The same Pat Robertson who tried to fund his church and political aspirations with smuggled African blood-diamonds but got caught? That Pat Robertson?
The Virginia Pilot 1997:
Robertson had gambled years before on a down-at-the-heels Portsmouth TV station and transformed it into a multimillion-dollar religious broadcasting empire.
Now there were diamonds - lots of them, waiting to be plucked from the heart of Africa.
Mining concessions in Zaire, the second-biggest diamond-producing country in the world, were being made available to the Virginia Beach-based evangelist by the government of longtime Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
In 1992, Robertson rolled the dice and embarked on an amazing African adventure.
It eventually involved whacking out a big patch of jungle deep in the rugged bush while dodging crocs and hippos. There were the twin plagues of political instability and frustrating equipment failures. There was an improbable cast of characters that included a defrocked Pentecostal preacher, a high-ranking felon from a Reagan-era Washington scandal, and a pair of former Navy SEALs - Sea-Air-Land commandos trained in clandestine operations.
For protection, there were guns purchased on a discreet shopping trip to the Chesapeake Wal-Mart.
And overriding everything was money - lots of it.
The same Pat Robertson who tried to fund his church and political aspirations with smuggled African blood-diamonds but got caught? That Pat Robertson?