Peter Lance is a five-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter and author. A graduate of Northeastern University where he majored in philosophy, he earned an M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, then spent the first 15 years of his career as a print reporter and network correspondent.
Starting as a cub reporter for his hometown paper, The Newport, R.I. Daily News, he won the coveted Sevellon Brown Award from the New England A.P. Managing Editors Association. Lance next moved to WNET, the PBS flagship in New York, where he won his first New York area Emmy and the Ohio State Award as a producer- reporter for Channel 13's news magazine THE 51ST STATE. Later, while working as a producer for WABC-TV Lance won his second NY Area Emmy and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for WILLOWBROOK: THE PEOPLE VS. THE STATE OF NEW YORK. He also was awarded The National Community Service Emmy for that same documentary.
While getting his law degree, Lance worked as a Trial Prep Assistant in the office of the District Attorney for New York County. Moving to ABC News as a field producer in 1978, Lance won his fourth Emmy in 1980 for his investigation of an arson-for-profit ring in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago: "Arson and Profit."
In 1981 he became Investigative Correspondent for ABC News. For his first piece on 20/20 Lance won his fifth Emmy for "Unnecessary Surgery," an exposé of unnecessary surgery in an Arkansas hospital. He won two more Emmy nominations in 1982 for 20/20 investigative pieces on Formaldehyde "The Danger Within" and toxic waste: "Deadly Chemicals, Deadly Oil;" a piece that also won the National Headliner Award.
Over the next 5 years he covered hundreds of stories worldwide for ABC NEWS 20/20, NIGHTLINE, and WORLD NEWS TONIGHT. A member of the first American crew into Indochina after the end of the Vietnam War, he chased rebel insurgents through the Plaine Des Jarres in Laos and members of the Genovese Family through the toxic wastelands of New Jersey. He tracked knife-happy surgeons in the Deep South and nuclear terrorists through the twisted streets of Antwerp. Then, in 1987, he took a break from non-fiction.
In 1987 he began working as a writer and story editor for Michael Mann on two of his acclaimed NBC series: CRIME STORY and MIAMI VICE. In 1989 Lance became the co-executive producer and Show Runner on the fourth season of WISEGUY for CBS and in 1993 he co-created MISSING PERSONS, for ABC.
In 1997 Lance's first novel FIRST DEGREE BURN (from Berkley-Penguin) became a national best seller, ranking No. 24 on The Ingram A-List: The Top 50 Requested Titles in Mystery- Detective Fiction. The film-noir mystery features FDNY Fire Marshal Eddie Burke. Later Lance adapted VEIL: THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA, Bob Woodward's best-seller on William Casey for HBO. For Showtime he wrote TERROR.NET, the story of Bradley Smith, a courageous Diplomatic Security Service agent who helped apprehend Ramzi Yousef, the al Qaeda terrorist responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Following the 9/11 attacks Lance started investigating the origins of the FBI's original probe of Ramzi Yousef. The result was his acclaimed investigative book from HarperCollins 1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE in which he proved, for the first time that Yousef had planned what became "the planes operation" from Manila in 1994, a plot later executed on Sept. 11th by his uncle Khalid Sheiklh Mohammed. Lance followed that book with COVER-UP in 2004. In TRIPLE CROSS, the final book in his 9/11 investigative trilogy, Lance provided stunning evidence that senior FBI and DOJ officials may have obstructed justice in their failure to monitor Ali A Mohamed, Osama bin Laden's principal spy inside the United. States.
In April, 2010 Lance was appointed Research Scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His profile of former FBI undercover asset Emad Salem, "The Spy Who Came In For The Heat," was the lead non-fiction article in the Sept. 2010 issue of PLAYBOY. "The Private War of Anthony Shaffer," Lance's probe into the Pentagon's censorship of "Operation Dark Heart," was the lead piece in PLAYBOY's January, 2011 issue.
In 2013 new edition's of FIRST DEGREE BURN and Lance's second novel STRANGER 456 were published by Tenacity Media Books along with the true crime classic MURDER, INC. for which Lance wrote a new foreword. His fourth book for HarperCollins, DEAL WITH THE DEVIL, the epic story of the FBI's 30 year relationship with Mafia capo Greg Scarpa Sr. was published in July 2013. In January, 2015 Lance wrote the foreword to the new memoir by John Gotti Jr., "Shadow of My Father."
In December 2016 along with his own website: peterlance.com Lance set up investigatingtrump.com a new site dedicated to curating the best reporting on the Trump presidency. In 2017 he adapted TRIPLE CROSS and DEAL WITH THE DEVIL into a 10 hour dramatic cable series. "Homicide At Rough Point," a two year probe by Lance into a murder in his hometown of Newport, RI commited by Doris Duke, then the richest woman in America, was published in VANITY FAIR's July/August 2020 edition and online at vanityfair.com On February 23rd, 2021 HOMICIDE AT ROUGH POINT, A 438 page book with 110 images and 60 pages of annotations, was published by Tenacity Media Books in four editions: Hardcover, Trade Paperback, Kindle/ebook and Audible/audiobook. Watch: HOMICIDE AT POINT: The Trailer on YouTube. For news on the national and international coverage of the book visit peterlance.com Follow Lance on Twitter @PETERLANCE_
