FEMA Fumbles on Operation Blessing and Pat Robertson

Several progressive bloggers went on the attack, and the story slowly filtered into the mainstream media. New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez did a piece Sept. 6, noting that Robertson used the charity to ferry diamond-mining equipment in and out of Zaire in the mid 1990s.
Gonzalez examined Operation Blessing's financial records and was surprised at what he saw. “The biggest single U.S. recipient of the charity's largess, according to its latest financial report, was Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network,” he wrote. “It received $885,000 in the fiscal year ended March 2004.”
Gonzalez noted that “Robertson uses that Christian network for some markedly unchristian purposes,” pointing out his association with dictators like Charles Taylor in Liberia.
The next day, The Nation magazine posted a column about Operation Blessing on its website. The piece by Max Blumenthal brought up the Africa charges again but also scored Robertson's “700 Club” for airing biased reports critical of the hurricane victims struck in the New Orleans Convention Center.