Tom Aspell joined NBC News in 1985 as a producer based in Cyprus, covering the rising tensions in the Middle East and traveling throughout the region's potential flash points. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Aspell went to Baghdad where he began reporting for NBC News as an on-air correspondent. Aspell was one of the few foreign journalists who remained in Baghdad following the U.N. deadline authorizing the use of force to remove Iraq from Kuwait. Since late 1992, Aspell has spent considerable time covering the war-torn region of Bosnia and the continuing ethnic strife in that area.

Aspell began his professional career in 1970, when he joined Visnews as a script writer based in London. In 1971 he moved to Hong Kong as a script writer and cameraman. Following that assignment, Aspell moved to Southeast Asia, where he worked as a cameraman until 1975. When Saigon fell to communist forces on April 30, 1975, Aspell was one of the few foreign journalists who stayed behind.

As tensions heightened in the Middle East in the mid 1970s, Aspell began what would become a long stint covering both the military and the political battles in that region, working as a freelance cameraman from 1975 through 1978. Aspell joined CBS in 1978 as a cameraman covering Beirut. From 1981 until 1983, he worked for ABC as a producer in Beirut.

Aspell has been the recipient of several awards, include the National Press Photographer' Association's in 1979 for coverage of the Iranian revolution, an Emmy for coverage of the Romanian revolution in 1989, and the National Headliner Award for coverage of Yugoslavia in 1993.

Aspell is a native of New Zealand. His wife, Nujud Dabbagh, and two sons, Peter, 13, and Gary, 9, live in the Middle East.