[3] Smith was born January 28, 1949, and raised on a citrus farm in Riverside, California until his family moved to Los Angeles when he was ten years old.

[citation needed] In his 40 years producing and reporting, Martin Smith has covered the world: from revolution in Central America and the fall of communism in Russia, to the rise of Al Qaeda and the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen to the inside story of the global financial meltdown.

Smith began his career at CBS News as a film editor in 1976 and in 1982 directed and wrote his first documentary, "Guatemala", which won both a George Polk Award for Investigative Journalism and an Emmy from the Academy of Television Art & Sciences.

In 1989 he was executive producer of "Inside Gorbachev's USSR" with Hedrick Smith, winning a third Polk award and DuPont Columbia Gold Baton.

The Alfred I. Dupont jurors awarded Smith with his second Gold Baton and said of the body of work: "the series never flinches from showing why terrorist groups harbor such hate for America and includes people whose attitudes toward the United States are undoubtedly offensive to many viewers.

In the trilogy, "In Search of Al Qaeda", (2002), "Return of the Taliban" (2006) and "Obama's War" (2008), Smith twice interviewed President Pervez Musharaff on Pakistan's duplicitous Afghanistan policy.

Notably "HEAT" about how international business leaders are reacting to calls for carbon reduction in the face of climate change, "The Madoff Affair", an investigation into the world's biggest Ponzi scheme, and "Money, Power and Wall Street" about the causes of the global financial crisis.

Most recently, Smith completed "The Untouchables" which examined the Justice Department's failure to hold Wall Street bankers accountable for mortgage fraud in the run-up to the 2008 collapse.