Eric Breindel

Eric Marc Breindel was an American neoconservative writer and former editorial page editor of the New York Post.

He attended Phillips Exeter, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he developed relationships with high-profile professors as well as David and Bobby Kennedy.

Career Early in his career, Breindel pursued work in government, as his classmates at Harvard had expected him to. At the age of 27, he went to work as Senator Moynihan's aide on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Shortly into the job, however, he was arrested for buying heroin from an undercover police officer in Washington, D.C., ending any hope of a career in government or politics.

While he was still serving out his year's probation, he wrote for The New Republic and then took a research position on the PBS show American Interests. During this time, he started a relationship with Tamar Jacoby, the deputy editor of The New York Times op-ed section. With her help and several recommendations, including one from Norman Podhoretz, he landed a job heading the editorial page of the New York Daily News.

Breindel contributed articles to such publications as Commentary, National Review, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The American Enterprise, and The American Spectator.

He began working at the Posts editorial page in 1986, branding Buchanan an anti-Semite.

Breindel died at the age of 42. His funeral featured eulogies by such notable figures as New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Governor George Pataki, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator Al D'Amato, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Norman Podhoretz, Andrew Cuomo, former New York City mayor Ed Koch and Martin Peretz.

In 1988, Spy magazine ran a feature that depicted Breindel as a ruthlessly career-driven opportunist whose career was effectively ended by his drug bust. The article was met with criticism from its readers.

In 1999, the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism was established in his memory, sponsored by Fox News, the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Family He was survived by his parents, both Holocaust survivors, and his sister.

PublicationsBooks The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors, with Herbert Romerstein. Washington, D.C.: Regnery (2001). .Articles''' "The Population Factor in the Middle East," with Nick Eberstadt. International Security, vol. 3, no. 4 (Spring 1979), pp. 190–196. . . "Soviet Has "Empire" Dilemma." International Journal on World Peace'', vol. 5, no. 3 (July/Sep. 1988). . .