This biography is recommended for speaking engagements and reposting.

Please feel free to trim it down as needed.

Frank Smyth is an independent journalist and MSNBC Contributor, Senior Advisor for Journalist Security at the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, and Executive Director of Global Journalist Security, a private consulting and training firm.

Smyth has long specialized in armed conflicts, organized crime and human rights, reporting from nations including El Salvador, Guatemala, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Jordan and Iraq where, in 1991, he was imprisoned for 18 days. Frank has reported, produced and filmed for CBS News radio and television, and written for publications including Mother Jones, The Nation, The Village Voice, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, World Policy Journal, Foreign Affairs and Harvard International Review. Smyth has testified before the Organization of American States, the International Commission of Jurists, and the U.S. Congress. He is co-author of Dialogue and Armed Conflict, and a contributor to The Iraq War Reader and Crimes of War. His study, "Painting the Maya Red: Military Doctrine and Speech in Guatemala's Genocidal Acts," was published in 2010 by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. More recently, Frank has focused attention at home examining gun violence and the gun lobby.

He has taught journalism, media studies and political history at American University and the Corcoran College of Art + Design, and is a graduate of Boston College and The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. His clips are posted at www.franksmyth.com.