If you're like me, you will appreciate this site, which takes a rational, even-handed look at the circumstances surrounding Berg's death. Most of the observations made by this site's proprietor, J.M. Berger, seem reasonable enough. Even so, I have a few additional comments.
1. Berger notes apparent differences between the orange jumpsuit worn by Abu Ghraib prisoners and the suit worn by Berg. To my eyes, most of these alleged differences can be attributed to the poor quality of the execution video, which reached the net in highly compressed form.
2. Zarqawi, Berger states, wore a hood because he has changed his appearance since the time his one and only available photograph was taken. "Regardless," adds Berger, "it's important to remember all this does not actually prove Zarqawi was the killer. It's simply that the mask is a non-issue." Unassailable logic.
3. Regarding the gold ring, Berger notes that
many Islamic fundamentalists connected to al Qaeda are members of al Takfir Wal Hijra, an extremist sect whose members are exempted from following the ordinary strictures of Islam. The exemption is meant to aid them in infiltrating Western society. They can drink alcohol, take drugs, skip prayers, engage in extramarital sex and have sex with women.As I recall, the instructions found among the possessions of the 9/11 hijackers (if genuine) forbade fornication and such. At any rate, Zarqawi was and is not infiltrating western society.
4. Berger admits that Berg's business interests do indeed seem odd, but cautions against reading anything into the fact that he did not incorporate. I agree.
5. Berger seems to believe that Berg was already dead when decapitated, but he finds this distinction uninteresting. I can't really agree with him here. Alarm bells should go off when we see any indication that the video was edited in such a way as to present a "story" differing from what actually occurred.
6. Berger argues that the "fake video" angle is intriguing but unpersuasive; his primary interest is directed at the idea that an intelligence agency used Berg as an informant. That's the area which most fascinates me, as well.
It may not be as sexy as claiming the U.S. government killed Berg, but it makes a lot more sense and it's consistent with the FBI's known counterterrorism practices. In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the related NYC Landmarks case, the FBI aggressively used an informant named Emad Salem to collect information on terror cell activities. (related story)The matter goes well beyond that.
While more realistic, this idea is not without its paranoid charms. If Berg was truly an informant when he was killed, the next natural question is whether he was an informant when he encountered Moussaoui.
If that turned out to be the case, then the failure to recognize Moussaoui's threat relative to the September 11 attack takes on almost mythic proportions, and a series of succeeding deceptions and cover-ups could fall into place like dominos.
We still do not know if Nick Berg spoke to Moussaoui directly (as the egregious Newsmax claims) or to an associate. We do not know if Berg dealt with but one Al Qaeda member or (as his father stated) more than one. We do not know the time of these meetings. Berg told the FBI that he innocently gave his password to an Al Qaeda operative met on a bus in Fall of 1999, but Moussaoui did not arrive in the United States until February, 2001. Did Berg lie to the FBI -- and if so, why? This chronological conflict is important, and seems quite difficult to explain away.
There is good evidence that the chance meeting on the bus was not the only time Berg met terrorists. Berg seems also to have known Hussein al-Attas, arrested in the wake of 9/11. How many Jewish students in Oklahoma circulate so freely with Arab nationals? And how many undercover Al Qaeda operatives seek the company of Jews?
We do not know why Berg chose the Al Qaeda-infested University of Oklahoma, a not-particularly-prestigious institution located far away from his home. We do not know why Berg continued to work around the university, and live in its vicinity, well after his only semester of attending classes in late 1999. The police in Norman, Oklahoma, arrested him for vagrancy in 2000; how did he segue so rapidly into his well-paying new life as a globe-hopping communications tower specialist?
We do not know if the password he gave to Moussaoui (or to an associate) was used by the FBI or another agency to track the terrorists, although that is the implication inherent in several news stories. We do not (yet) know if Berg was the Caucasian worker at that University library who purchased a ticket for one of the hijackers.
We do not know which email service Berg used at that time -- a potentially important point. If it was Commtouch, then run by the daughter of Mossad asset Robert Maxwell, we would have further possible indication that the Israelis were tracking the 9/11 terrorists in the United States. Or did Berg provide the password to the xdesertman@hotmail.com account mentioned in this court document?
Berger also does not touch on the frustrating mysteries surrounding Berg's brief period of freedom between April 6 and April 10. His behavior was, as we have noted in previous posts, bizarre. Although he previously contacted his father several times a day, Nick Berg refused to telephone or email his family after April 6. Yet he found time to go to the gym in Baghdad and to go out drinking with buddies.
He reportedly refused an offer from U.S. officials to be flown out of Iraq because he did not trust the military to get him safely to the airport. Yet his friend Andrew Duke said that Berg planned (for unexplained reasons) to travel by land to Kuwait -- a far more dangerous option, one would think. Berg told Hugo Infante he intended to get to the Baghdad airport on his own and fly back to the U.S. He told others he hoped to go to Jordan.
He also said that he had come into a great deal of money. One wonders how: He did no known work during his Iraq adventure.
Then there is the as-yet unexplained testimony of "Joe Aziz," or Aziz Al Taee, the Iraqi "freedom fighter" with shadowy connections to the criminal underworld -- and to the Freepers, who have made Michael Berg the target of a hate campaign. Aziz met Berg in Baghdad during the time period under scrutiny. On April 10, Berg called him to say that some friends -- "nice people" -- were going to travel with him to Jordan.
Who were these "nice people"? Obviously (and this is presuming we can trust the account given by Aziz) they were connected to the terrorists -- otherwise, these "nice people" would have come forward. Why would Berg mistrust a U.S. military escort, yet trust these unnamed Iraqi comrades? Recent reports indicate that non-ideologically-motivated crooks in Iraq have been kidnapping workers connected to the occupation forces and handing them over (for a suitable payment) to the insurgents.
We should not forget Aziz' ultra-bizarre claim to have monitored Berg's cel phone calls after his capture. The phone was used as recently as April 19 -- or so the mysterious Iraqi has claimed. If he did not meet Berg on April 10, how would he have gained access to the phone?
And what are we to make of Aziz's links to ubiquitous ex-CIA terror expert Vincent Cannistraro (a few wags have questioned the "ex-" prefix) and to the anti-CIA neocon writer Laurie Mylroie?
What are we to make of reports that Berg, upon his first detention, counted anti-Semitic literature and a Koran among his possessions? Why did his passport contain an Israeli stamp? (The Israelis routinely give a second passport to American travelers who may also visit nations unfriendly to Israel; Berg traveled widely in such locales.)
Finally, why did MSNBC initially report that Berg, during his first Iraq trip, repaired the communication tower at Abu Ghraib -- only to strike out all mention of that site in a re-written version of the story?
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