Washington, DC – Prominently featured in The Inner Circle, Steven Emerson is acknowledged as a Pinnacle Professional Member Inner Circle of Excellence for his contributions to Leading Authority in Counterterrorism and Founder of The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Steven Emerson, a distinguished figure in counterterrorism, serves as the Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a nonprofit research organization he founded in 1995. With over three decades of dedicated investigation into the phenomenon of terrorism, particularly concerning the Middle East, Mr. Emerson has established IPT as the world’s most comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups.
In his role, Mr. Emerson collaborates closely with federal and state law enforcement agencies as well as media outlets, contributing to documentaries and articles that illuminate pressing terrorism-related issues. His academic journey began with a master’s degree from Brown University.
Before he founded the IPT, Mr. Emerson worked as an investigative reporter for the New Republic, U.S News & World Report, the New York Times Magazine and as a correspondent for CNN. Mr. Emerson’s career highlights include founding IPT, developing extensive databases on terrorist organizations, and authoring 8 books, including two best sellers “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us” and “The American House of Saud: The Secret Petrodollar Connection.” Other books include “Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era”; “The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation” ; “Terrorist: The Inside Story of the Highest-Ranking Iraqi Terrorist Ever to Defect to the West” ; “Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.” ; and “CAIR’s Antisemitism Unmasked.”
Mr. Emerson’s first documentary, “Jihad in America,” was broadcast on PBS in 1994. For the film, Emerson received numerous awards including the George Polk Award, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, for Television Documentary in 1994. He also received the Tom Renner Award from the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization (IRE) for best investigative reporting all categories in 1994. The award from IRE was the fourth he had received from that group. The documentary was also featured on 60 Minutes.
In 2013, he produced the second installment of his Jihad in America series in a new documentary called “Jihad in America: the Grand Deception” (www.granddeception.com) which was an expose of the covert infrastructure and influence of militant Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the US. The film won 7 Best Documentary Awards.
Mr. Emerson has frequently provided briefings to U.S. government and law enforcement agencies, members of Congress and congressional committees, and print and electronic media on terrorist financing and operational networks of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the rest of the worldwide Islamic militant spectrum.
Emerson is recognized as one of the first terrorism investigators to have testified and warned about the threat of Islamic militant networks operating in the United States and their connections worldwide. In a pioneering congressional testimony delivered in 1998, he specifically warned about the threat of Osama Bin Laden’s network. Nearly every one of the terrorist suspects and groups first identified in his 1994 film have been indicted, convicted, or deported since 9-11.
Mr. Emerson is now working a new documentary that will reveal the true origins of the Hamas terrorist organization.