James Markham
 James Markham  (journalist, Iran-Contra/Premature death) | ||||||||||||||
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| Born | March 7, 1943 | |||||||||||||
| Died | August 9, 1989 (Age 46) Paris, France | |||||||||||||
Cause of death | shot with air rifle "suicide" | |||||||||||||
| Nationality | US | |||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Princeton, Balliol College (Oxford) | |||||||||||||
| Member of | Rhodes Scholar/1965 | |||||||||||||
| Victim of | premature death | |||||||||||||
New York Times foreign correspondent who allegedly shot himself with air rifle while investigating leads in the Iran-Contra affair.
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James Markham was the New York Times foreign correspondent in Paris[1][2]. He was investigating parts of the Iran-Contra affair when he died, allegedly killing himself with an air rifle.[3]
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Background
A graduate of Princeton and a former Rhodes scholar, Markham spoke half a dozen languages, including Spanish and Hindustani.
Career
A veteran correspondent, he joined the newspaper as a metropolitan reporter in 1971 and later reported from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Markham moved from the Saigon bureau to Beirut in 1975, covering Lebanon's civil strife, and in 1976 he took over the Madrid bureau and traveled from Spain to the Middle East to cover the Iranian revolution and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978.
Death
Markham was found dead in his Paris apartment on August 9, 1989, in what police said was a suicide.
Markham, 46, had just been named the paper’s next deputy foreign editor, a post he was to have assumed on September 11.
