© St. Petersburg Times, published January 17, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- Who is Steven Emerson?
Is he a Muslim-basher prone to reckless and inaccurate statements? Or is he a remarkably prescient journalist who anticipated the events of Sept. 11 years before anyone else?
Tuesday night, an audience of 800 gave no doubt as to how it felt. At a private event sponsored by the Florida Holocaust Museum and area Jewish organizations, Emerson drew a standing ovation for a speech in which he said the United States had been "lulled into a false sense of security" even as it "became home to virtually every single militant Islamic group in the world."
"I told people there was an Islamic Jihad cell in Tampa and people scoffed," said Emerson, whose 1994 film Jihad in America led to allegations that an Islamic terrorist group was operating at the University of South Florida.
Emerson had harsh words for USF, its faculty union and professor Sami Al-Arian, a founder of the now-defunct World and Islam Studies Enterprise and the Islamic Committee for Palestine.
Emerson charged that Al-Arian was "leader of a terrorist organization," raised money for Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups and, with his brother-in-law, former USF instructor Mazen Al-Najjar, sponsored conferences that "celebrated abhorrent violence against the United States and Jews."
Al-Arian himself once said "Death to Israel," Emerson told the crowd.
Emerson said a 1996 probe into the alleged terrorist ties was "a whitewash." And faculty support for Al-Arian -- who was recently fired -- "speaks volumes about the lack of integrity" of USF faculty members.
Emerson said he has no evidence Al-Arian has supported Islamic Jihad since 1995, when WISE was shut down. But while Al-Arian never has been charged with a crime and has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks, Emerson said he is "cautiously optimistic" that there will be legal action against him.
Al-Arian, reached for comment Wednesday, called Emerson's speech "character assassination."
"This is an attempt by him and his ilk to silence and marginalize the leaders of Arabs and Muslims in the United States," Al-Arian said.
He noted that a federal immigration judge found no evidence that WISE and the Islamic Committee for Palestine were "fronts" for the radical Islamic Jihad.
"To the contrary, there is evidence on the record to support the conclusion that WISE was a reputable and scholarly research center and the ICP was highly regarded," Judge R. Kevin McHugh wrote in ordering the release of Al-Najjar, who was jailed for more than three years on secret evidence of alleged terrorist ties. He was freed in December 2000 but is back in prison awaiting deportation for a visa violation.
His brother-in-law, Al-Arian, said the conferences they organized were far-ranging ones that included praise as well as criticism of U.S. foreign policy. And while Al-Arian acknowledged saying "death to Israel" at a 1988 rally, he said that is common though often misinterpreted Middle Eastern rhetoric.
"To a Muslim audience, when you say 'death to Israel' it does not say 'death to Jews.' What was meant was death to the occupation and oppression of Palestinians and death to that system that's victimizing Palestinians."
Emerson, a former CNN correspondent and senior editor of U.S. News & World Report, has long been a controversial figure. Detractors accuse him of making "reckless and biased" statements, the Washington Post said in a recent article about him.
In 1993, Emerson inaccurately pointed to Yugoslavs as suspects in the first World Trade Center attack. He was also wrong when he said that "it was a bomb that brought down TWA Flight 800" in 1996.
And a day after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, Emerson erroneously speculated on TV that Arabs were responsible. Trying "to inflict as many casualties as possible -- that is a Middle Eastern trait," he said.
Emerson has his admirers, though, especially among pro-Israel groups and some congressional and law enforcement sources. He has testified before Congress, and a former FBI counter-terrorism chief once wrote that Emerson "is better informed in many areas of terrorism than we were in government."
In his speech, Emerson said he first became aware of militant Islamic activity in America while on assignment for CNN in Oklahoma City in 1992. He wandered into a conference of young Arabs, he said, and was stunned to find literature filled with hatred for the United States and Jews.
Further investigation resulted in Jihad in America, which ran on PBS. It led to scrutiny of the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, which Al-Arian had helped found in 1990 to foster greater understanding of the Muslim world.
In 1995, the organization's second director, USF instructor Ramadan Shallah, resigned, only to surface a few months later in Syria as the new head of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad.
WISE's funds were frozen, its records seized and USF cut its ties to the organization. But investigators found no evidence of illegal or subversive activity.
Nonetheless, Al-Arian was fired last month on grounds he had failed to distance his outspoken views from USF and had become a security risk. He is fighting his dismissal and has support from the faculty union and other groups, which say his dismissal is a blow against free speech and academic freedom.
Al-Arian is "engaging in raw, brutal coverup," Emerson said. "He does not deserve any immunity or apologies."
Emerson's own views arouse such controversy that his speech was closed to the public for "security reasons." Single and 47, Emerson says little about himself other than that he has a master's degree from Brown University. Visitors to his Washington D.C.-area headquarters must swear never to reveal its location, the Post reported.
Although he acknowledged Islam is a non-violent religion, Emerson told the audience that the majority of organized Islamic movements in the United States "have been tethered to militant Islam."
And, he added, "militant Islamic fundamentalism is a phenomenon that seeks to impose its sovereignty around the world."
-- Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com