Conflict Minerals: Dispatches From the Diamond Wars

Sep 5, 2014 | Howard W. French, The Wall Street Journal
View Original

Some of my earliest memories as a reporter have to do with diamonds in Africa. Several times, as a young freelancer visiting Sierra Leone in the early 1980s, I managed to wander into the strangely unsecured presidential headquarters, in Freetown, to seek an interview, only to find the hallways buzzing with diamond traders and bag men cutting shady deals.