Claudia Rosett (May 29, 1955 – May 27, 2023) was an American author and journalist. An editorial board member ofThe Wall Street Journal, she was the only print journalist to witness theTiananmen Square massacre and later broke the United Nations’Oil for Food scandal, the largest public fraud in history. After herJournal career in Hong Kong, Moscow, and New York, she wrote a foreign affairs column forForbes, blogged forPJ Media, and made regular appearances on national television and radio, includingFox Business. She also worked for theIndependent Women's Forum and theLondon Center for Policy Research, and served as an adjunct fellow at theHudson Institute.
Rosett earned a BA inEnglish atYale University in 1976, an MA in English atColumbia University in 1979, and anMBA at theUniversity of Chicago in 1981.[1]
Rosett joinedThe Wall Street Journal in 1984, and was named editorial pageeditor atThe Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong in 1986. In 1996, she worked in Moscow, first as a reporter for theJournal, then as Moscow Bureau Chief, before taking leave to live in India. In 1997, she returned to New York, where she served on the editorial board ofThe Wall Street Journal until 2002. She wrote a regular column, "The Real World,” forThe Wall Street Journal Europe andOpinionJournal.com from July 2000 to December 2005.
In 1990, she received anOverseas Press Club Citation for Excellence in recognition of her on-the-scene reporting of theTiananmen Square protests of 1989.[2] In 1994 she broke the full story of North Korean labor camps in the Russian Far East, reporting from the camps.[1] She also broke the U.N.'sOil for Food scandal; the largest public fraud in history.
Rosett, also contributed toNational Review,The New York Times,The Philadelphia Inquirer,USA Today,Commentary,The New Republic andThe Weekly Standard, among others.[1]
Rosett died on May 27, 2023, at the age of 67.[3]
Rosett was a frequent critic of corruption in theUnited Nations. In 2004 and 2005, she wrote a series of articles exposing the corruption behind theU.N.'sOil-for-Food program.[4] AsMichael Barone, a senior writer atU.S. News & World Report, explained:[5]
The U.N. Oil for Food program, we learn from the reporting of Claudia Rosett inThe Wall Street Journal, was a rip-off on the order of $21 billion—with money intended for hungry Iraqis going instead to Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, to bribed French and Russian businesses and, evidently, to the U.N.'s own man in charge, Benon Sevan. For this work, she was honored with the 2005 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism[6] and a "Mightier Pen" award from the Center for Security Policy.[7]
In June and July 2006, Rosett covered the trial ofTongsun Park via ablog at theNational Review's website.