April 25, 2000
RELEASE ON RECEIPT

Oberlin Lecture Series:
The Challenges of National Security in the 21st Century
Concludes with Andrew and Leslie Cockburn

Wednesday, May 3, 2000
8 P.M. Hallock Auditorium
"What Are We Fighting For?"

Veteran journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, authors of One Point Safe, the account of Russia¹s unguarded stockpiles of nuclear weapons that inspired the motion picture The Peacemaker, are the final speakers in an Oberlin College lecture series dedicated to the challenges of national security in the 21st century. The Cockburns' talk, "What Are We Fighting For?" is free and open to the public. Hallock Auditorium is located in the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, 122 Elm Street, Oberlin.

Leslie Cockburn is a producer for 60 Minutes and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. Her award-winning coverage of foreign affairs, spanning 20 years, includes reportage on the Gulf War, the war in Central America, the drug wars in Colombia, the uprising against the Duvaliers in Haiti, the Khmer Rouge guerrilla war in Cambodia, the war in Afghanistan, and the troubles in Kurdistan and Somalia. She has produced and directed dozens of documentaries for CBS and ABC News, and was a correspondent for four years for PBS's Frontline.

She is a recipient of the George Polk Award, the Dupont Columbia Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Emmy Award, and awards from the Writers Guild, and the National Press Club.

Among the stories she has produced for 60 Minutes are "The Perfect Terrorist Weapon," about General Alexander Lebed¹s revelations in One Point Safe that atomic demolition munitions, the now famous "suitcase bombs," from the Russian arsenal, may be unaccounted for; "Zero Alert," revealing that Russia¹s strategic nuclear arsenal is on hair trigger alert and more prone to accidents than during the Cold War; and "What is Saddam Hiding?" featuring Saddam¹s former chief of military intelligence who was the first to alert U.N. inspectors, in December 1994, to the huge cache of anthrax and VX gas in Iraq. In 1999 she produced "Unfinished Business," the Kafkaesque story of six Iraqis who were part of the CIA¹s secret army in Kurdistan. Airlifted to the U.S. by the CIA, they were promptly jailed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Leslie's piece helped secure their release.

Besides co-authoring One Point Safe with her husband, Andrew Cockburn, she is the author of Looking for Trouble, a memoir of war coverage. In 1998 she was Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

Andrew Cockburn, a native of Ireland and graduate of Oxford University, has written on defense and intelligence for more than 20 years. He has produced numerous documentaries for British and American television, including the Peabody Award-winning "The Red Army," which led to his best-selling book, The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine. Former CIA Director William Colby called the book a "major contribution," and Newsweek called it "the funniest book about the military since Catch-22."

For Vanity Fair, Andrew has written stories on Colombia, Iraq, Russia, Iran, Northern Ireland and Egypt. He has traveled in and written extensively about China, Tibet and Mexico. Besides One Point Safe, his other collaborations with Leslie Cockburn include four documentaries for PBS's Frontline, including "The War We Left Behind," on Iraq after the Gulf War. Together the Cockburns braved the worst days of the Colombian drug wars to cover the cartels (for Frontline and Vanity Fair). The infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, while in hiding, became Andrew's penpal.

Andrew's recent work includes two pieces for National Geographic on Yemen and Libya, a story for Vanity Fair on Pan Am 103, and a current assignment for The New York Times Magazine. Harperperennial Library released Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, the book he co-wrote with brother Patrick Cockburn, in paperback last month.

Oberlin's environmental studies program sponsors this lecture by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn with the support of the Richard R. Hallock Foundation. Richard Reid Hallock '41, had a deep interest in issues of national security, and was an advisor to U. S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. Prior to his death, Hallock met frequently with David Orr, professor of environmental studies and politics, to discuss plans for a class and lecture series that would address the changing nature of security in the new century.

Media Contact: Marci Janas 4/25/00 #xx bg