read this for starters, or try Googling "pat robertson" + "Freedom Gold" + "conflict diamonds":
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/07/we_477_05.html#three The Dictator and the Televangelist
Poor Charles Taylor. These are dark days for the Liberian dictator. Rebels control most of the country, he's under indictment for war crimes, and George W. Bush has called for his ouster, though the White House hasn't yet committed troops to the effort. Everyone, it seems, has abandoned West Africa's most notorious warlord. Everyone, that is, except Pat Robertson. Indeed, the televangelist and GOP stalwart is loudly defending Taylor -- a human-rights nightmare known for recruiting child soldiers to help him with the massacre and mutilation of thousands, whose regime is linked not just to the "conflict diamond" trade in neighboring Sierra Leone but to Al Qaeda and destabilization campaigns against its neighbors. Robertson, however, is having none of it. As he declared on his TV show, the 700 Club, last month: "'This country has had a close relationship with the United States over the years, but of late -- the last oh, four, five, six years -- the United States State Department has tried as hard as it can to destabilize Liberia and to bring about the very outcome we're seeing now. They had no endgame, they have no plan of what to do, they only wanted to destroy the sitting president and his government, and as a result, the place is being plunged into chaos.'"
Why would Robertson defend such a man? Well, perhaps Robertson is simply standing up for a fellow evangelical. After all, Taylor is a born-again Christian, an ex-con turned Baptist preacher who frequently compares himself to Jesus ("Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time," he told the BBC in defense of his human rights record). To be sure, Robertson's ministry has a history in Liberia. Last year, his Christian Broadcasting Network held a massive, three-day rally in Monrovia, the capital city, an event described (rather puzzlingly) by one of Robertson's ministers as "the atomic bomb of peace." And in recent broadcasts of the 700 Club, Robertson has characterized Liberia's civil war as a battle between Taylor's God-fearing regime and fanatical Islamic rebels -- a gross oversimplification, the Washington Post's Alan Cooperman reports.
There's something else at work besides the Christian connection, though -- something Robertson hasn't mentioned in his broadcasts. As it turns out, Robertson and Taylor are business partners. Robertson's mining company, Freedom Gold, holds the prospecting rights to a large swath of Liberian jungle, and over the years Robertson has poured millions of dollars into his investment. So far, that investment hasn't panned out, but as Robertson told the Post, "Hope springs eternal": "'Once the dust has cleared on this thing, chances are there will be some investors from someplace who want to invest. If I could find some people to sell it to, I'd be more than delighted.'"
This isn't Robertson's first foray into the world of African dictators and diamond mines. Depite recent condemnations of Zaire (now Congo)'s late strongman, Mobutu Sese Seko, Robertson cut a deal with Mobutu's dying regime in 1994. As Bob Drury and Aram Roston reported for GQ, Robertson was so enthusiastic about his new diamonds-and-timber business that he diverted cargo planes intended to help alleviate the crisis brought on by Rwanda's genocide to his mines in Zaire....
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