What motivation would Moore have for lying about having the interview footage? So far it doesn't make him look good.
This is going to be fun. Does Drudge have anything to say about this?
I can think of a few.
One, he's a media whore. He put his finger in the wind and figured that his new film is going to be a box office bomb. He tried the trick of whining about not being able to get a distributor because of the controversial nature of his film. Heck, it worked for Mel Gibson, he figured. Hmmm...didn't work for Moore, though. He won the top award at Cannes and figured maybe that'd bring him some box office. Wrong again. Within a few days of Cannes, he'd already dropped out of the headlines and people were yawning. Suddenly this story of the Nick Berg video is "leaked" to salon.com. Don't believe for a minute that anything is accidentally "leaked" to salon.com without Moore's knowledge and blessing, if not his outright instigation. Now everyone is talking about Michael Moore and F911 again.
Two, he's an America hating Bush bashing idiot of the highest magnitude. So is Nick Berg's father. With Mike Berg's shared agenda and cooperation, they're both happy to use the brutal murder of Nick Berg as nothing more than a prop. Between the two of them, they can cook and spin this anyway they like. Moore can scream about becoming an FBI and Bush administration target when he refuses to release the video. Imagine him screaming, "The Bush regime has NO principals and NO morals. Nick Berg's family doesn't want the Bush propagandists to have this video of their son. How dare Bush make such demands of a grieving family?" That's just one scenario I can think of.
So far it doesn't make him look good.
You don't really think he cares about that, do you?