Leslie Cockburn

Cockburn was the 2018 Democratic nominee for Virginia's 5th district in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to Republican Denver Riggleman.

• Name — Leslie Cockburn • Birth Name — Leslie Corkill Redlich • Born — 2 September 1952 • Birthplace — San Mateo, California, U.S. • Political Party — Democratic • Children — 3, including Olivia • Education — Yale University (BA) University of London (MA)

Cockburn was born Leslie Corkill Redlich on September 2, 1952 in San Mateo, California and raised in Hillsborough, California. She is the daughter of Jeanne (née Fulcher) and Christopher Rudolph Redlich, a shipping magnate. She grew up in a family of hunters and supports gun control. Leslie attended the Santa Catalina School. She then studied at Yale University, entering in the second year that women undergraduates were admitted to the university. She went on to earn a master's degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Cockburn is a former investigative journalist for NBC, CBS, and PBS Frontline. While living in London, she started working for NBC News. Among her early reports was an interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In 1978, Cockburn moved to CBS. During her career, she covered six wars including the U.S.-directed Contra War against Nicaragua.

In 1991, Cockburn and her husband, Andrew, published their first book together on the military and intelligence relationship between the U.S. and Israel after 1948. This book detailed how, over several decades, Israel had served U.S. interests both through espionage operations in the former Soviet Union as well as covert operations in Central America and other third-world regions where the U.S. was loath to intervene directly. The book also detailed Israeli nuclear activities, including U.S., assistance to its bomb-making program and Israeli cooperation with the South African apartheid regime's nuclear weapons program. Kirkus Reviews said it was "no thrown-together post-Gulf product, but an unflinching, fact-packed, closely reasoned exploration of our relations with our strongest ally in the Middle East." The Chicago Tribune said the book "should stand for a long time as the alpha and omega of the relationship between the United States and Israel...the Cockburns present the history in rich detail." In Israel, the response was more measured. Haaretz reviewed it favorably at length, calling it "credible".

In 2009, Cockburn directed and co-produced (with her husband) her first feature documentary for theatrical release, American Casino. It follows the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, which led to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Cockburn and her husband began filming in January 2008, and documented the financial machinations and miscalculations on Wall Street that produced the disaster, and its effects on several Baltimore homeowners struggling to stay afloat. The film premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival in April 2009. Variety called it a "searing expose of the subprime mortgage crisis [matching] Wall Street's numbers and graphics to the flesh-and-blood individuals whose lives have been devastated by the deliberate machinations of bankers and traders." The New Yorker said it was "a terrific documentary chronicling the subprime-mortgage mess and the financial collapse." The New York Times said it was "a meticulously structured film."

Cockburn was the 2018 Democratic nominee for Virginia's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. She announced her candidacy in July 2017, and secured a large majority of delegates over several rival candidates for the nomination in May 2018 at the district Democratic convention to succeed the outgoing Republican representative, Tom Garrett. After winning her party's nomination, she lost to Republican nominee Denver Riggleman in the general election; Riggleman garnered 165,339 votes (53.2%) to Cockburn's 145,040 (46.7%). 547 votes (0.2%) were cast as write-ins.

Cockburn lives in Rappahannock County, Virginia, with her husband, Andrew Cockburn, a journalist and film producer. They married in San Francisco in 1977 and have co-authored several books. They have three children together: Chloe Francis Cockburn (April 3, 1979), Olivia Wilde (March 10, 1984), and Charles Philip Cockburn (January 31, 1993). She has four grandchildren. Her parents-in-law were Claud and Patricia Cockburn. Cockburn had two brothers-in-law, the late Alexander Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, and the mystery writer Sarah Caudwell was her half-sister in law. Tao Ruspoli is her former son-in-law. Journalists Laura Flanders and Stephanie Flanders are the daughters of her half-brother in law Michael Flanders.