Conflict Diamonds....Counterpoint
By Dennis Lormel
In response to Doug’s rebuttal I’d like to reiterate my closing comment in my last posting. Based on a number of dynamics, including cultural considerations, this is a gray area. There is a considerable amount of “he said, he said” which is quite inconsistent. I could easily list a number of individuals and officials who concur with my position. In the interest of brevity, I would ask Doug to legally stipulate on this issue.
The FBI traveled to Belgium and met directly with the Belgian Police on one of the deployments to West Africa to investigate the conflict diamond issue. The Belgians specifically advised that they did not state that Al Qaeda was involved in the diamond trade and had no such information. The results of the FBI investigations were reported in trip reports.
All of the allegations that were known at the time of the FBI investigation were placed in a matrix and thoroughly investigated. None of the allegations could be substantiated.
Interestingly, the US officials identified in Doug’s post appear to have acted/commented unilaterally and not in conjunction with their agency headquarter components in Washington, DC. The interagency community in Washington was all in agreement on this issue. Had other information been available it would have been investigated.
Conflict diamonds are clearly an area of vulnerability. As such they were closely scrutinized. The subject is also extremely confusing and contradictory. Hence the debate continues.
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