Alexander Cockburn

His ancestral family included Sir George Cockburn, 10th Baronet, who was responsible for the burning of Washington, DC in the War of 1812.

His two younger brothers, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick, are also journalists.

Alexander Claud Cockburn (6 June 1941 – 21 July 2012) was a Scottish-born Irish-American political journalist and writer.

Alexander Cockburn was born on June 6, 1941, in Scotland and grew up in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.

He was the eldest son of journalist, Claud Cockburn, a former Communist author, and his third wife, Patricia Byron, née Arbuthnot.

(She wrote an autobiography, Figure of Eight).

Cockburn graduated from Oxford in 1963, after which he worked at the New Left Review, becoming its managing editor in 1966.

He was also assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement, and in 1967 worked at New Statesman.

In 1967 Cockburn co-edited The Incompatibles: Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus with Robin Blackburn.

Blackburn described the book as "[bringing] together trade-union organizers, leftwing journalists including Paul Foot, Marxist economists and two liberals—Michael Frayn and Philip Toynbee—who mocked the demonization of union activists by Labour as well as Conservative pundits."

In 1968, Cockburn published a letter to The Times supporting British socialists protesting the Vietnam War.

In 1969 the pair co-edited Student Power: Problems, Diagnosis, Action, with contributors including Herbert Marcuse, Perry Anderson, and Tom Nairn.

Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland, but lived and worked in the United States from 1972.

Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edited the political newsletter CounterPunch.

Cockburn also wrote the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation, and another column for The Week in London, syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Cockburn moved to the United States in 1972 and lived there for the rest of his years.

He contributed pieces to The New York Review of Books, Esquire, Harper's, and, from 1973 to 1983, The Village Voice.

For the latter, he initiated the longstanding "Press Clips" column.

His interview of Rupert Murdoch in The Voice preceded Murdoch's purchase of the paper.

James Ridgeway later noted that "Murdoch, when he owned the Voice, was said to gag on some of Alex's pointed epithets, but he never did anything about it."

In 1975 Cockburn wrote Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death. In 1979 Cockburn and Ridgeway co-wrote Political Ecology.

During the 1980s Cockburn also contributed to the New York Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New Statesman, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, The Week, The Wall Street Journal, and Chronicles.

In a January 1980, Village Voice column, Cockburn criticized the US media's coverage of the Soviet–Afghan War, and described Afghanistan as "An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers ... I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan."

Cockburn later said that his comments were "satirical," "tasteless," and that he "shouldn't have written it ... it was a joke."

In 1982 Cockburn was suspended from The Voice for "accepting a $10,000 grant from an Arab studies organization in 1982."

In 1984, Cockburn became a regular contributor to The Nation with a column called "Beat the Devil", titled for the novel of the same name written by his father.

In 1987, Cockburn completed the first of a series of books collecting columns, diary entries, letters, and essays dating from 1976, titled Corruptions of Empire; the cover featured a portrayal of Admiral George Cockburn torching the White House.

The USS Vincennes fired a missile in 1988 that brought down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 people.

With Ken Silverstein, in reaction the two men co-wrote articles critical of the United States military and its commanders.

Cockburn also criticized economic and political sanctions imposed on the Iraqi government by the United Nations.

He said that such policies targeted "rogue states (most of which, like the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of US intelligence)."

In the 1990s Cockburn contributed to, and eventually became co-editor of, the newsletter CounterPunch.

He lived in New York City for many years, before moving to Petrolia in Humboldt County in northern California in 1992.

Follow-up books included The Golden Age Is In Us: Journeys and Encounters (1995) and A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture (2013).

His half-sister, Sarah Caudwell, a barrister and mystery writer, died in 2000.

His half-sister Claudia Cockburn and her husband Michael Flanders have two daughters, who are both journalists: Laura and Stephanie Flanders.

Actress Olivia Wilde is the daughter of his brother Andrew.

Cockburn grew up between his family home in Ireland and Glenalmond College, an independent boys' boarding school, in Perthshire, Scotland.

He later studied English at Keble College, University of Oxford.

Cockburn became a United States citizen in 2009.