Emerson hasn't been as visible lately as Pam Geller or Robert Spencer, but he was one of the people who set off much of the anti-Islamic hysteria back in the 90's, and many of these others are essentially his disciples.
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Emerson_StevenSteve Emerson is a former freelance journalist turned antiterrorism "expert" who began making a name for himself in the mid-1990s as one of the key promoters of the idea that Islamic terrorists were actively operating on American soil. Although he has been repeatedly criticized for producing faulty analyses and having a distinctly anti-Islamic agenda, Emerson is a frequent guest commentator on FoxNews, MSNBC, and other national news programs, and has often been invited to give testimony to Congress about purported threats from terrorists operating domestically. . . .
Earlier, in 1994, Emerson produced the Frontline piece Jihad in America, which won the George Polk Award for best TV documentary. The film was also credited in part with leading to the Patriot Act. . . . Emerson also claimed during his 1998 congressional testimony that the media attention generated by the film made him a target of terrorism. . . . Emerson has turned the claims about threats to his life into a signature aspect of his professional persona, one that he highlights in his promotional materials and interviews. As Slate.com reported in 2003, "People who visit Emerson's DC office must be blindfolded en route, and employees call it 'the bat cave'" (March 14, 2003). . . .
In 1995, Emerson founded the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which according to lecture group Harry Walker Agency is "one of the world's largest archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups." The project's website, however, serves as little more than a promotional tool plugging Emerson's various books, including his latest, Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the United States (Prometheus Books, 2006). . . .
Although some of Emerson's supporters include the likes of former antiterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who told Brown Alumni Magazine that he saw Emerson "as the Paul Revere of terrorism," his biggest boosters seem to be among hardline neoconservatives and rightists who frequently cite Emerson as one of the country's foremost experts on Islamic terrorism. . . . More recently, in October 2006, the FoxNews program Hannity & Colmes featured Emerson during a show highlighting the purported connections between leftists in the United States and Islamic extremists. Asked whether there was a "quasi-alliance" between radical Islamists and radical left academics, Emerson said: "You're 100 percent right" (FoxNews, October 13, 2006).
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