Debate Continues Here on Al Qaeda's Involvement With African Diamond Trade

By Andrew Cochran

One of my original goals for this site was to hold the definitive debate on the issue of Al Qaeda's possible involvement with the diamond trade in West Africa. The world had heard from Douglas Farah, former award-winning Washington Post reporter, whose investigative work in Africa led him to write "Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror.� Released in 2004, the book laid out the evidence for his thesis that Al Qaeda "moved tens of millions of dollars from banks into diamonds, gold, tanzanite, emeralds, and sapphires" to finance its operations. But that thesis was always discounted by law enforcement and the intelligence community, and the 9/11 Commission staff agreed with that side in its Monograph on Terrorist Financing: "No persuasive evidence exists that al Qaeda relied on the drug trade as an important source of revenue, had any substantial involvement with conflict diamonds, or was financially sponsored by any foreign government." The most knowledgeable former law enforcement official in the world who can discuss the issue openly is Dennis Lormel, former Director of the FBI�s Terrorist Financing Operations Section, from where he directed the FBI's investigation into Doug's thesis.

Doug and Dennis touched on the issue periodically prior to this month, when they engaged in a full point-counterpoint debate. I've decided to compile all of their CT Blog posts on this issue for our readers in a single document. I invite you to download it (I'll also save it in the Counterterrorism Library), and I'll update the file as needed:
Download debate_on_alqaeda_african_diamonds.doc

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