Frank Snepp

Frank Snepp is a Peabody Award–winning investigative journalist, best-selling author, former CIA officer, and nationally recognized authority on national security, related First Amendment law and the Vietnam War. With more than 35 years of experience in network and local broadcast journalism, he has held staff positions at ABC’s World News Tonight and 20/20, where he helped break major headline stories. He later reported and produced signature investigative reports for the CBS and NBC outlets Los Angeles, where his work earned multiple Emmys, Edward R. Murrow Awards, and a 2006 Peabody Award for an exposé about a lethal methane threat to 12,000 Los Angeles residents. 
 
In early 2025 he helped his family escape the Pacific Palisades fire and has written about it in a post called "Prisoners of Fire."

Before his journalism career, Snepp served from 1968 to 1976 as a highly decorated CIA analyst in Vietnam, rising to senior intelligence analyst at the Saigon station and becoming one of the last CIA officers evacuated during the fall of Saigon. His CIA experience later placed him at the center of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case U.S. v. Snepp (1980), which reshaped First Amendment doctrine, whistleblower protections, and press–government relations. It stands for the enforceability of government pre-publication review (prior restraint) rules even when no national security secrets are at stake.

Snepp is the author of Decent Interval, widely regarded as a classic memoir of the Vietnam War, and Irreparable Harm, chronicling his Supreme Court battle. He has published investigative exclusives and commentary in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and The Village Voice, and has written extensively for national security outlets, including SpyTalk. He is an accomplished podcaster and documentary producer, with work praised by Foreign Policy and featured in major documentaries such as Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War.

In addition to his media work, Snepp has taught investigative journalism, media law, and political science at the University of Southern California and California State University. He holds a B.A. from Columbia College and a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University. Widely respected for his rigor, clarity, and courage, he has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists with its First Amendment Award and by the CIA with the Medal of Merit. He has also received a writing grant from the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation.