Con Coughlin
He read Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford,[1] where he specialised in the Industrial Revolution under the tutelage of the historian Simon Schama.
As a young reporter for his newspaper, he was initially given responsibility for covering a number of major crime stories, such as the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe (dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper) and the Brixton riots.
He writes a weekly column, "Inside Abroad", and comments on a broad range of subjects, with a special interest in defence and security issues, the Middle East and international terrorism.
Historian Dominic Sandbrook, reviewing Khomeini's Ghost in The Observer, wrote: "Readers already familiar with recent Iranian history will not discover much new information in Coughlin's account, but it nevertheless makes a very readable and entertaining introduction to a nation badly misunderstood in the west.
[7] Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Moaveni, in a review for The New York Times, asserted that the book contained factual errors and misrepresentations of facts, the author having documents out of context to bolster his argument.
[10] The Sunday Telegraph had published an article by Coughlin in November 1995, then the newspaper's chief foreign correspondent (and a piece for the newspaper's Mandrake column, published during the following month, which quoted Coughlin)[11] alleging that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was involved in a massive criminal operation with Iranian officials that involved counterfeit notes and money laundering in Europe based on information received by British intelligence and banking officials.
The original story followed a lunch given by Malcolm Rifkind, then Foreign Secretary, at which editor Charles Moore and colleagues were present, and later briefings given to Coughlin by MI6 agents who had insisted on the preservation of their anonymity.
In 2002 Geoffrey Robertson QC made a statement on behalf of the Telegraph Group stating "there was no truth in the allegation that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi participated in any currency sting".
[20] Coughlin alleged that the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has negotiated a deal with Iran for Tehran to make a $25 million contribution to the campaign funds of Turkey's ruling party.
In April 2009, Coughlin wrote an article entitled "My advice to Obama: Don't pick a fight with Dick Cheney", which was published on the Telegraph's website.
In the article, which followed claims that US forces had waterboarded an Al Qaeda suspect 183 times, Coughlin argued that: "There are always two sides to a story, even a deeply unpleasant one such as waterboarding an al-Qaeda suspect", before asking "what if, as Mr Cheney is now suggesting, these brutal interrogation methods actually produced information that saved lives by thwarting potential al-Qaeda attacks?".
