Robertson charity misled donors about Africa work, paper says

Church & State, Sep 1999

Investigators with Virginia's Office of Consumer Affairs wanted to prosecute TV preacher Pat Robertson for making deceptive appeals about his Operation Blessing charity but were overruled by the attorney general's office, a newspaper has reported.

Bill Sizemore, a staffer with the Virginian-Pilot, a daily newspaper serving the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area, reported in July that investigators at the consumer affairs office concluded that Robertson "willfully induced contributions from the public through the use of misleading statements and other implications."

Lawyers in the attorney general's office agreed Robertson had made inaccurate statements but decided against prosecution, saying there was no evidence he intended to defraud potential donors. Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley is a political ally of Robertson who accepted a $35,000 campaign contribution from the TV preacher in 1997. (Earley insists he played no role in the decision regarding Robertson.)

The controversy over Operation Blessing stretches back to 1994 when Robertson used his "700 Club" daily cable television program to raise funds for the charity. Robertson said Operation Blessing was using cargo planes to aid refugees from Rwanda who had fled into the neighboring nation of Zaire (now known as Congo) to escape a violent civil war.

In fact, Robertson was using the planes to haul mining equipment in and out of Zaire for African Development Corporation (ADC), his for-profit diamond-mining company. Robertson later said the planes had proved impractical for relief work and insisted he had reimbursed the charity for ADC's use of them.

The Office of Consumer Affairs' report contained several examples of deceptive fund-raising practices by Robertson. In one case, Robertson talked about a "medical strike force" going into the Zairian towns of Goma and Bukavu to transport "doctors and medicine back and forth....So please go to your phones; you can participate in Operation Blessing."

While Robertson did have volunteer medical teams in the area, they were not ferried back and forth by the airplanes. Those craft were used instead to haul ADC mining equipment.

Summarized the report, "Pat Robertson made material claims, via television appeals, regarding the relief efforts. These statements are refuted by the evidence in this case and thereby suggest a violation of the...law's prohibition against obtaining money by any misrepresentation or misleading statement."

Robertson was livid over the Virginian-Pilot report, which was picked up by the Associated Press and carried nationwide. He accused the newspaper of deliberately publishing an inaccurate account.

At a news conference held outside his Christian Broadcasting Network offices, Robertson said, "This newspaper story is not only unfair, it is blatantly and maliciously wrong. The managing editor and the reporter conspired together to defraud the people of Hampton Roads, the Associated Press and the electronic media by making a libelous assertion which they knew was not contained in the 500-page file released by the Office of Consumer Affairs. I have instructed my attorneys to review the case for possible legal action on behalf of myself and Operation Blessing against the newspaper."

The paper later ran a lengthy statement by J. Nelson Happy, an attorney for Robertson and former dean of Robertson's Regent Law School, criticizing the story. It also ran a letter by J. Carlton Courter III, a state commissioner who overseas the Office of Consumer Affairs, challenging the accuracy of the story. (Courter was appointed by Gov. James Gilmore, also a Robertson ally who has accepted hefty campaign contributions from him.)

But the Virginian-Pilot stood by its story. In an editorial titled "No Absolution Here," the paper called the attorney general's decision not to prosecute Robertson "reasonable" but added that "it falls well short, though, of vindicating the religious broadcaster's use of the airwaves."

The paper noted that state officials have criticized the charity for sloppy bookkeeping and for mixing non-profit and for-profit activities. It also pointed out that Robertson reimbursed Operation Blessing for ADC's use of its airplanes in two stages. Investigators determined that ADC owed Operation Blessing $468,773. Robertson ultimately gave the group $572,597, but $400,000 of that came two months after the official investigation began.

Concluded the Virginian-Pilot, "That was three years after the expenses were incurred. If this gives no grounds for prosecution, it surely affords none, either, for Robertson's aggrieved selfrighteousness."

In other news from Virginia Beach: Robertson has called for changing U.S. foreign policy to allow for the assassination of foreign leaders.

Appearing on his "700 Club" Aug. 9, the TV preacher said, "I know it sounds somewhat Machiavellian and evil, to think that you could send a squad in to take out somebody like Osama bin Laden, or to take out the head of North Korea," Robertson said. "But isn't it better to do something like that, to take out Milosevic, to take out Saddam Hussein, rather than spend billions and billions of dollars on a war that harms innocent civilians and destroys the infrastructure of a country? It would just seem so much more practical to have that flexibility....