http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25401-2004May13_2.html
EXCERPT
...One of the people Berg met in Baghdad was Aziz Taee, an Iraqi who studied electrical engineering at Temple University and has lived in the Philadelphia area for most of the past 20 years. Taee is chairman of the Iraqi American Council, a business group based in Annandale that encourages investment in Iraq.
Berg had visited the group's Web site and communicated with Taee by e-mail. When the two men finally met, Taee was impressed enough that he agreed to start a small company with Berg, called Shirikat Abraj Babil, or Babylon Towers Co.
They printed business cards advertising their services in installing, inspecting and repairing telecommunications and utility towers. They rented a small corner office on the second floor of a building in Jamiaa, a neighborhood near Baghdad University.
Taee, 40, said he sometimes worried about his 26-year-old associate, who would wander freely around Baghdad.
"He had a short haircut, like the Marines, and he was well-built," Taee said. "Most people thought that he was an Army guy in civilian clothes. He took a lot of risks. He was a guy who loved adventure and risk."
Wearing a large tool belt and using metal grippers and rope, Berg began climbing transmission towers, taking photographs of structural damage that he would later show to prospective clients. The work, which was itself dangerous, took him to hostile areas.
Once, he climbed a tower in Abu Ghraib, an impoverished western suburb of Baghdad infamous as the site of Iraq's largest prison. A local farmer became enraged, thinking that Berg was trying to steal parts of the already damaged structure.
Another time, Berg was briefly detained in the southern city of Diwaniyah by Iraqi police who became suspicious when they noticed an American traveling alone. Berg also was robbed one night in Baghdad near his hotel, Taee said.
(snip)
You would think that Aziz Taee, would have been concerned when his pardner failed to show for a couple weeks.
Plus Aziz Taee could have vouched for him with the local police.