Capps enrolled in ROTC and enlisted in the Virginia Army National Guard simultaneously while attending Old Dominion University in 1983.

In April 2017, Capps and the non-profit he founded, the Veterans Writing Project, received the Anne Smedinghoff Award from the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Affairs Symposium.

[12] In 2007, Capps received the American Foreign Service Association's William R. Rivkin award for "intellectual courage and the creative use of dissent in foreign policy.” The award was presented in recognition of a State Department cable Capps wrote while serving as a political officer at Embassy Khartoum that questioned U.S. government policy in Darfur.

The cable, titled "Darfur: Who Will Apologize," was classified as confidential, but was nonetheless leaked to blogger Eric Reeves who included parts of it in a long blog post.

Capps provided a copy of a draft version of the cable to researcher Rebecca Hamilton who mentioned it in her book, Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide.

According to the website for his book, Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years, Capps is "a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal with oak leaf cluster, and was twice presented Department of State Superior Honor Awards.