Frank Gibney

Who was Frank Gibney?

Frank Bray Gibney was an American journalist, editor, writer and scholar. Correspondent of Time, editor of Newsweek and Life, he was the vice chairman of the Board of Editors at Encyclopædia Britannica and wrote or edited eleven books, most notably about Japan. During World War II, he worked as a naval interrogator at Iroquois Point near Pearl Harbor.

Gibney's books included The Penkovsky Paper, which was alleged to have been commissioned by the CIA, and The Pacific Century, which was later adapted into an Emmy Award-winning public television series. He was also the father of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, and is interviewed in Alex's documentary film Taxi to the Dark Side.

In 1979, Gibney founded the Pacific Basin Institute, which moved to Pomona College in 1997.

He died from congestive heart failure on April 9, 2006 in Santa Barbara, California. Following his death, the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, which Gibney had helped to found, established the Frank Gibney Award for a graduate student essay in the field of American-East Asian relations.