Early Life and Career
Leslie Cockburn (nee Leslie Corkill Redlich) was born at Mills Hospital in San Mateo, San Mateo County, California, and raised in Hillsborough. She is the daughter of Christopher Rudolph Redlich, Stanford Class of 1938 (Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington, August 10, 1915 - December 15, 2000), buried at Newcastle Cemetery, Newcastle, Placer County, California. Christopher was the Chairman of Marine Terminals Corp, who helped transform the shipping business and port operations worldwide with his advocacy of containerization. He advised countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia and China on how to develop modern ports. He was former president of the San Francisco Golf Club. (Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, December 19, 1942) Her mother was Christopher's wife Jeanne Louise Fulcher (nee Pigott), UCLA class of 1942, a 4th generation Californian. (Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California or New York, March 18/19, 1921 - Hillsborough, San Mateo County, California, February 4, 2002), who lived at Hillsborough, San Mateo County, California, buried at Newcastle Cemetery, Newcastle, Placer County, California. Her ancestry includes German, Irish, English, and Manx.
Leslie attended the Santa Catalina School for Girls '70 and won the distinguished alumni award on 2010 She was a member of the second class of women to graduate from Yale. Afterwards, she went on to earn a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. While living in London she began to work for NBC News in their London bureau. 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.
Following the overthrow of the Duvalier regime in Haiti in 1986, Cockburn’s report “Haiti’s Nightmare” (1987) on the brutality of a Haitian military unit being armed and trained by the U.S. led to an outcry in Congress and the suspension of all U.S. military aid to Haiti.
Other stories covered by Cockburn in this period included Pentagon military procurement scandals and the political history of then-Senator Jesse Helms in North Carolina. Shortly afterwards, Helms launched a campaign for his right-wing followers to buy the network.
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