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The FBI apparently conducted a lengthy investigation of Berg in captivity because they were checking out a possible friendship or other tie with an Arab at the University of Oklahoma who was under scrutiny in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

• The source said that in addition to his passport, cash and a laptop, Berg had two books when he was arrested in Mosul on March 24 that aroused suspicion: the Koran and a book that authorities somehow interpreted as "anti-Semitic."

Friends say it's unlikely that Berg, a practicing Jew, would have carried an anti-Semitic book but that reading the Koran and other local texts was very much in line with his intellectual curiosity.

• Berg stubbornly refused American offers of assistance in getting home - including an offer of free airfare, cash and an American escort. He told authorities before his April 6 release that he was eager to get back to work seeking contracts in Iraq, telling U.S. authorities "he was losing thousands of dollars in jail."

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Berg also sent a lengthy e-mail to his family after he was detained. Among the questions asked, he wrote, were: "Why was I in Iraq? Did I ever make a pipe bomb? Why was I in Iran?"

The Times said he conjectured that their questions arose from some Farsi literature and a book about Iran that he had. Berg wrote that after four days he was transferred to a cellblock that included prisoners charged with petty offenses and suspected "war criminals."

"Word had spread due to the presence of certain items amongst my stuff that I was Israeli," Berg wrote. "So I felt a bit like Arlo Guthrie walking into a jail full of mother rapers and father stabbers as an accused litterbug."

On April 7, the day after he walked out of the Mosul jail on his own terms, he wrote a friend: "I'm currently trying to pick things up with the business and the local contacts, all of whom think I'm the biggest flake in the world now, as well as plan my return trip, which has been complicated by...military closures."

Three days later, Berg disappeared.