Kirk Spitzer

Kirk Spitzer is a veteran journalist and defense correspondent, based in Tokyo. He has covered nearly every major US military deployment since Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm and has made more than a dozen reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was the first journalist to report from the fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in November 2004, where he was embedded with US special operations forces. Spitzer has won numerous journalism awards, and is a frequent speaker at military-media symposiums. Before moving to Tokyo, he worked as defense correspondent for USA Today in Washington DC, and reporter/producer for CBS News in London. Spitzer has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Hawaii; he was also a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu and a Davenport Fellow at the University of Missouri.