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Steven Emerson

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Steven Emerson is a Jewish American investigative journalist and author specializing in national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism. He is the executive director of The Investigative Project, a data-gathering center on Islamist groups, and the author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (2002).

Emerson 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. He has been criticized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and by journalists for what they see as an anti-Islam or anti-Arab stance. [1]

Education and early career

Emerson received a Bachelors of Arts degree from Brown University in 1976, followed by a Masters of Arts in sociology in 1977. After university, Emerson worked on staff as an investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee until 1982, and as an executive assistant to Senator Frank Church. [2]

He then worked as a freelance writer, published mainly in The New Republic, including a series of articles exploring the influence of Saudi Arabia in American corporations, law firms, public-relations outfits and educational institutions. In their pursuit of large contracts with Saudi Arabia, he argued, American businesses had become unofficial, and unregistered, lobbyists for Saudi interests. This material received further elaboration in his first book, The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection, which was published in 1985.

From 1986 to 1989 he was employed by U.S. News and World Report as a senior editor specializing in national security issues, [2] and continued to write on security issues. In 1988, he published Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era, a strongly critical review of recent efforts to strengthen American covert capabilities. In 1990, he co-authored The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation, which argued for the alternate theory Iran was behind the Lockerbie Bombings.

Journalist and commentator

In 1990, he joined CNN as an investigative correspondent for the network's Special Assignment, 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, which detailed his account of how Iraq had spread and increased its terror network in the 1980s with United States support.

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, [3]and the top prize for best investigative report from the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization (IRE). [4] Emerson elaborated this subject in his next book, Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.[5]

Emerson is also the founder and executive director of The Investigative Project, one of the world's largest intelligence archives on Islamist 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. He is a contributing expert to the Counterrorism Blog. [6]

Richard Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism for the U.S. National Security Council, said of Emerson: "I think of Steve as the Paul Revere of terrorism ... We'd always learn things [from him] we weren’t hearing from the FBI or CIA, things which almost always proved to be true." [7]

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." [1] He left the condominium he had just purchased when Jihad in America was first aired, and now lives undercover. [2]

Works

Books

  • (1985), The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection, Franklin Watts, ISBN 0-531-09778-1
  • (1988), Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era, Putnam, ISBN 0-399-13360-7
  • (1990) with Duffy B., The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation, Putnam, ISBN 0-399-13521-9
  • (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
  • (1995), The worldwide Jihad movement: Militant Islam targets the West (Policy forum), Institute of the World Jewish Congress
  • (2002), American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, Free Press; 2003 paperback edition, ISBN 0-7432-3435-9
  • (2006), Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US, Prometheus Books (October 2, 2006), ISBN 1-591-02453-6

Documentaries

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Who is Steven Emerson?", Council on American-Islamic Relations.
  2. ^ a b Emerson, Steven. Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1988 (see bio on back flap).
  3. ^ George Polk Award
  4. ^ "Steven Emerson", Harry Walker Agency.
  5. ^ Jihad Incorporated, interview with Steve Emerson, FrontPageMagazine, October 16, 2006
  6. ^ Steven Emerson, Counterterrorism Blog.
  7. ^ Brown Alumni Magazine, November-December 2002.

References

Further reading

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