Posted on 05/27/2004 9:26:51 PM PDT by Rennes Templar
May 27, 2004 | Filmmaker Michael Moore filmed an interview with American Nicholas Berg in the course of producing his documentary film "Fahrenheit 9/11" before Berg left for Iraq, where he was taken hostage and killed, Moore confirmed to Salon in a statement Thursday. The 20 minutes of footage does not appear in the final version of "Fahrenheit 911," according to the statement.
Word of the footage reached Salon through a source unaffiliated with Moore or his film "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is reported to feature stark images of U.S. civilians and soldiers grappling with conditions in war-torn Iraq, as well as examining the relationship between President George W. Bush and the bin Laden family. It received the Palme d'Or, the Cannes Film Festival's highest honor, on Saturday.
In a statement widely circulated by Moore's people after an initial request for comment by Salon, Moore said, "We have an interview with Nick Berg. It was approximately 20 minutes long. We are not releasing it to the media. It is not in the film. We are dealing privately with the family." Moore's camp declined to comment further on any aspect of the interview. Because the footage is not in the film, a spokeswoman for Miramax Films, the production company behind "Fahrenheit 9/11," said the company had no comment.
It was not clear from Moore's statement whether footage from the interview with Berg had ever been included in early cuts of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Reports about a film industry controversy surrounding distribution of the film first hit the news on May 5, a week before Berg's death. The film officially screened for the public and the press for the first time during the Cannes festival on May 17.
The news that Moore spoke to Berg while he was still in the United States only adds to the mystery surrounding the young man's presence in Iraq and tragic death. The interview was shot before the 26-year-old Berg left for Iraq late last year as a private contractor in the hopes of helping to rebuild the ravaged country. Though it was unclear what Berg spoke about in his interview with Moore, or how the two men met, unrelated reports following his death indicate that he headed for the Middle East with plans to work to improve the country's technological infrastructure and communication abilities. He ran his own company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, in a suburb of Philadelphia.
Berg did not find employment in Iraq, and when he attempted to return to the United States he was detained by Iraqi police and questioned by American forces. He was released after his family complained. But shortly after, he is believed to have been kidnapped by Islamic terrorists. Video of his beheading was released on an Islamist Web site on May 11. Salon was unable to reach the Berg family for comment before publication.
Moore's film chronicles the United States' military, political and business involvement in the Middle East in the years before and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His previous politically charged films, including "Roger & Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," have created controversy and won him praise (including an Oscar, for "Columbine"). "Fahrenheit 9/11" has already sparked a media storm; in early May, Miramax's parent company, Disney, announced that it would not allow Miramax to distribute the film, which is highly critical of Bush and his administration.
Miramax has yet to make a deal with a distributor, though the film's warm reception at Cannes and the publicity surrounding the film have made it a hot property that is generating a lot of interest in Hollywood. "Bowling for Columbine" grossed $21 million, making it the highest-grossing non-IMAX documentary of all time.
A source close to "Fahrenheit 9/11" said that a new distributor will be announced shortly, and that the film is expected to be released in theaters during the first week of July, as originally planned.
I'm beginning to understand. You know, I've been googling his name and I'm seeing conspiracies on the other side that are so absurd that I'm beginning to think mine are just as bad. I'm sure brighter minds than mine have gone through all the evidence and if there was something, then...Probably just one of those weird coincidental things that are just what they appear to be. The Father just makes it all that much stranger.
I think we need one for Nick Berg...........LOL.
>>>>>
From Post #1082
Prometheus Radio Project is a non-profit, I believe, that receives funds from big foundations to bring "guerrilla radio" to the Third World. Complicating the issue of finding out about it is the fact that its members use pseudonyms.
However, it has a board, and on another thread, someone had identified a "Carol Berg" as being on the board, and said that Carol was the middle name of Nick Berg's mother.
***
PS: Ignore the Freepmail I just sent you. It's late and my eyes are crossed. LOL!
PPS: I agree entirely with your sentiments re MMs commentary on President Bush reading to the children after Andy Card gave him the news.
So if he releases F9/11 in June that would take it back to 9/01. Most of the press I've found shows that he doesn't mention the project until he's promoting Columbine in 02.
He probably started to "research" shortly after 9/11 based on all the conspiracy theories surrounding and while he was polishing up Columbine for release in 02. That would leave him with the rest of 02 and 03 to collect footage from various sources and eventually (based on found images) come up with his "special" part of the doc. Namely the "man on the street" hectoring he's known for.
So if I had to nail it down I'd say his personal "stuff" (interviews, guerilla camera crews in Iraq, etc.) were probably shot in the summer of 03 through the end of the year.
I had two kids at OU back then and still have two there. That story about email accounts being stolen doesn't wash. My daughter was on the newspaper at the time and I would think that it would have been front page if the email accounts were stolen not to mention front page of the birdcage paper here in Norman.
My son has not been able to find anyone that had their email account stolen or even heard about it. None of the parents I know heard about it either.
They did bring the Internet connection inhouse and everyone had to change their email account but that would have meant that Berg's email account was no longer good and couldn't have been used.
I live in Norman and we don't have a large number of towers here that I see except the polls with all the tornado warning sirens and they are not towers. No more towers here then anywhere else that I have traveled.
None of the professors can remember this hotshot kid either -- not one. None of the people in class can either, but the Islamic Society knew him and the people at Lloyd Noble. What was he doing working at Lloyd Noble for events if he was so good with electronics? Why not get a job in the Engineering Department or at least apply?
If he came here to climb towers, I have yet to hear one of the companies that service them mention he worked for them. In fact, most of the cell phone towers were not even built when he was here now that I think about it. All I remember seeing were the radio towers prior to the cell phones becoming really popular.
He didn't get a degree here at OU. In fact, as far as I know he only worked at Lloyd Noble for special events. Not even sure when he left Norman.
LOL You know, at this point, it would not surprise me in the slightest.
Don't take my post to mean that I
think Nick was involved in only
a series of coincidences. I too
am suspicious of something very
odd going on. I was just stating
a few facts as I understood them.
Don't really think a white guy hanging out at the Islamic Society when he is Jewish is very normal either. We have the Hillel Center here -- makes no sense.
Ah Mr.Moore when the first plane hit no one knew it was an attack
He could have moved in the dorm -- no housing shortage in the dorms back then and there were less students then there are now.
Norman has NEVER had a housing shortage for students. There are FOR RENT signs out all year long around here and have been for years.
Where are you getting your information? I live in Norman, we have no more towers than anyone else and the students certainly didn't have a housing shortage. The Commons were here back then as well as a lot of OU upper division students lived there.
Why would OU have courses for people that climb towers -- we have no schools dedicated to electronic technicians. OU does not award a General Engineering degree.
I am hoping that the embargo on the OU story, is at the behest of the FBI. They were fast to proclaim that the connection was a coincidence, which a reasonable person might assume there is an ongoing investigation already.
Check this out! And before you start reading, note the date of the article or it won't make sense.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Xinhua News Agency
NOVEMBER 17, 1994, THURSDAY
Feature: A System Closer Than A Spider's Web --UNSCOM Monitoring System in Iraq
by zhang dacheng
Baghdad
Three grey and white pigeons were startled to leave a roof beam of a bright and spacious workshop when a group of correspondents came to visit Nasr machinery factory Tuesday. Over there are the surveillance cameras installed by the United Nations Special Commission on destroying and monitoring Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (UNSCOM), said Aref Kardoori, 41-year-old director of the factory which was located opposite to a military camp at Taji area some 30 kilometers north of Baghdad.The gate of the factory was guarded by soldiers with heavy machine guns and many high installations were painted with anti-air raid green camouflage. Sitting on the some 50-meter-long beam, six blue colored video cameras and two photo cameras were vigilantly staring at a row of giant digital control vertical drilling machines. A bunch of black cables connecting with the cameras crawled from the beam into a room at the corner in the workshop and there was an entrance warning board on the wall of the room whose door was locked by a steel wire with an IAEA (the international atomic energy agency) lead sealing. Kardoori said that the room was a monitoring station which was indefinitely visited by the U.N. weapons inspectors for analyzing the tape and photos taken by the cameras.
Outside the workshop and in front of a small white house, there stood a 10-meter-high silver colored metal pole holding a yellow disc receiver of one-meter diameter. In the house, a gun shell like metal cylinder was under testing at a hydraulic test table which was under the surveillance by a video camera. The video camera was connected by cables with two sets of Kooltronic brand electronic equipment whose doors were all sealed by black plastic strips with the word UNSCOM on them.
"This camera can be remotely controlled and can round-the-clock send signals to the U.N. monitoring headquarters in Baghdad," Kardoori said, adding that there was another kid of surveillance devices that could give an alarm to the headquarters any time when the machines under surveillance were turned on or moved about.
Since its foundation in 1988 by the Iraqi Military Industry Commission, the Nasr machinery factory, with a large number of advanced machines imported from Britain, Germany and other European countries, had made a great contribution to the development of Iraq's arsenal of mass destruction weapons. Under the U.N. Resolution 687 which ended the 1991 Gulf War, the factory was allowed to produce the missiles with a range less than 150 kilometers. Following the total destruction of Iraq's biological, chemical, nuclear weapons and long-range missiles by nearly 100 teams of U.N. weapons experts in three years, the UNSCOM established on august 1 a weapons monitoring and verification center in the canal hotel in the outskirts of Baghdad.
Commanded by Goran Wallen, a 61-year-old retired Rear Admiral of the Royal Swedish Navy, the center can round-the-clock receive and analyze all the information collected through a 90-meter-high communication tower at the hotel which remotely controls all the video and photo cameras, sensors, tape recorders and other surveillance devices installed at a about 750 weapons-related industry sites and installations throughout the country. The center also has an access to the latest information from the United States' U-2 high altitude reconnaissance planes based in neighboring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the surveillance satellite which keeps a routine flying over Iraq. Dozens of resident weapons inspectors at the center regularly take samples from the water, the soil and the air around the sites.
"Such a monitoring system is organized even closer than a spider's web," said a liaison officer from the Iraqi Military Industry Commission.
As a focus of the pro-and-con sanctions struggle, the weapons field has been witnessing endless confrontations between Iraq and the U.N. inspectors. Iraq demands lifting or easing the sanctions as a reward for its destruction of the U.N.-banned weapons and acceptance of the long-term monitoring system, while the UNSCOM led by Rolf Ekeus delayed for many times the official starting of the system, one of the most advanced systems in the worldwide disarmament field.
It is expected that after Iraq's recognition of Kuwait last week, Baghdad will enhance its efforts for an early beginning and a short trial period of the U.N. monitoring system in a bid to win an early lifting of the four-year-old U.N. sanctions which have inflicted great sufferings to the 18 million Iraqis.
The lamestream media will paint Moore as being a victim of the Luddite Bush administration. Perhaps that is Moore's aim in this new "revelation."
Thanks for the ping. You did an excellent job of pointing out the inconsistencies in this story.
Several of us were chastised on an earlier thread for saying that pictures of Nick Berg did not resemble the man being executed in that video. Still others say that the video is fake. We saw a poor copy, but did notice the lack of blood when the head was held up.
Others have failed to find out much about Nick's company, Prometheus whatever. It's not registered in any state.
Nick if you're alive, you'll be grounded for for 25 years!
I say haul Moore's sorry ass into an interrogation room, and find out what the hell is going on.
I haven't seen any info as to whether he had a camera with him, but I would say He Did.
That's what my son and I both think. Only thing that makes sense.
I am indeed prayng...I think our research could blow this puppy wide open....I really do.
IIRC, This is a left-wing organization. If not mistaken, in Portland OR
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