Steven Emerson (born June 6, 1954) is an American journalist, author, and pundit on national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism. Some have called Emerson an Islamophobe, who has recently been accused of spying on two different American Muslim organizations. Education and early career 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. Journalist and commentator 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. U.S. News & World Report and CNN 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