I’m a skeptic at heart, but this story is REALLY strange. As I understand it, we have a young man who’s father is a radical leftist activist (a member of A.N.S.W.E.R). But he’s supposed to be a young Republican. Okay, fine. Lots of kids rebel against their parent’s beliefs.
But then this kid just happens to be on a bus with Moussaoui, and willingly gives this stranger his computer AND his E-mail password? A stranger who says, “Excuse me, but could I please write an E-mail on your laptop”? And for that matter, just how do you write an E-mail on someone’s laptop when it isn’t connected to the internet? Write it and ask the guy to mail it for you later when he gets connected to the net? If so, why in hell would he need the kid’s password? And why would anyone ever give a total stranger their E-mail address? That story makes no sense at all.
Then this young Republican decides to go to Iraq and just wander around? It’s all very strange. I don’t know how to make sense of any of it, but something doesn’t seem right about this one.
Geez beleez, you people. Letting a total stranger your laptop is not evidence that you’re part of a massive conspiracy or indication of any seriously messed state-of-mind. I’ve let a total stranger use my computer before. Of course I know enough to put up reasonable safeguards against them getting my passwords or any other sensitive information. But still…
And if you’re sitting next to someone on a bus, you can look over their shoulder and make sure they’re not taking down furniture.com with a denial of service attack or something else bad.
I’ve heard two other bizarre conspiracy theories about Berg so far besides this thread. I predict that by next week they’ll have tied him to the Kennedy assassination.
Meh. If you’re sitting next to a guy on a bus for a long trip, I can see where there’s a little pressure to help. Anyway, if it’s true that this guy went to Ghana and came back emaciated because he kept giving away his food, I can buy that he let a stranger use his laptop on a bus.
I agree that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I just can’t wrap my arms around it. Berg allowed a terrorist to use his laptop, and then later turned up at a place teeming with members of that terrorist organization and we’re supposed to believe that it was just a huge coincidence? His father is very anti-Bush, yet Berg was supposed to be a republican? Berg is a Jew yet he was walking around with the qoran? Berg had no job but was wandering around a war zone? He says in e-mail that U.S. officials had detained him, but the U.S. officials deny this and say he was repeatedly told to go home.
Bizarre.
The CIA thinks that al-quaeda was behind Berg’s beheading. I realize they are not rational, but what a strange thing to do when public opinion of the entire WORLD was mounting against the U.S. due to the torture scandal. Why risk turning public sympathy BACK towards America by brutally and publicly executing an American?
Which lends itself to some troubling, mutually exclusive theories:
Berg WAS a secret operative for the U.S. He was hoping to infiltrate al-quaeda by pretending to be sympathic to their cause (e.g. carrying a qoran around). His luck tragically ran out.
Problems with this theory: a) His father is very vocally anti-Bush; b) Berg met Moussaoui; c) He e-mailed his parents that the U.S. was detaining him
Berg was an al-quaeda sympathizer who was attempting to gain in-roads with al-quaeda operatives. They thought him to be a double agent and executed him.
Problems with this theory: a) He’s a Jew.; b) It would be the irony of ironies that al-quaeda not only beheaded one of the few Americans who was actually on their side but that the beheading back-fired by swinging sympathy back toward the U.S. ; c) Berg’s an American. It’s a hard pill to swallow to think he was a traitor.
So either he was an American hero OR he was a nefarious traitor. Or he was a naive young man who thought he could help the Iraqi people by going over there and, I don’t know, building homes for the homeless. With his computer skills. His acquaintance with Moussaoui was just a strange coincidence.
Yeah right. Sometimes a tower is just a tower, but even I, a world-class skeptic, have a hard time buying that.
Damn! I have the exact same chair, and the walls in my hallway where the chair is are painted yellow. OMFG!! Berg was beheaded in my hallway! My neighbour is an Al Quaida terrorist!
No no no. That’s just my fridge that needs cleaning.
If there is something more here, I think the most likely scenario is that this guy was just a wanna-be terrorist. Oklahoma City… Perhaps he’s not just a ‘Republican’, but actually a fringe wacko of the McVeigh variety? He tries to hook up with al-Qaida, and they use him for his E-mail and maybe a few other little things. Then he shows up in Iraq and says, “Hey guys! I’m here to help out.”. They take him in, let him believe he’s one of the boys, then execute him when it suits their purpose. As a Jew, they’re never going to accept him into the organization, and maybe they suspect him of being an agent. So they string him along, tell him they are going to threaten him with execution to try to get the U.S. to bow to their demands, and he becomes a willing hostage. Then they just carry out the threat and actually kill him. Maybe when the knife hit his neck his was totally surprised by that, thinking it was all going to be an act.
Who knows? I don’t buy into grand conspiracies involving MOSSAD or the U.S government. But the story of idiot kids hooking up with terrorists is getting pretty damned common. Remember Johnnie Walker, the “American Taliban”? Or Richard “Shoe Bomber” Reid? Or the snipers? There seems to be no shortage of supply of brain-challenged westerners who want to stick it to the evil west.
So do we think Berg was a long-time member of Al Qaeda, or that Moussaoui sat next to him on the bus and said “I’m a terrorist, can I please use your computer?” As far as I know, most of AQ’s recruiting is done at mosques, and I don’t care how anti-West you are, I don’t think they’d use a Jew.
It’s definitely miles beyond bizarre. But I still find the idea of a Al Qaeda letting in a Jew and then killing one of their own members stranger than simple coincidence.
That’s really not unusual.
My brother is a Jew who walks around wearing a pin of V.I. Lenin and sometimes wears a kaffiyeh. Trust me, stranger things have happened. At least Berg had the excuse of trying to learn about the locale.
Dumb, but already explained I think. Some of the articles I’ve read mentioned that he went to Iraq thinking he had a contract, only to learn it had fallen through.
The US does say, however, that he was held by Iraqi police and that there may have been American agents on hand.
I’m not saying every single question is solved, definitely not. But I don’t think these things are quite as mysterious as they appear.
of all the bus seats, in all the busses, in all the cities of the world, you had to walk in and sit down in this one…
The mind boggles.
The senses reel.
Granted that some things ARE coincidence. this one is off the hiznook.
BTW (forgive cross-thread hijack) stories are now circulating that the man identified by cpa as Al Z died four months ago in falluja, but what the hey…
Would Berg actually have had a blackberry or some other ubiquitously funcitioning laptop (mobile modem?)
Short of handing over the machine to his swarthy seatmate (no slur intended, rather swarthy myself, I’m just saying that Moussaoui is not passing for Swedish any time soon), or using it while being observed,…
Why give your password–any fool who wants one can have a hundred free email accounts in 30 seconds (per each…)-- how are you going to frame a request like that.
Say, buddy, couldn’t help noticing that youy have one of those email accounts.
Boy, I sure wish I had one of them, so I could send a message to my aged mother back in Marseilles, she has terminal impetigo and the receipt of any communication, however impersonal and digital, could save her life, if only I could get an email account or borrow someone elses…
Geraldo interviewed two westerners in Baghdad who knew Nick Berg. One said Berg was a “tower guy”. He had a climbing belt and tools, and would install broadcasting equipment… mostly cellular communications.
I saw that interview too. Did you notice the conflicting stories? He told one guy he wasn’t making any money and he wanted to go home, and told the other guy he’d made a lot of money and was going sailing in Turkey next.
Geraldo was very sceptical of the whole story. He said: “If Nick Berg was just a ‘businessman’ in Iraq, then I’m an astronaut”.
I think the password business was a coincidence, and from his letters home, he sounds like a buisnessman to me. Rather than wandering, his letters (registration required) are filled with accounts of towers he was busy checking out, so much so, that he actually wrote “technical stuff” or something similar, and then “end of tower stuff.” A good example:
Note he also mentions his uncle. He also brings up being mistaken for someone other than American:
From what I get out of his letters (dating from January), he spent almost all of his time trying to get to different sites, examining towers, trying to get a contract. He left Iraq and then returned in March to find out a contract he had wasn’t available any longer. Since he had a relative in Mosul, I can see him being familiar with that area, and maybe feeling more comfortable leaving by that route, when he realized he was not going to get work. Since he’d been in war torn areas before, and had already invested time in Iraq, I can see him staying a little longer than was wise, so the entire thing wouldn’t be a wash-out. He also sounds naive to me, with his mention of “gung ho” security guys.
At least Geraldo’s not claiming to be a journalist anymore.
How can you be surprised when the guy obviously didn’t ask? We already know that Berg was in Israel, hence the talking about it part. If he guessed right, that’s why the Iraqi police stopped him (the Jewish name and an Israeli stamp on his passport).
I don’t know, Marley. Maybe it’s more of a reflection of poor journalism. The guy’s a reporter, had a 45 minute conversation with Berg, and came away with “he had a nice smile”?!!
I’m not a journalist (or an astronaut)- maybe I’m just nosy by nature - but unless someone is being deliberately cagey, I learn a hell of a lot more in 45 minutes.
I can understand certain circumstances in Iraq where you might not want to reveal/ask about nationality. But why in this circumstance? And how would it be prudent to mention ties to Israel, if there was a concern?
But this is the least of all the fishy stuff that’s out so far.
BTW, I’m still trying to figure out why you roll-eyed alaricthegoth’s comments about the email password borrow. Are you saying it’s tinfoil-ish to be suspicious of this story?
I’m not sure what else there is to explain. To me, Alaric is just saying it can’t be true because… it can’t. I admit this is some damn weird stuff, but like I said, none of the theories or ideas I’ve heard kicked around here seem more plausible than just a coincidence. I said nothing of tinfoil, especially since that will usually get you a warning around here. It does seem to me that we have a number of people corroborating the popular story about Berg and what he was doing in Iraq and nobody has offered anything but suspiciousness to the contrary.
I actually am a journalist (or I will be when somebody hires me ;)). Maybe the interviewer is a dope, but he does say “In today’s Iraq a pleasant conversation can spoil quickly with aggressive questioning, since everyone is defensive about security.” He did learn some things about him, but yes, the guy may have been reticent to talk about being an American with things in Iraq being how they are.
There’s obviously something very fishy about the dispute over whether Berg was in US custody or not. There are too many contradicting stories, all from people who should be telling the truth.
I didn’t know about that rule. Are you sure? I’ve seen it hurled about quite frequently, even in GD.
True, to a certain extent. But an intel agent would certainly have a cover story that could be corroborated to a certain extent. Telecom is the perfect cover for an intel operative. Nothing suspicious about travelling around inspecting, surveying, and taking notes when you’re “the tower guy”, right? It gets fuzzy when you look beyond the sound-bites…
Did Berg actually work on any towers at any time in Iraq? No one will verify that. US govt says he never worked for them or the coalition. How did he make “a lot of money”, as one of the corroborators alleges? Seems he spent most of his time travelling the country, inspecting towers (and then sending out “chatty” emails with detailed specs on all his inspections).
Although his company name ends in Inc., it is not registered as a corporation. No website, no advertising, no one in the US he did tower work for, no employees (other than his father?)… Berg had no degree, an unregistered company, and no as yet verified tower work experience and yet he was an “expert”?
Again, this is just one other facet - there’s so much more about this story that is suspicious…
All the more reason for you to crack this story. Be a little more suspicious, man! You could be the next Hersh or Woodward… Or Geraldo
Maybe Berg got Moussaouis password off of his (Bergs) laptop and used it to dig into Moussaouis life. Maybe Berg was able to contact Mouss and things took off from there.
Everyone else thinks Bergs password was duplicated, maybe it was Moussouis password that Berg stole.
