And so in 1993 I left CNN to work full-time as an investigator of terrorist networks in the United States. I founded The Investigative Project, which has employed a shifting staff of from two to 15 people. What we discovered is that, indeed, international terrorist organizations of all sorts had set up shop here in America. They often took advantage of religious, civic or charitable organizations. Usually, this was more than enough to fool the public, the police and especially naive leaders of religious or educational institutions, who were more than willing to encourage and sponsor these groups in the name of "multiculturalism" and "diversity." Meanwhile, U.S.-based terrorists have been able to use these organizations to ferry equipment to Middle Eastern terror groups, to offer financial support to the families of suicide bombers, to coordinate efforts with other terrorist networks around the world, and ultimately to plan and support terrorist acts in the United States.

It took us a while to piece all this together. Going to conferences and collecting promotional material had its limits. We could attend mosque services, but much of them were in Arabic. Early on, I hooked up with a friend named Khalid Duran, and he began providing translation services for much of the written and video material. But it was slow going.

Then one day I found myself standing in a Yemeni grocery store in Brooklyn. I looked around and spotted dozens of copies of dusty videos that appeared to have something to do with commandos and rifles. I bought twenty different tapes – much to the astonishment of the store owner. When I got them into Khalid's hands we realized we were looking at paramilitary training videos for the leaders of Islamic militant groups. One of them was put out by an organization called the Islamic Association for Palestine, in Richardson, Texas. To our horror, it showed the actual torment and forced "confessions" of Palestinian "collaborators" moments before they were executed.

We followed up this material by traveling to Texas, Florida and New York to try to arrange interviews with the leaders of these groups. For the most part they were not very cooperative. We got very little footage. Slowly, however, we were beginning to accumulate enough material to put together a documentary.

Part of the task, I realized, would be tracing some of these organizations to their origins in the Middle East and beyond. I started in Israel. I had learned by this time that the first calls for worldwide jihad had come from Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian mullah who had set up a way station in Peshawar, Pakistan, for Muslim recruits who wanted to take part in the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. One afternoon, riding around the West Bank in a taxicab, I was talking absentmindedly with my Palestinian driver when I mentioned Azzam. "Oh, his brother-in-law lives here just north of here," the driver said. He gave me the name of the village of Jenin.

The next day I found another driver and headed for Jenin. All I had was Azzam's name and the name of the village. When we got there and asked a few people, however, they quickly directed us to his house. Azzam was very gracious and immediately welcomed me in. He told me about his experience in Peshawar and about his brother-in-law. It was a strange encounter. At the time, Palestinian electricity was not very reliable and every 10 minutes or so the lights would go out, plunging us into total darkness.

Azzam told me he had other relatives living in Chicago. When I got back to the United States, I called them up and arranged to visit one of Azzam's nephews. Khalid came with me. We rendezvoused at a small Middle Eastern restaurant in Bridgeview, Ill., a suburb southwest of Chicago. The nephew was very gracious. He was not aware that I was collecting information, and I didn't make any attempt to misrepresent myself. I simply said I was interested in his family and anxious to write about them. He told me about Hudaifah, one of Abdullah's sons, and said he was trying to hold together his father's organization in Peshawar.

Later, he took Khalid and me to the Bridgeview Mosque, where Jamal Said was the imam. I could tell immediately that we were deep in the heart of Hamas territory. The walls of the vestibule were covered with Hamas posters and recruiting literature showing masked gunmen brandishing automatic weapons. It was all in Arabic, but you could see daggers plunged into Jewish hearts wrapped up in American flags. They even had a library filled with militant terrorist videos and books. Khalid was there to translate for me. The Friday service was a rather strange experience. Out of 800 people, I was the only one wearing a red ski jacket. When the service was over I approached the imam and asked him if he had known Abdullah Azzam. He was very defensive. "I never met with him," he said quickly and then dismissed me. Earlier that year, two Hamas operatives, congregants of the mosque, were arrested in Israel for transferring money from the United States to terrorists on the West Bank. One of these men, Mohammad Jarad, told the Israelis that he was sent on his mission by Jamal Said.

"Jihad in America" was broadcast on Nov. 21, 1994. It showed in the 10 p.m. slot on a Thursday night. Militant Islamic groups began to protest even before the show was aired. Several weeks before the showing, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release that a mosque in Brooklyn had been set on fire. The subtitle: "PBS 'Jihad in America' documentary may prompt more hate crimes." The implication, of course, was that the violent backlash against Muslims – even a month before the film was to air – had already begun. (When police investigated the fire, they found that it had been set on a rug in an upstairs apartment – over an internal dispute.)

"Jihad in America" pulled together a fair representation of the material we had collected. We showed Hamas operatives and militant mullahs preaching jihad and violence "with the gun" against Israel and America. We didn't show the torture and confessions of Palestinian collaborators – that would have been too inflammatory. The documentary continuously stressed the fact that militant Islamists are only a minute percentage of the Muslim population. Nevertheless, the film was attacked, and I was called a "crusader," a "racist" and just about

everything else. To say it was disconcerting would be an understatement. I never anticipated the degree to which these groups were going to try to deny what was going on. They claimed that I was making it all up and that I had fabricated the tapes. I was also amazed at how far some prominent mainstream newspapers would do the same, some running several highly skeptical and critical editorials. Other newspapers simply used the tried-and-true method of being "even-handed." On the one hand, Steve Emerson says militant Islamic groups are bringing jihad to America. On the other hand, Islamic groups deny it.

Despite all the skepticism, the fights and the controversy, "Jihad in America" won the prestigious George Polk Award. It was also named the "best investigative reporting in print, broadcast or book" by the Investigative Reporters and Editors Organization. It won the National Headliner Award and the Chris Award as well.

Suddenly thrust into the public eye, I encountered situations I had never dealt with before. One night I was taking a cab back to my apartment from Reagan National Airport in Washington. I glanced at the front seat and saw an Arabic-language newspaper. On the front page was my picture with a bull's-eye superimposed on it. I realized my life was going to be very different from then on.

Once I found myself at a Muslim convention where a speaker started shouting, "Steven Emerson is the enemy of Islam! Are we going to let Steven Emerson tell us what to do?" "No," the crowd roared in response. I sat there sweating. Thankfully, I had altered my appearance. Even so, I was exceptionally nervous. Fortunately, no one noticed me.

Over the years, The Investigative Project's acquisition of materials has become quite sophisticated. We subscribe to more than a hundred radical periodicals a month and acquire hundreds more documents from sources, conventions, rallies and other venues. We sustain a rigorous effort to collect video- and audiotapes of radical Islamic groups and leaders in action. We have translators working full-time and often send Arabic-speaking representatives to conventions and other gatherings, since this is the only way to understand fully what is going on. We have logged more than 6,000 hours of video- and audiotapes, and our electronic library is probably the most comprehensive in the world. We have compiled a database of some thousands of individuals who are known or suspected terrorists, or direct supporters of terrorists, as well as dossiers on scores of militant groups.

The Investigative Project built on its own momentum. We became a collection point. People started calling up and asking, "What do you know?" or "Do you know this?" We received countless tips. Most of them turned out to be bogus, but a few were incredibly fruitful.

Then the death threats began. It started in South Africa. A public television station in that country announced it was going to show "Jihad in America." Radical Islamic groups immediately went to court and tried to block it. Much to our satisfaction, a South African court ruled in our favor. The show ran, with a good deal of pre-publicity.

A short time later, I got an urgent call from U.S. law enforcement officials. I was working in my Washington apartment. They told me to get in a taxi and come downtown immediately, making sure no one was following me.