DIRTY DIAMOND INDUSTRY: Interview With Author Tom Zoellner

The Inquirer caught up with Tom Zoellner in Albuquerque, where Zoellner's on a tour to promote his new book, "The Heartless Stone: a journey through the world of diamonds, deceit, and desire." It's a rapid-paced yarn, a kind of adventure travel tale (Zoellner crisscrossed the globe from Siberia to Angola investigating diamonds) that's chock-full of fascinating details from the mines in Sierra Leone to the heartbreak that can accompany a man with in possession of a rejected engagement ring. Highly recommended.

New York Inquirer: Diamonds are so pretty! What could ever be wrong with them?

Tom Zoellner: Granted, they are kind of attractive, but so are lots of rocks. What's uniquely ugly about diamonds is the way they've been used for such disgusting purposes throughout history. They've been used to launder money, finance civil wars and keep laborers in a kind of bondage that is slavery in all but name.

NYI: Whoever decided that diamonds were so important (so desirable, so expensive) in the first place?

TZ: The idea of a diamond as an object to be valued and coveted (and killed for and died for) was born in the Golconda region of India in the 6th century B.C. It was introduced to Europe in the 17th century by a traveling French merchant named Jean-Baptiste Tavenier. These rocks took off like a fad among the nobles. The mystique was born. Everyone wants to be like royalty and a diamond is a quick -- and false -- ticket to where we think we want to go.

NYI: You write that the diamond trade “brings misery to millions of people across the world.” Misery? Millions? So Blood Diamonds are no joke?

TZ: Far from a joke. Some of the worst African wars of the last twenty years were partly or mostly financed by illicit diamond sales. And these are the same stones that most likely make their way to America and wind up on the fourth finger of an unwitting bride.

NYI: In “The Heartless Stone,” you call De Beers “The Cartel.” That's unforgiving.

TZ: Not at all. De Beers survived for 118 years by exercising virtual monopoly control of the world's supply of diamonds. That was their hallmark and their guiding philosophy.

NYI: Oil, livestock, sugar, these commodities are traded in international market exchanges, allowing the supply and demand forces of the market determine value and cost. Is it the same for diamonds? What, or who, determines their value?

TZ: Diamond exist outside of the traditional fluctuations of a market economy. The question is not “what” determines the price of diamonds, but “who.” That entity is De Beers. They keep a careful guardianship over the price by releasing a calculated amount of stones onto the market from their London selling office every fifth Monday. Their dominance is not quite what it used to be these days, but they still have control of slightly half of the world's supply of rough diamonds.

NYI: Your book is like an investigative adventure tale. Meeting warlords in central Africa, did anyone stick a gun in your face and say, “Get your hands off my rocks!”

TZ: Hah! Never heard that one. The research went pretty smoothly, for the most part, and people generally treated me with courtesy, even in the midst of some sketchy areas. Although there are some terribly brutal things that happen within the supply chain, the industry has an old-boy genteel air about it.

NYI: Look, let's cut to the chase. Do people buy diamonds because they don't have anything better to spend their money on?

TZ: There's a saying in the business: “If diamonds did not exist, we would have to invent them.” There's something in the human heart that yearns to possess a little piece of natural brilliance. Something that claims to be eternal. Something that sets us apart from the banality of everyday life and lifts us to a higher realm of power, prestige and perfection. Nobody understands this better than De Beers, which has managed to insert an otherwise worthless rock into the crosshairs of this grand mysterious urge that exists inside all of us. This is the genius behind the greatest ad slogan ever written.

It's just four words long. Say it after me, everyone . . .

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