Murray Waas was in 1993 the winner of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School's Goldsmith Prize. In awarding the Goldsmith Prize to Murray Waas, the judges cited Waas' "series on U.S. government policy toward Iraq".

That same year Waas was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category of national reporting.The Pulitzer Board cited Murray Waas and reporter Douglas Frantz for “documentingthe clandestine effort of the U.S. government to supplymoney and weapons to Iraq in the 1980′s and up to the weeks before the Gulf War.” The Pulitzer nominationswas the first for Murray Waas.

n 2010, Waas was a winner of the Barlett & Steele Award for Investigative Business Reporting from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, for his reporting on the health insurance industry.