Bartholomew's Notes

WorldNetDaily is (again) triumphant:

United Nations prosecutors confirm al-Qaida has been deeply involved in the African diamond business since before Sept. 11, 2001, confirming a report last year broken by Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter published by WND.

A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaida fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a confidential report by U.N.-backed prosecutors obtained by the Associated Press.

WorldNetDaily is clearly well ahead of the game, and its “report last year broken” came only a year (at least) after the story was all over the mainstream press, thanks particularly to the investigations of Douglas Farah (no apparent relation) in The Washington Post. In 2002 Douglas Farah reported in the Post that:

ANTWERP, Belgium — An aggressive year-long European investigation into al Qaeda financing has found evidence that two West African governments hosted the senior terrorist operatives who oversaw a $20 million diamond-buying spree that effectively cornered the market on the region’s precious stones.

Investigators from several countries concluded that President Charles Taylor of Liberia received a $1 million payment for arranging to harbor the operatives, who were in the region for at least two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The terrorists moved between a protected area in Liberia and the presidential compound in neighboring Burkina Faso, investigators say.

Even before the al-Qaeda link was discovered, another Post writer was questioning Taylor’s diamond-business links with another kind of religious extremist: Pat Robertson. Famously, Robertson contrasted the “Christian, Baptist” Taylor with his Muslim opponents in Liberia, totally ignoring Taylor’s appalling record. Funnily enough, WorldNetDaily has decided not to mention the former Liberian President or Robertson, preferring a more general discussion of the problem of “blood diamonds” in Africa.

Douglas Farah’s reaction to the 9/11 Commission’s dismissal of the diamond link can be read here (found via his website).

This is a second recent scoop for WND – only last month Joseph Farah’s radio show “broke” the news of Rev Moon’s coronation in a senate office building a mere two weeks after Bill Berkowitz had drawn attention to John Gorenfeld’s work of four months previously.

Meanwhile, Pete at the Dark Window notes the patriot Robertson’s shocking discovery that John Kerry has a French cousin.

Filed under: Uncategorized