He then served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantry leader, parachutist, and shipboard special weapons security and counterterrorism instructor.
Smith has written for numerous publications, including USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, The New York Post, and the UK's The Guardian.
As a war correspondent, Smith reported from battlefields in both the Balkans in 1995 and in the Middle East in 1997, and he covered the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks from ground zero in New York.
Also during the 1990s, he worked as a business magazine editor, a contract media relations director, a publicist for NBA basketball player Vince Carter and other professional athletes, and was the sole columnist for head football coach Lou Holtz's official website during Holtz's inaugural season at USC.
Smith is a contributing writer for A Nation Changed, a book commemorating the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (published by U.S. News & World Report).
He has served as adjunct professor at USC's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, and he has lectured groups and conferences from Fortune 500 companies to the U.S. Armed Forces.
In November 2007, Smith became the subject of controversy for blog posts he wrote as a freelancer for "The Tank", a section of National Review Online (NRO).