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.
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
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics at
Brooklyn College, worked as a union organizer.
After receiving a master's degree in journalism from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1945, she became the Rome correspondent of "a fly-by-night American news agency."
When it folded, she joined ''
The Reporter'', which she wrote for until it ceased publication in 1968.
Sterling began writing her second book after losing her job at ''The Reporter''; it was published in 1969.
She also wrote for various newspapers and magazines, including ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' and ''
Reader's Digest
''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wif ...
''.
She married Thomas Sterling, a novelist, in 1951.
After spending their honeymoon in Italy the two moved there, living in Rome for several decades.
They had two children.
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
Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz (; 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher and humanitarian.
Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism, but he defined himself as a Chris ...
under her
maiden name
When a person (traditionally the wife in many cultures) assumes the family name of their spouse, in some countries that name replaces the person's previous surname, which in the case of the wife is called the maiden name ("birth name" is also use ...
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', which was a covert British
propaganda operation run by
British Security Co-ordination
British Security Co-ordination (BSC) was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
Its purpose was to investigate ...
, set up in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
by the British Secret Intelligence Service (
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
) upon the authorisation of Prime Minister
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
.
Sterling's second book revisited the 1948 death of
Jan Masaryk
Jan Garrigue Masaryk (14 September 1886 – 10 March 1948) was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbul ...
, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, which she blamed on Soviet or Czechoslovak Stalinists.
More controversial were her books ''
The Terror Network'' (1981) and ''The Time of the Assassins'' (1984). In the former book, which was translated into 22 languages, she claimed that Soviet Union was a major source of backing behind terrorist groupings around the world. The book was read and appreciated by
Alexander Haig
Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. (; December 2, 1924February 20, 2010) was United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to and in between these ...
and
William Casey
William Joseph Casey (March 13, 1913 – May 6, 1987) was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agen ...
, but its arguments were dismissed by the CIA's Soviet analysts;
Lincoln Gordon
Abraham Lincoln Gordon (1913 – 2009) was the 9th President of the Johns Hopkins University (1967–1971) and a United States Ambassador to Brazil (1961–1966). Gordon had a career both in government and in academia, becoming a Professor of Int ...
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.
Sterling was the first to claim (in a September 1982 article in ''
Reader's Digest
''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wif ...
'') that the
1981 assassination attempt on Pope John II had been ordered by the Bulgarian Secret Service, a theory that became known as the "Bulgarian Connection"
She was one of three journalists who developed and published details supporting the theory - the others were
Paul Henze, a propaganda expert and former CIA station chief in Turkey, and
Michael Ledeen
Michael Arthur Ledeen (; born August 1, 1941) is an American historian, and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He is a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United St ...
, associated with the Georgetown
Center for Strategic and International Studies
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. CSIS was founded as the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown University in 1962. The center conducts polic ...
(CSIS) in Washington, a right-wing think tank. Ledeen had strong connections with a faction of the Italian secret service (
SISMI
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (abbreviated SISMI, ''Military Intelligence and Security Service'') was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services app ...
) linked to the
Propaganda Due secret masonic lodge, which first revealed the fraudulent proposed attack on the Pope by the Soviet Minister of Defence
Dmitry Ustinov
Dmitriy Fyodorovich Ustinov (russian: Дмитрий Фёдорович Устинов; 30 October 1908 – 20 December 1984) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union and Soviet politician during the Cold War. He served as a Central Committee se ...
. The three journalists wrote articles and appeared on television and her and Henze's books were enthusiastically reviewed. Individually, or as a team, the two were repeatedly invited as guests on to the three principal American networks and programmes on British television. They insisted that no expert who supported a contrasting view be interviewed with them on the same programme and, in most cases, the producers obliged. The Sterling-Henze duo was almost able to monopolise coverage of the story. In the American media, for a certain time, it became almost impossible to express a different view and anyone who did was considered ''
unpatriotic'' at best. The "Bulgarian Connection" theory has also been, in detail, refuted and attributed to bias by
Edward S. Herman
Edward Samuel Herman (April 7, 1925 – November 11, 2017) was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a fr ...
and
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
in ''
Manufacturing Consent
''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out ...
''. ''The Time of the Assassins'' dealt with the assassination attempt and advanced this now-discredited theory. Her last two books dealt with the Sicilian Mafia and post-Communist globalized organized crime, respectively.
Books
''Our Goal Was Palestine''.London:
Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz (; 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher and humanitarian.
Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism, but he defined himself as a Chris ...
(1946).
::A 28-page pamphlet published as Claire Neikind.
*
''The Masaryk Case''. New York:
Harper & Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
(1969). .
*
''The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism.'' New York:
Berkley (1981). .
*''The Time of the Assassins''. New York:
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
Holt McDougal is an American publishing company, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, that specializes in textbooks for use in high schools.
The Holt name is derived from that of U.S. publisher Henry Holt (1840–1926), co-founder of the e ...
(1984). .
*
''Octopus: The Long Reach of the International Sicilian Mafia''. New York:
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...
(1990). .
**UK ed.: ''
The Mafia: The Long Reach of the International Sicilian Mafia''. London:
Hamish Hamilton (1990).
*
''Thieves' World: The Threat of the New Global Network of Organized Crime''. New York:
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...
(1994). .
**UK ed.:
''Crime Without Frontiers''. London: Warner (1995).
[Naylor, R. T. (Jan. 2004). ''Wages of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance, and the Underworld Economy''. Ithica: ]Cornell University Press
The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in t ...
. .
Footnotes
References
*
External links
*
*
Claire Sterling papersat th
Hoover Institution Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sterling, Claire
1919 births
1995 deaths
American women journalists
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni
Brooklyn College alumni
Non-fiction writers about the French Connection
20th-century American historians
20th-century American women writers
Women crime writers