That makes two of us -- only reason I can think of for OU profs to all of a sudden regained their memories and know Berg well!
Nicolas Berg and the Continuing Search for Answers
Posted by Ira Simmons
Sunday, May 30, 2004
When I wrote ''Nicholas Berg: The Dots Do Not Connect'' for ChronWatch on May 13, I knew I had a very hot story. Along with Barbara Stock's poignant ''My Rage Over the Nick Berg Killing,'' both columns set ChronWatch records for the number of hits and the volume of e-mail sent to our website. Because of the many unanswered questions about his life and death, ''Nicholas Berg'' also was the most used term on several major search engines during the week after the tape of the beheading was made public.
In the ensuing weeks, a few important questions have been answered. But two troubling mysteries basically remain unsolved: a) What was Berg doing in Iraq when he was detained by authorities and later in the hands of Al Qaeda, and b) What really was his relationship with the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, in 1999 when both were in Oklahoma, and did it have anything to do with Berg's eventual fate? And a related question is ''Did father Michael Berg with his activist, far-left political leaning, contribute to the his son being in harm's way in Iraq and was thus indirectly responsible for his murder?"
One part of the puzzle has been solved: Nicholas Berg did perform repair work on communication towers for radio stations in the Northeast and was qualified to do the same in Iraq. Despite a media report that claimed his company never registered with the Pennsylvania Corporation Bureau, one source told ChronWatch that Berg did indeed complete high-elevation repairs and subsequently billed clients as the Prometheus Methods Tower Service. His invoices included the required Federal Tax Identification Number. Prometheus also employed two workers plus his father helped with the business end of the small company. If Nick Berg performed any work on a tower under a phony name, the Federal Communications Commission would impose penalties on a radio station quicker than you can say Howard Stern!
In my earlier column, I mentioned that virtually all reconstruction work in Iraq must pass through a few companies that have been given large government contracts. In January, the Harris Corporation, based in Melbourne Florida, was awarded a $96 million contract for development of the Iraqi Media Network, which included repair work of communication towers. It is believed that Nick Berg's initial trip to Iraq was to access tower damage and that he returned to the U.S. to negotiate a deal with Harris to perform the repairs. But here is where the trail turns slippery and cold. Before returning to Iraq, Berg e-mailed a friend that he was talking to Harris at the company's broadcast offices near Cincinnati but there is no evidence that a contract was ever signed.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that while in Iraq in March, Berg met with Jan Bosman, the regional program manager for the Iraqi Media Network, ostensibly managed by the Harris Corporation, about obtaining work. Harris said nothing publicly after Berg's beheading video was shown which seems to indicate that he never completed a deal with the communications company. ChronWatch is continuing the investigation into what Nick Berg was doing during his second trip to Iraq.
On May 14, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a news conference to report that Berg was not willfully involved with Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who had used his e-mail account when both were living in Oklahoma. This was after Fox News and other news organizations had reported the story and the father had made some veiled references to a brush with the F.B.I. during a press conference.
Blindly accepting such an explanation from Ashcroft without asking a few questions seems ridiculous! How many people, especially somebody as intelligent and computer literate as Nick Berg, would blindly lend his laptop computer or password to a stranger who spoke broken English, on a bus? And not set up a separate free e-mail account? I do not believe college buses had wireless Internet connection capabilities back in 1999!
A recent media report alleges that Berg teamed up in Baghdad to repair communication towers with Aziz Kadoory Aziz, a shady former Philadelphia resident who led a controversial group of Iraqi expatriates supposedly with encouragement by the U.S. government. But Aziz, also known as Aziz al-Taee, was convicted in 1994 for his role in a Russian-émigré crime ring that was selling millions of vials used for crack. Not surprisingly, this report has not gotten any traction.
Unfortunately the two latest items about Nicholas Berg appear to be more smoke than fire. A Thursday story in the National Enquirer is long on spy theories, short on facts, and repeats the false charge that Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc. never existed. Then we have an assertion from far-left film maker Michael Moore that he has a videotape of a 16-minute interview of Berg. Not conducted by Moore, the interview allegedly was recorded in early December at a convention in Virginia about rebuilding Iraq before Berg made his first trip to the liberated country. Similar to his two recent political movies ''Bowling for Columbine'' and ''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' Moore's boast of having a tape of Berg before the world knew of him may be more fiction than fact. In his Friday report about Moore, Philadelphia Daily News reporter William Bunch asks:
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?
Bunch also wondered 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? But contradicting earlier statements by his father, brother David Berg now says his brother wasn't overtly political: He went to Iraq because he had certain beliefs about helping people in messed up situations, but it's not like he was trying to help the Bush administration, David Berg told the Associated Press.
Rather than an American spy as hinted in the National Enquirer story, any link to Michael Moore or his friends would have made Nicholas Berg more likely to be aligned with his father's political activities. As we know, Michael Berg is a highly active member of International ANSWER (''Act Now, Stop the War, and End Racism'') a group that formed a few days after the 9-11 terrorist attacks and shares the same extreme ''America Is The Root Of All Evil'' mantra as the film maker.
Similar to winning the War On Terror, finding the truth about Nicholas Berg is proving to be a slow process, but I believe we are making progress.
Ira Simmons
http://www.topthecharts.net/