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Robertson could hardly engage in these activities without Mobutu's help. ``Diamonds are Mobutu's principal source of revenue,'' says William Harrop, who served as U.S. ambassador to Zaire from 1987 to 1991. ``It is virtually impossible to operate in that field without his permission.'' One man who helps run ADC in Zaire is Bill Lovick, a former Assemblies of God minister who was dismissed from the church in 1985 for ``a lack of ethics in raising Assemblies of God monies,'' according to a letter dispatched to him on Nov. 22, 1985, from the church's district secretary-treasurer. Lovick told Time that the government granted Robertson the forest concessions and had been generally helpful. ``It's been a very good thing for the President,'' Lovick says, ``and a very good thing for Dr. Robertson.'' It has not been a good thing for other missionaries, who fear that the people will believe they too are in league with Mobutu.
An American executive recounts a trip to Zaire with Robertson some years ago that began in Paris, where the minister, his wife Adelia and an entourage of 15 boarded one of Mobutu's personal planes, a Boeing 707. On the visitors' arrival, Mobutu received them on the presidential yacht. There was a ride up the Congo to visit a presidential estate and, in an unusual gesture of official hospitality, Mrs. Mobutu actually prepared several of the dishes served to the guests. ``The atmosphere was very congenial,'' says the executive, long a supporter of Robertson's. ``Pat Robertson and Mobutu get along extremely well. Mobutu was interested in bringing in people to get the mining and agriculture operations going again.''
Robertson told TIME that his organizations ``do not engage in domestic politics with governments--whether it be Angola, South Africa or Zaire,'' and that they operate ``under strict ethical guidelines'' that meet ``all legal requirements imposed by governmental agencies.'' Consorting with a dictator like Mobutu, however, just might raise the eyebrows of a more supreme authority.
--With reporting by Adam Zagorin/Washington