Holy Cow. That's how Berg met Aziz, his business associate in Iraq.According to Berg's emails published by the Philadelphia Inquirer and others, Berg met Aziz in Iraq, not at a Business Conference. Below is the text as I copied originally from the Inquirer (no longer available online). Here is a link to the email as published by Associated Press. The text is the same, with the exception of the Inquirer's intro:
Following are emails sent by Nicholas Berg to friends and colleagues back home during a January trip to Iraq to secure business. Spellings appear as they do in Berg's e-mails. The names of the recipients of the e-mails have been removed. The e-mails were provided to the Associated Press by David Skalish, an engineer at Philadelphia radio station WPHT-AM.-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Berg [mailto:climbing_hand@hotmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 11:36 AM
(snip)
I’ve found a very competent and fairly reliable commercial Manager here. He’s actually been living in Philadelphia the last twenty years and just came back - so he’s similarly a bit out of his element. Imagine coming home to a country so different form where you grew up. We’re right now at an office near the sporting club where he played European Football as a kid.
Since then it’s been destroyed, rebuilt, run by Oday, son of Hussein, and finally privatized. The fact alone that he and I are just now sitting in a free and open internet shop is unbeliveable to most Iraqis. Even a year ago he would have been arrested upon his return. Neither of us would be seeing the un-restricted internet. At any rate, Aziz will do us well I think, and I’m happy I finally found someone I can strategize with.
I vaguely remenber seeing Aziz interviewed. around the same time that Hugo and Andy Duke spoke to the media on a balcony in Baghdad. I thought Aziz mentioned he already knew NB before he came to Iraq and they made plans to meet up again when they were both in Iraq. I remember that that story was not something I had heard before, and it also didn't jive well with the story that Hugo and Andy were telling. So they very well could have met here in the States....
The way that they met was through the conference. I believe the initial contact was Berg sending an email to Aziz. Not unusual for the organizers of such conferences to publish contact info for those that wish to trade info. Have seen that in conferences set up to facilitate "teaming" of primes, not just subcontractors.