Mission Congo

In the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, overcrowded refugee camps sprang up in the neighboring country of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Around this time, American televangelist and multi-millionaire Pat Robertson ran a media blitz on his television station, the Christian Broadcasting Network, to raise money for his charity Operation Blessing. He gave glowing reports of the charity's relief efforts in Congo, raising donations from viewers eager to assist. Absent from these reports was his simultaneous involvement in a very different mission: diamond mining. Friendly with a brutal dictator and in business with a pastor, Robertson searched for gems deep in the jungle, diverting cargo planes away from the refugee camps to transport mining equipment to a remote part of Congo. Using eyewitnesses,  gives an insider’s view into Operation Blessing’s actual accomplishments in the squalid refugee camps, revealing the startling contradiction between what Robertson promised viewers and what others experienced on the ground.