Counterterrorism Blog

I agree that Dennis and I, from our different prespectives, will continue to disagree on this matter, while agreeing that commodities like diamonds presented and present and ongoing area of vulnerability that needs greater attention. I hope it has been an informative debate, and I learned some things.

I will only reiterate my belief that the investigations of the FBI were trying to answer a question that was not asked: whether al Qaeda funded itself through diamonds. The central contention, however, was that al Qaeda moved its money into diamonds to avoid possible freezing actions. Therefore, the primary purpose was not to make money, but to hide it, even if it entailed taking a small loss on transactions. Starting with a different question, one can get a different answer.

The history of al Qaeda's involvement in gemstones (including opening two diamond businesses in East Africa in the mid-1990s, the statements of bin Laden's closest aides on al Qaeda's diamond businesses, bin Laden's personal secretary's globe-trotting on diamond and other gemstone deals, bin Laden's personal interest in Liberia, and the court statements of al Qaeda operatives on buying and selling diamonds) seems to me to give a logical and historical framework to the development of the al Qaeda invovlement in the diamond trade as I described it. The FBI investigations seemed to me to view the diamond-buying activities in a historical and contextual vacuum.

Finally, I reiterate the different conclusions reached by people who spent considerable time--months and years at a time--on the ground, meeting with people directly involved, and investigations that, out of necessity, relied on more formal channels and could not spend time on the ground. It was not just media that came up with the allegations, but other serious law enforcement investigators coming from several different angles. The two types of investigations reached two very different conclusions. And, for the time being, that is where we are. I will leave it at that.