American journalist Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan was born on October 27, 1936 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In 1958 he received a B.A. from Harvard University. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1959 to 1962, Sheehan began working for the United Press International. Following a stint in the Tokyo bureau he worked as a bureau chief covering the Vietnam War for two years. Sheehan joined The New York Times in 1964 and reported from Indonesia and again Vietnam before becoming the Pentagon correspondent in 1966. He began reporting on the White House in 1968.
In 1971 Sheehan published in The New York Times controversial details from the classified Pentagon Papers regarding the war in Vietnam. The government lost the resulting case, New York Times Co. v. United States, in which it had tried to halt these actions.
Sheehan has written several bestselling books. He won a non-fiction Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for A Bright Shining Lie, considered to be one of the best books ever written about the Vietnam War. It also won the 1988 National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has also published The Arnheiter Affair, After the War Was Over, and A Fiery Peace in a Cold War.
Neil Sheehan died in Washington, D. C. on January 7, 2021 at the age of 84.
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