Steven Emerson

Steven Emerson (born June 6, 1954) is an American investigative journalist, author, and pundit on national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism.

Emerson received a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University in 1976, and a Master of Arts in sociology in 1977.

He went to Washington, D.C., in 1977 with the intention of putting off his law school studies for a year.

He worked on staff as an investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee until 1982, and as an executive assistant to Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho.

Emerson was a freelance writer for The New Republic, for whom he wrote a series of articles in 1982 on the influence of Saudi Arabia on U.S. corporations, law firms, public-relations outfits, and educational institutions.

In their pursuit of large contracts with Saudi Arabia, he argued, U.S. businesses became unofficial, unregistered lobbyists for Saudi interests.

He expanded this material in 1985 in his first book, The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection.

From 1986 to 1989 he worked for U.S. News & World Report as a senior editor specializing in national security issues.

In 1988, he published Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era, a strongly critical review of Ronald Reagan-era efforts to strengthen U.S. covert capabilities.

Reviewing the book, The New York Times wrote: "Among the grace notes of Mr. Emerson's fine book are many small, well-told stories".

In 1990, he co-authored The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation, which argued for the then-mainstream theory that Iran was behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Reviewing the book, The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Emerson and Mr. Duffy have put together a surpassing account of the investigation to date, rich with drama and studded with the sort of anecdotal details that give the story the appearance of depth and weight."

The newspaper listed it as an "editors' choice" on their Best Sellers List, and cited it as a "notable book of the year".

In 1990, he joined CNN as an investigative correspondent and continued to write about terrorism.

In 1991, he published Terrorist: The Inside Story of the Highest-Ranking Iraqi Terrorist Ever to Defect to the West, detailing how Iraq spread and increased its terror network in the 1980s with U.S. support.

Emerson left CNN in 1993 to work on a documentary, Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America, for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Emerson has said some critics fail to recite the rest of his statement that references the 1993 World Trade Center attack which was also carried out with a fertilizer truck bomb.

Emerson indicated that he was one of many experts interviewed after the bombing who concluded there were similarities between the Oklahoma City bombing and Middle Eastern terrorism.

He said the initial reporting did not "tar the entire Muslim community", that he referred only to a fanatical minority in the Islamic community.

He acknowledged there were outbreaks of harassment which he referred to as unfortunate.

In response to claims that all Muslims were blamed Emerson said "the charge of racism against Muslims is a canard designed to justify radical Islamic activities in this country."

He supported the media's decision to report the possible link to Middle East terrorism, saying "There was no doubt" that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies suspected it.

He is the founder and director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and received a George Polk Award for the 1994 documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America.

It aired as "a PBS special" in November 1994.

In the documentary, he warned of future Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) noted that PBS denied requests by Arab and Muslim journalists to screen the program before its showing, and argued that Emerson was promoting "a wild theory about an Islamic terrorist network in America".

Writing for The New York Times, Walter Goodman opined that the request to change or cancel the documentary was not justified, but that the concerns about Emerson's claims of an Islamic terrorist network were justified "since 'Jihad in America' is likely to awaken viewers' unease over what some Muslim groups here may be up to."

He received the 1994 George Polk Award for "Best Television Documentary."

He also received the top prize for best investigative report from the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization (IRE).

A review of the book by The New York Times's Ethan Bronner, says that conservatives and some Jewish organizations took Emerson seriously, but that others have dismissed him as "an obsessive crusader", and concludes that while Emerson sometimes connects unrelated dots, occasionally he can be wrong; but that as an investigator focusing on radical Islamic groups in the US, his information should be taken seriously but not just at face value.

Emerson has made false claims about Muslims in the US and Europe; in particular, some of his claims during a Fox News segment about the relationship between British Muslims and the city of Birmingham were subsequently rebuked by the then British Prime Minister David Cameron and led to a censure of Fox News by Ofcom for the airing of the comments which the broadcasting regulator characterized as "materially misleading" and "a serious breach for a current affairs programme".

It was Emerson's 1994 documentary Jihad in America that first linked Sami Al-Arian to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

In 1995 CBS interviews, prior to any knowledge the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building was perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh, Emerson said "Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East", and that the bombing "was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible. That is a Middle Eastern trait, and something that has been generally not carried out on this soil until we were rudely awakened to it in 1993".

He also told viewers not to believe Islamic groups' denials of their involvement.

In testimony on March 19, 1996, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Emerson described the Holy Land Foundation as "the main fund-raising arm for Hamas in the United States."

When in February 2003 the U.S. indicted Al-Arian, accusing him of being the North American leader of PIJ and financing and helping support suicide bombings, The New York Times noted that Emerson "has complained about Mr. Al-Arian's activities in the United States for nearly a decade."

In 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to conspiracy to help a "specially designated terrorist" organization, PIJ, and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, after a jury deadlocked on 9 charges (8 of which the government agreed to drop as part of the plea bargain) and acquitted him on another 8.

Al-Arian said that he knew of the terrorist group's violent acts, though no evidence was admitted at trial showing that he was involved with violent acts.

In 2007, federal prosecutors brought charges against Holy Land for funding Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations.

In 2009, the founders of Holy Land were given life sentences for "funneling $12 million to Hamas."