Sheehan was hired by The Boston Globe and was sent overseas to cover stories in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
[1] These experiences were the seeds of his 1964 debut novel, Kingdom of Illusion, published by Random House, which tells the intrigues swirling around Mohammed VII, playboy king of the Middle Eastern country of Al Khadra.
[1] His contributions to The New York Times Magazine in the 1960s and 1970s, included stories about travels on the Congo River,[3] the ascendancy of Milton Obote as President of Uganda,[4] the Black September hijackings and detonation of U.S. aircraft,[5] the accession of Anwar Sadat in Egypt[6] and Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi and its oil wealth.
Further details from these reliable Nixon Administration sources were included in The Arabs, Israelis and Kissinger about Kissinger's role as a shuttle diplomat trying to resolve the conflict between Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir.
[9] Alfred Atherton, a career foreign service officer, had taken detailed notes during the shuttle negotiations and was Sheehan's source.