A diplomat and journalist specializing in world affairs, Leslie H. Gelb, has died. He was 82.
The New York Times reports that Gelb’s wife says he died Saturday at a New York hospital of renal failure brought on by diabetes.
Gelb had a long association with the Times as well as stints with the federal government, working as an editor, columnist and correspondent for the newspaper. He played a leading role on the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1986 for a series of stories on the Strategic Defense Initiative, known as “Star Wars,” undertaken by the Reagan administration.
In government, Gelb worked at the Pentagon in the late 1960s and served as an assistant secretary of state during the first years of the Carter administration.
