ceased publication in 1968.[1] Sterling began writing her second book after losing her job at The Reporter; it was published in 1969.[1] She also wrote for various newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Reader's Digest.[1]

She married Thomas Sterling, a novelist, in 1951.[1] After spending their honeymoon in Italy the two moved there, living in Rome for several decades.[1][5] They had two children.[5] She died of cancer at age 75, in a hospital in Arezzo.

Work as an author

Her first book, titled Our Goal was Palestine, was published by

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',[6] 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.[7]

Sterling's second book revisited the 1948 death of

William Casey, but its arguments were dismissed by the CIA's Soviet analysts; Lincoln Gordon one of three members of a senior review panel at the CIA charged with bringing non-intelligence professional and academic review to the agency discovered comparing CIA intelligence reports and the book at Casey's request that at least some of Sterling's claims had come from stories that the CIA itself had planted in the Italian press.[8]

Sterling was the first to claim (in a September 1982 article in

unpatriotic at best. The "Bulgarian Connection" theory has also been, in detail, refuted and attributed to bias by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent.[12] The Time of the Assassins dealt with the assassination attempt and advanced this now-discredited theory.[13] Her last two books dealt with the Sicilian Mafia and post-Communist globalized organized crime, respectively.[1]

Books
A 28-page pamphlet published as Claire Neikind.[14][15]

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Eric Pace (1995-06-18). "Claire Sterling, 76, Dies". The New York Times.
  2. ^ Bird, Kai; Holland, Max (1985-08-01). "Claire Sterling and the C.I.A.". The Nation.
  3. ISBN 978-0-7656-1464-3
    .
  4. ^ "The Politics of Fear". The Washington Post. 1981-04-11.
  5. ^ a b Wolfgang Achtner (1995-06-26). "Obituary: Claire Sterling". The Independent.
  6. ^ "Jonathan Fishburn Catalogue Five: ZIONISM 1000 Items of History, Politics, Literature, Art and Ephemera from Pre-Mandate Palestine to the Founding of the State of Israel. Fishburn Books" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-02-04. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  7. ^ William Boyd: William Boyd on the largest covert operation in UK history, The Guardian, 19 August 2006
  8. ISBN 0-671-65543-4
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-312-42493-0
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-8157-9144-7
    .
  11. ^ The Independent: Obituary: Claire Sterling, 26 June 1995
  12. ISBN 9780307801623
    .
  13. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (1983-12-30). "Books Of The Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-18.
  14. ^ Williams, Michael (1946-01-01). Commonweal. Commonweal Publishing Corporation.
  15. ^ Neikind, Claire (1946). Our Goal Was Palestine. London: Victor Gollancz LTD.
  16. ISBN 0801489601
    .

References

  • Bart Barnes (1995-06-18). "Claire Sterling, Investigative Writer, Dies". The Washington Post.

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Claire_Sterling&oldid=1190077872"