Listen as I interview Frank Snepp, a Peabody-Award winning investigative journalist and broadcaster; best-selling author; a CIA whistleblower after being an interrogator, a counter-intelligence operative and the chief strategy analyst for the them in Vietnam; he was named defendant in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on free speech and national security; he is an expert commentator on the Vietnam war, national security, and the First Amendment and is also a whistleblower against ageism in the workplace more recently.
Additional bio information reads as follows:
Frank is a graduate of Columbia’s School of Internal Affairs, is a former, highly decorated CIA agent whose best-seller about his experiences in Vietnam, in his book titled, “Decent Interval,” triggered a landmark First Amendment/national security decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Decent Interval,” tells of his eyewitness experiences as interrogator, operative and chief strategy analyst at the CIA Station, Vietnam, and as one of the last agency officers to be choppered off the roof of the U.S. embassy in April 1975.
His second book, “Irreparable Harm,” details those experiences. He was part of the four-person team for ABC News World News Tonight that broke the Iran Contra scandal and served as a national security consultant to the Manuel Noriega defense team. In his first year as staff investigative producer for NBC4, he reported, produced and wrote an expose about dangerous local methane issues, which won a Peabody Award, which is the highest award in broadcast journalism.
In his subsequent thirty-year career as an investigative journalist Snepp has been on the leading edge of some of the most important stories of the era, including Iran-contra, the October Surprise and Monica Lewinski scandals, and the intelligence crises in Iraq and Iran. He continued to expose major environmental and construction hazards. In addition to political corruption in southern California and investigated the abuse of children and the elderly.
He has won every major award in broadcast journalism, from the Peabody to the Emmy to the Murrow prize, as well as the Society of Professional Journalists’ National First Amendment Award. He has worked for all three major broadcast networks, written for major news outlets including Newsweek and The Los Angeles Times, and provided commentary for hundreds of documentaries on national security and the Vietnam war.
He has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in journalism and political science at USC and California State University, served as a consultant to the Manuel Noriega legal defense team, and even written TV and movie screenplays, including one he co-authored with the famed actor Marlon Brando.

website: franksnepp.com