Frank Snepp

Frank Warren Snepp (born May 3, 1943) is a journalist and former chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saigon during the Vietnam War. For five out of his eight years as a CIA officer, he worked as interrogator, agent debriefer, and chief strategy analyst in the US Embassy, Saigon; he was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work. Snepp is currently a producer for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, California. He was one of the first whistle blowers who revealed the inner workings, secrets and failures of the national security services in the 1970s. As a result of a loss in a 1980 court case brought by the CIA, all of Snepp's publications require prior approval by the CIA.

Born in Kinston, North Carolina, Snepp studied Elizabethan literature at Columbia University, graduating in 1965. After spending a year at CBS News, he returned to Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, graduating in 1968.

Snepp was recruited to the CIA in 1968, by the Associate Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Philip Mosely. Initially working on NATO and European security, he was sent to Saigon in 1969. Here Snepp worked as an analyst and counter-intelligence officer, coordinating agent networks and interrogation of captured enemy forces as well as preparing strategic estimates regarding the enemy. Snepp rejected the usual 2-year rotation, and stayed in Vietnam until the US was forced out in 1975. Snepp wrote in 2009 that he was "still haunted" by the "psychological manipulation and torment of a prisoner" he was involved with as a CIA interrogator.

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