Berg's sister confused over Moore's taped interview

Knight Ridder ^ | Fri, May. 28, 2004 | William Bunch

[Raebie]

Posted on Fri, May. 28, 2004 Berg's sister confused over Moore's taped interview

BY WILLIAM BUNCH

Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - The sister of Nick Berg, the contractor from the Philadelphia suburbs who was beheaded earlier this month in Iraq, says she's dumbfounded by reports that liberal icon Michael Moore had filmed an interview with her late brother for his new anti-war film.

"I'm very skeptical of this," said Sara Berg, a Virginia attorney whose brother's beheading sparked a global uproar.

But she said there was no way to confirm that Moore had sent a tape of the reported 20-minute interview to their parents' home in West Chester, as the filmmaker suggested in a statement Thursday, because the couple has been away.

Moore's acknowledgment that he had interview footage of Berg that had been shot - but not used - for his highly controversial "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary may be the strangest twist yet in the increasingly weird saga of Berg and his Iraqi travels, which led to his slaying.

The initial story that touched off the controversy appeared Thursday on the online magazine Salon.com.

It said the interview took place in the United States late last year, before Berg, a radio-tower technician, made the first of two trips to Iraq seeking work there as a private contractor.

So, how would a completely unknown young wannabe contractor like Berg come to the attention of Moore, whose anti-President Bush screed "Dude, Where's My Country?" was the best-selling book in the nation at the time?

Stranger than that: Why would Moore or his crew interview Berg for "Fahrenheit 9/11" for 20 minutes, when Berg's family insists the slain contractor was pro-Bush and supported the American military action in Iraq?

The film, which just took top honors at the Cannes Film Festival, blasts Bush and shows graphic war footage from Iraq.

We may never know the answers, because Berg is dead and Moore says he has no plans to release the interview footage to the public.

"We have an interview with Nick Berg," Moore's terse statement said. "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."

Friends of Berg, the Henderson High School grad, say he was an adventurous, inventive and perhaps naive young man who simply wanted to help in the rebuilding of Iraq but disregarded safety warnings, traveling solo and in private taxis.

Berg was arrested by Iraqi police on March 24, held in custody for 13 days, and released - only to disappear again on April 10. His headless body was found on a Baghdad overpass on May 8, three days before the video of the decapitation was posted.

Despite some contradictory evidence, the CIA claims the execution was done by an al Qaeda terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Since then, some have questioned why Berg had been in Iraq, as well as some of his strange connections.

The FBI questioned Berg in 2002 to find out why his e-mail password had ended up with an Oklahoma terror suspect linked to al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

In Iraq, Berg partnered with an ex-Philadelphia Iraqi expatriate who'd been convicted in a Russian-exile crack-vial ring before becoming the highly visible leader of an anti-Saddam Hussein group backed by the Bush administration.

[RGSpincich]

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[Travis McGee]

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