Steven Emerson

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Steven Emerson
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Steven Emerson

Steven Emerson is a controversial American print and television investigative journalist. He is a terrorism analyst often consulted by and frequently seen on mainstream media networks such as MSNBC, [1] NBC, [2], CNN, and Fox News [3]. He is regarded by his supporters as a national security expert and one of the world's authorities on Islamist financial networks and operational structures. His critics regard him as an Islamophobe and a racist whose sloppy work is marked by pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias [4] He is known for having predicted, before September 11, 2001, that Islamists would launch a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and for having warned the U.S. Congress in 1998 of the danger posed by Osama bin Laden. His critics have accused him of claiming that the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was the work of Middle-Eastern terrorists (domestic groups were later determined to be responsible for the attack). By his own account he only claimed that federal authorities were investigating a connection to Islamic extremists regarding the Oklahoma City bombing. [5]

He is a regular advisor to the White House, National Security Council, FBI, Justice Department, Congress and intelligence agencies.

In 1998, Emerson told a congressional committee that he had been a target of death threats for his award-winning television documentary, Terrorists among us - Jihad in America.

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[edit] Education

Emerson received a Bachelors of Arts degree from Brown University in 1976, followed by a Masters of Arts in sociology in 1977.

[edit] Professional background

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After university, he worked as a staff member for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee until 1982, and as a speech writer for Senator Frank Church. He then worked as a freelance writer, published mainly in The New Republic.

His first book, The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection, was published in 1985. From 1986 to 1989 he was employed by U.S. News and World Report as their national security correspondent, and in 1990, he joined CNN as a special investigative correspondent. He left CNN in 1993 to work on his documentary, Jihad in America, for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which exposed the clandestine operations of Islamist groups in the U.S., and for which he received the George Polk Award for best television documentary, and the top prize for best investigative report from the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization (IRE). Nearly all the U.S.-based Islamists Emerson identified in the documentary were indicted, prosecuted or deported after the September 11, 2001 attacks. [6]

He is also the founder and executive director of the Investigative Project, one of the world's largest intelligence archives on Islamist and Middle Eastern terrorist and militant groups. He started the Project in 1995, after the broadcast of Jihad in America. Since September 2001, Emerson has testified before Congress dozens of times on terrorist funding and on the operational structures of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, and has given interviews debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. [7]

[edit] Death threat

After his film Jihad in America aired in South Africa, Emerson writes that the FBI informed him that a South African Muslim group had dispatched a team to the U.S. to assassinate him. Since that time, Emerson says, he uses a collapsible mirror to check there are no bombs underneath his car, stays away from windows, varies his routine, does occasional U-turns when driving to make sure no one is following him, wears inconspicuous clothing, and changes his routes and the times he leaves his home. He requires security when speaking at universities, and a police guard when addressing the Senate. According to Slate, people who visit his Washington, D.C. office are blindfolded en route, and employees call it "the bat cave." [8] He left the condominium he had just purchased when Jihad in America was first aired, and now lives undercover. [9].


[edit] Books and papers by Emerson

  • (2002), American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, Free Press; 2003 paperback edition, ISBN 0-7432-3435-9
  • (1995), The worldwide Jihad movement: Militant Islam targets the West (Policy forum), Institute of the World Jewish Congress
  • (1991), Terrorist: The Inside Story of the Highest-Ranking Iraqi Terrorist Ever to Defect to the West, Random House; Villard paperback edition, ISBN 0-679-73701-4
  • (1990) with Duffy B., The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation, Putnam, ISBN 0-399-13521-9
  • (1988), Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era, Putnam, ISBN 0-399-13360-7
  • (1985), The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection, Franklin Watts, ISBN 0-531-09778-1
  • (1982), Dutton of Arabia, New Republic

[edit] Documentaries

[edit] Award

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

  • [11] recent interview with Steve Emerson, Planet Jackson Hole
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