Wish we could get more details on the dates. Nick quit Cornell Dec. 98 so spring semester 99 at OU makes sense but apparently he stayed out of school until fall semester 99. Why would he still be in Norman, OK over a year (Feb/Mar 01)later to ride on the same bus with Moussaoui? Atta and al Shehhi were in Norman in July 2000 which is closer for a timeline. Could Nick have met up with Atta first?
Someone on another thread mentioned he was getting more involved in religion - isn't that the same story we hear about converts to the religion of peace?
Hey.... Norman was a hopping place then. If you recall.. Bob Stoops won his National Championship during that time frame. Berg was probably just a fan wanting cheap student tickets :)
Thought the religion he was getting more involved in was Judaism, not Islam. There was mention by his family of him going to Temple more often.
Yeah, why would a Pennsylvania resident leave an Ivy League school to transfer to...Oklahoma?
I'm assuming he had no roots/ties to Oklahoma prior to '98. What, he decided to go back to school, put on a blindfold, picked up a dart and threw it at a map of the U.S., and had it land on Norman or something?
Just weird.
Norman Okla was a real HOTBED.
According to our paper, Berg was here in the Fall of 1999 at OU but no one knows when he left Norman.
It's easy to be confused with all the misreporting. CBS today on their website says that Berg gave the password directly to Moussaoui, but that's not what Berg's father or the FBI reported.
If you read the direct quote from Berg's father in my post, he states the son didn't come into contact with Moussaoui directly, but with "some terrorist people — no one knew they were terrorists at the time, they were just fellow students — were also taking the bus..."
According to KJRH Channel 2, Tulsa: "Berg attended the University of Oklahoma during the 1999-2000 school year, but did not graduate... During his time in Norman, Berg was employed as a temporary employee at the Lloyd Noble Center. His job was to help setup and tear down events. Those who knew him say Berg loved to debate political and social issues. They also say he was always looking for ways to better himself."
Several other news sources have mentioned that Nicholas used skills learned at the job in Norman to get a job at the Republican National Convention, which took place July 29 - August 3, 2000 in Philadelphia. The timeline is vague, but I get the impression that Nicholas didn't return to Oklahoma after that.
Aside from the visit to Norman by Atta and al-Shehhi in late June/early July, there are other possibilities in the password theft.
Moussaoui didn't arrive in Oklahoma until February 2001, but he roomed with two Muslims, Husseim Al-Attas and Mukarram Ali who were apparently attending the University before he got there.
From CBS News, July 22, 2002:
""al-Attas, who was an engineering student at the University of Oklahoma, had shared an apartment with Moussaoui and at least one other person for several weeks."
From Newsday, 2003:
"Moussaoui did sign up for a pass to a University of Oklahoma exercise facility in Norman from May through August (2001). Some students, a university spokesman said, remember him using the weights and cardiovascular equipment.
According to some members of the Muslim community there, he found temporary housing with two other men -- Hussein al-Attas, who said he was from Saudi Arabia, and Mukarram Ali, who said he was from India. Members of the mosque understood that both were students, and they had been attending the mosque for some time before Moussaoui appeared."
From the LA Times, March 30, 2002:
"In the following weeks, Moussaoui spent his time in Oklahoma, much of it with two Muslims he had met through a mosque in Norman, according to those who knew them and government officials. Both men now are in federal custody, presumably held as material witnesses against Moussaoui.
"One of those friends, Hussein al-Attas, who was detained with Moussaoui in Minnesota, said Moussaoui talked to him for hours about the plight of Muslims and their need to fight the West, official sources say. A 19-year-old Yemeni who had memorized the Koran cover to cover, al-Attas would accompany Moussaoui on the next--and final--leg of his journey.
"The other, another fellow worshiper at the mosque named Mukarram Ali, lent Moussaoui a Compaq laptop computer that would briefly be the focus of federal investigators' efforts to determine whether--and what--Moussaoui was plotting."