Seawolf
Member
My money is on the guess that he was a Mossad agent.
Do you notice the ONE THING nobody is saying about Nick Berg?
- Thread starter The_Antibubba
- Start date
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jimpeel
Member
Seawolf
Or at least a Mossad asset.
Of course, with the Mossad we will never know because, unlike our own CIA and congress which can't keep a secret about anything, they will never tell.
Or at least a Mossad asset.
Of course, with the Mossad we will never know because, unlike our own CIA and congress which can't keep a secret about anything, they will never tell.
Waitone
Member
He could also have been a useful fool for AQ.
7.62FullMetalJacket
Member
William of Occam (1284-1347) was an English philosopher and theologian. His work on knowledge, logic and scientific inquiry played a major role in the transition from medieval to modern thought. He based scientific knowledge on experience and self-evident truths, and on logical propositions resulting from those two sources. In his writings, Occam stressed the Aristotelian principle that entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. This principle became known as Occam's Razor, a problem should be stated in its basic and simplest terms. In science, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected.
throwweight
member
All of the 'useful tools' of Al Quida
are in the US Congress, led by Teddy bin Drinkin.
are in the US Congress, led by Teddy bin Drinkin.
Marshall
Member
OK, I'll be the first to speculate on a possiblity........
Was he in ca-hoots them which was his reason for being there, which is why the FBI/Iraqi police held him? Also, his beheading was either for fear he turned over information to the FBI/Iraqi police or, for just being a liability to Al Qaeda from then on?
I know, a ton of questions, me too. What other senarios do you all see?
Was he in ca-hoots them which was his reason for being there, which is why the FBI/Iraqi police held him? Also, his beheading was either for fear he turned over information to the FBI/Iraqi police or, for just being a liability to Al Qaeda from then on?
I know, a ton of questions, me too. What other senarios do you all see?
7.62FullMetalJacket
Member
I think it would be absurd to believe that an American Jew was in cahoots with Al Qaeda. That is, unless he was as twisted as his dad. All information points to him not being anit-American.
So, Occam's razor leaves us with the Mossad. That would explain his happenstance meeting with AQ agents in the US, his passage to Iraq illegaly with only an Israeli stamp in the passport (although I can't believe they would slip like that), his detention on suspicion by Iraqi/US forces, the offered flight out (as an asset), his hanging around bad parts of town "looking for work" while possibly running nefarious errands.......
You get my drift...
But the "stupid" angle does have its merits.
So, Occam's razor leaves us with the Mossad. That would explain his happenstance meeting with AQ agents in the US, his passage to Iraq illegaly with only an Israeli stamp in the passport (although I can't believe they would slip like that), his detention on suspicion by Iraqi/US forces, the offered flight out (as an asset), his hanging around bad parts of town "looking for work" while possibly running nefarious errands.......
You get my drift...
But the "stupid" angle does have its merits.
Marshall
Member
What's his reason for carrying a Koran? His OU happenstance with Mossoui and the computer password?
grampster
Member
I also mentioned in a thread a few days ago that Mr. Berg was a Jew. Someone responded by saying "what does his religion have to do with anything.......
The simple reason usually being correct leads me to believe that perhaps Mr. Berg was like many Americans today......they think that going anywhere in the rest of the world is like wandering around in Michigan.
The simple reason usually being correct leads me to believe that perhaps Mr. Berg was like many Americans today......they think that going anywhere in the rest of the world is like wandering around in Michigan.
ravinraven
Member
"All of the 'useful tools' of Al Quida
are in the US Congress, led by Teddy bin Drinkin."
Well, not all of them. There's Looneywood, CNNABCCBSNBC.
95% of college profs. and airhead america.
rr
__________________
are in the US Congress, led by Teddy bin Drinkin."
Well, not all of them. There's Looneywood, CNNABCCBSNBC.
95% of college profs. and airhead america.
rr
__________________
Unlucky
member
Didn't he have an Iraqi uncle/relatives living in the northern part of Iraq? There a very few Iraqi Jews left, so I'm guessing these relative may have been Christian (perhaps Muslims)?
7.62FullMetalJacket
Member
Shucky Darn, I forgot about that
He does have Iraqi relative(s). Now that screws up the whole Occam's razor thing.
Unless.............The marriage within the family to an Iraqi(s) was designed for future Mossad cover?
It is getting deep.
Stoopid is looking very likely
He does have Iraqi relative(s). Now that screws up the whole Occam's razor thing.
Unless.............The marriage within the family to an Iraqi(s) was designed for future Mossad cover?
It is getting deep.
Stoopid is looking very likely
Marshall
Member
7.62FMJ,
What is troubling is that their are extremely intelligent people on this forum and when we are all kinda..uhhh...stumped, daised and confused about this, it leaves too much to the imagination. The whole thing just doesn't add up.
What is troubling is that their are extremely intelligent people on this forum and when we are all kinda..uhhh...stumped, daised and confused about this, it leaves too much to the imagination. The whole thing just doesn't add up.
7.62FullMetalJacket
Member
Marshall,
We may never know.
We may never know.
Marshall
Member
True my friend, true.
MBG
Member
Nick’s religion has been front and center in the headlines here. As for CIA/Mossad; probably not. The insurgents may have thought he was, but I don’t think it mattered to them one way or the other.
There were remnants of an Iraqi Jewish community, but from what I’ve heard, most of them have gotten out of dodge since we rolled through; so the family story is plausible.
But the pieces still don’t add. With the limited available set of facts, my guess is that the father asked some of his ANSWER friends to make sure that someone looked after his kid in the sand box.
And they looked after him.
I can imagine he refused the ride home offered to him, because he thought transport was taken care of through his father.
That would also explain why no one would touch him for the microwave antenna repairs. Tech’s from my old employer (a microwave based phone company) get pestered on a weekly basis to head over; there is lots of work to be done in that field. But, if you can’t pass a clearance because you are linked to a Sadam funded anti-war group with reputed ties to the current insurgency, you don’t work.
I hope I’m wrong with this guess. The Berg’s have enough pain on their plate.
Marty
There were remnants of an Iraqi Jewish community, but from what I’ve heard, most of them have gotten out of dodge since we rolled through; so the family story is plausible.
But the pieces still don’t add. With the limited available set of facts, my guess is that the father asked some of his ANSWER friends to make sure that someone looked after his kid in the sand box.
And they looked after him.
I can imagine he refused the ride home offered to him, because he thought transport was taken care of through his father.
That would also explain why no one would touch him for the microwave antenna repairs. Tech’s from my old employer (a microwave based phone company) get pestered on a weekly basis to head over; there is lots of work to be done in that field. But, if you can’t pass a clearance because you are linked to a Sadam funded anti-war group with reputed ties to the current insurgency, you don’t work.
I hope I’m wrong with this guess. The Berg’s have enough pain on their plate.
Marty
The_Antibubba
Member
Grampster
You're wrong-I don't think there's ANYTHING like wandering around in Michigan
OK, maybe I should have clarified in my initial post. I was seeing very little in print. As to why he was there, you conspiracists can shed your tinfoil. As 7.62fmj points out, Occam's Razor has not left the building. My guess is, Mr. Berg was in Iraq partly because he was in denial about reality. Liberals see what they want to see. Or to put it more accurately, "If I can envision a better world, then I should behave as though that world is already in place." Mr. Berg ignored common sense and the warnings of his government, and ignored the fact that his religious beliefs made him an extra special prize.
And no, he wasn't Mossad . Mossad isn't that obvious.
Deguello, Daniel Pearl was a reporter, and reporters put themselves in harm's way sometimes. And Pakistan wasn't thought to be as dangerous as we KNOW Iraq to be.
No, Nick Berg just FUBARed.
OK, I've repudiated my original post. You can all go somewhere else now.
Are you gone yet?
You're wrong-I don't think there's ANYTHING like wandering around in Michigan
OK, maybe I should have clarified in my initial post. I was seeing very little in print. As to why he was there, you conspiracists can shed your tinfoil. As 7.62fmj points out, Occam's Razor has not left the building. My guess is, Mr. Berg was in Iraq partly because he was in denial about reality. Liberals see what they want to see. Or to put it more accurately, "If I can envision a better world, then I should behave as though that world is already in place." Mr. Berg ignored common sense and the warnings of his government, and ignored the fact that his religious beliefs made him an extra special prize.
And no, he wasn't Mossad
. Mossad isn't that obvious.Deguello, Daniel Pearl was a reporter, and reporters put themselves in harm's way sometimes. And Pakistan wasn't thought to be as dangerous as we KNOW Iraq to be.
No, Nick Berg just FUBARed.
OK, I've repudiated my original post. You can all go somewhere else now.
Are you gone yet?
ravinraven
Member
Sounds to me like...
...Nick Berg was a bit like that guy and his girlfriend who went up to Kodiak Island or someplace without a gun because they thought they could sing to the bears and be OK.
Is this it??
rr
...Nick Berg was a bit like that guy and his girlfriend who went up to Kodiak Island or someplace without a gun because they thought they could sing to the bears and be OK.
Is this it??
rr
Orthonym
Member
Talk about Occam's razor...
Maybe the the guy was just a weird, cranky, idiosyncratic individualist? Of course, that doesn't describe any of us...
Maybe the the guy was just a weird, cranky, idiosyncratic individualist? Of course, that doesn't describe any of us...
Orthonym
Member
Of course it ain't healthy to be an individualist, all by your lonesome, in a war zone.
Cool Hand Luke 22:36
member
My theory:
Berg the younger traveled to Iraq in order to make contact with the insurgents linked to Al-Queda.
This was at the behest of his father and more senior elements of International A.N.S.W.E.R.
The reason was to establish their own "back channel" negotiations with Al-Queda and the Iraqi insurgents, in order to embarrass the Bush Administration.
Intl. A.N.S.W.E.R. may have been hoping for a situation similar to that which existed during the Vietnam War where anti-war Americans (notably John Kerry) met with North Vietnamese Government officials in France in order to "negotiate" terms of peace and a US withdrawal from S. Vietnam.
Intl. A.N.S.W.E.R. would love to be able to serve as a conduit for Al-Queda and Iraqi Insurgents "reasonable" demands to end the war and stop terror attacks on the US. The attacks would never stop of course, but the extremist leftists in A.N.S.W.E.R. could use that as propaganda against the US Government just as well.
Berg was in Iraq on a mission for US anti-war groups, that's clear from his earlier contacts with Al-Queda operatives in the US.
As his father said: "They killed their best friend" referring to the Al-Queda terrorists who murdered his son.
Berg the younger traveled to Iraq in order to make contact with the insurgents linked to Al-Queda.
This was at the behest of his father and more senior elements of International A.N.S.W.E.R.
The reason was to establish their own "back channel" negotiations with Al-Queda and the Iraqi insurgents, in order to embarrass the Bush Administration.
Intl. A.N.S.W.E.R. may have been hoping for a situation similar to that which existed during the Vietnam War where anti-war Americans (notably John Kerry) met with North Vietnamese Government officials in France in order to "negotiate" terms of peace and a US withdrawal from S. Vietnam.
Intl. A.N.S.W.E.R. would love to be able to serve as a conduit for Al-Queda and Iraqi Insurgents "reasonable" demands to end the war and stop terror attacks on the US. The attacks would never stop of course, but the extremist leftists in A.N.S.W.E.R. could use that as propaganda against the US Government just as well.
Berg was in Iraq on a mission for US anti-war groups, that's clear from his earlier contacts with Al-Queda operatives in the US.
As his father said: "They killed their best friend" referring to the Al-Queda terrorists who murdered his son.
Master Blaster
Member
Personally I think he was just there trying to get work fixing towers, and it seems that he was what we would call an adrenalin junkie, he was ther because it was dangerous and challenging.
Posted on Sun, May. 16, 2004
R E L A T E D L I N K S
• Peace is the answer, Berg's father says
• U.S. kills 18 loyalists of radical cleric Sadr
• Rumsfeld OKd prison plan, report says
• More on Iraq
A life lived fearlessly, but lost too soon
Idealistic, trusting, brash, Nick Berg went to Iraq to help. It cost his life.
By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer
He was 26 years old.
He introduced himself in Arabic as bogdne - "tower guy."
He traveled the Iraqi countryside, climbing 1,000 feet into the air to inspect and repair communications towers.
In chatty, quirky e-mails to family and friends, he sounded upbeat, even happy.
He came across as someone who felt safe, someone on a mission that was worthwhile. With a bit of adventure tossed in.
But by the time Nick Berg was released after 13 days in an Iraqi prison, hostilities had escalated dramatically.
By then, getting from his Baghdad hotel to the airport and a flight home was the equivalent of "crossing a pit of fire to get to the golden oasis," said a friend, Tom Clardy.
Berg checked out of his Baghdad hotel about 7 a.m. on April 10 and told the receptionist, "Inshallah [God willing], I will be back in a few days."
A porter put his bags on a cart and they walked toward busy Saadoun Street. But the U.S. Army had blocked it. A soldier motioned for them to turn around.
The porter dropped the bags and turned back. Berg picked them up and kept walking.
His decapitated body was found 28 days later, on May 8, at a Baghdad highway overpass.
•
Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc. was the whimsical name Nick Berg cooked up for his West Chester company.
According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gave it to man.
Maybe Berg had a little of that brashness in him, too.
At the base of a radio tower taller than One Liberty Place, he'd grab hold and begin climbing. Sometimes it would take two hours to get to the top.
On the way, he'd inspect the structure, the guy wires, electrical cables. He'd repair things.
He'd done it in Texas and across the Mid-Atlantic. On Dec. 21, he left to do the same thing in Iraq.
After a conference about business opportunities in Iraq, he hooked up with Aziz Taee, Philadelphia director of the American-Iraqi Council, who agreed to give him Baghdad office space.
Berg's family said he was an idealist who had traveled to Third World countries on other projects. He wanted to help.
He quit several colleges. A hands-on guy, he disdained "the kind of job where the engineers are afraid to get their Jaguars dirty," his father said.
"The game plan was to make the towers in Iraq serviceable again," said Berg's U.S. foreman, Scott Hollinger.
In the north, Berg inspected a tower at a broadcast site near Kurdish-controlled territory.
It was kind of un-nerving to inspect this thing with so many incongruities... . Still, it was beautiful, a really superb piece of engineering nestled on a beautiful riverside... .
Before visiting a country, Berg would immerse himself in its culture, history and language, Hollinger said. He read Livingstone before he went to Africa. When he went to Iraq, he was reading A.J. Barker's Arab-Israeli Wars.
He always carried a copy of the Torah, Hollinger said. "He was a glutton for information. It wouldn't surprise me that he had the Koran with him, too."
The night before he went home from that first trip, Berg was mugged, Taee said. "I was always pressuring him to keep a low profile, but he ignored all my caution and advice." He was out late at night and took public transport.
When Berg got home on Feb. 1, "we breathed a sigh of relief," his father said.
His parents hadn't wanted him to go. They'd been afraid for him. They had even done their best to talk him out of it. At least now he was home safe.
Then he shocked them again.
He said he was going back.
•
Nick Berg infuriated his family sometimes.
He was so trusting, he'd leave his apartment door unlocked.
He believed in people.
He didn't believe, Michael Berg said, "that people would" - he paused - "do things."
Back in high school, he was the energetic one, the one who was outgoing, funny, inquisitive. The one who was always rigging up a zany device to demonstrate a physics principle.
They should have known he'd go to high places, his family and friends joked. On a family trip to the Grand Canyon, he went to the edge. When the 2000 Republican National Convention came to town, he went to the ceiling to rig wires.
He was fearless.
•
Nick Berg left the second time for Iraq on March 14.
He invited Taee to go to Mosul with him, but Taee said it was too dangerous.
By now, lots of tower companies were in Iraq. Hollinger said Berg looked to be more of a service broker.
He was compiling a database of all the towers in Iraq and what they needed. He had a likely customer: Harris Corp., a company with a $96 million contract.
"He climbed every tower in Iraq," Hollinger said. "He didn't care if he had to climb them in the dark. That was his nature."
The game plan was to score a contract, Hollinger said. Berg wanted to cover his costs.
But he also had a wedding to go to. A friend, Doug Strickland, was getting married April 3.
Berg was to be on a March 30 flight from Jordan to New York.
Michael Berg met the plane, but Nick wasn't on it.
•
April 2 was Nick Berg's birthday, and he spent it in an Iraqi prison, doing push-ups.
He was placed in an Iraqi police cell block with 70 criminals. He found humor in it, comparing it to the song "Alice's Restaurant": "I felt... like Arlo Guthrie walking into a cell full of mother-rapers and father-stabbers as an accused litterbug."
By April 2, he had already been in prison nine days. Just two days earlier, the FBI had come to the Bergs' home to ask them about Nick; the Bergs felt they had verified who he was.
But still, Nick wasn't released.
On April 5, they filed a federal suit, claiming he was being held illegally by the U.S. military.
But the question that rankled and escalated last week was: Who was really holding Nick Berg?
The U.S. government said the Iraqi military kept him. A Mosul police official said they didn't.
Michael Berg produced an April 1 e-mail from a U.S. consular officer in Iraq: "I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe... ."
A government official later said the e-mail was in error.
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has vowed to sort out the truth. "The inquiries will be very intense," the Pennsylvania Republican said.
Meanwhile, various news events swirled around the vortex that had become Nick Berg.
It turned out that the FBI had questioned him a few years ago over a possible connection to accused 9/11 coconspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Michael Berg said Nick had simply shared his computer with a fellow student at the University of Oklahoma. It was a coincidence.
But apparently, when Berg revealed that to FBI officials in Iraq, it delayed his release.
Michael Berg has contended that if his son had been released earlier, he would be home safe today. The "terrorist" connection enraged him.
"In the '50s, if you called someone a communist, you didn't have to prove it; just calling him a communist relieved him of all his rights," he said. "And that's what the word terrorist means today."
•
After he got out of prison, was Nick Berg scared?
"It's kind of difficult to say," Michael Berg said. "You're talking about a 26-year-old male who would like the world to believe he's not scared of anything. But... reading between the lines, I'd have to say yes."
The government says he refused its offer to "facilitate safe passage" out of the country.
Hollinger thinks he knows why Berg might have been reluctant to leave: "He was close to getting some... contracts."
The days after his release are murky territory. One guest at Berg's hotel told a reporter they had had beers together and Berg had told him he intended to go sailing in Turkey.
Hollinger can't believe it. "Nick never had a beer in his life. He was absolutely vice-free."
Berg told his parents he was looking for a way out. He might go through Kuwait. Or get to Turkey. He felt it was too dangerous to try to get to the airport on the other side of Baghdad.
Michael Berg told him on April 9: "Use your judgment. Get home as fast as you can. But don't take any chances."
They never heard from him again.
Aziz Taee did, however. He said Berg called him April 10 "to say he found some friend to travel with to Jordan... . I told him to have a nice trip."
Now, amid the outpouring of concern and compassion, some have wondered why Nick Berg was there in the first place.
He was an anomaly: alone, unauthorized, a guy trying to find work. Was his idealism misplaced or naive?
On April 14, four days after Berg disappeared, the U.S. Commerce Department held a conference in Philadelphia to promote working and investing in Iraq.
William H. Lash 3d, chairman of the department's Iraq and Afghanistan Reconstruction Task Force, said: "Don't think of it as an economic opportunity; think of it as a moral obligation."
•
Last week, a militant group released a video of Nick Berg in an orange jumpsuit, his hands and ankles bound, as five masked men stood behind him and read a statement.
Then one of them pulled out a very large knife.
The Defense Department confirmed that the voice on the gruesome video was that of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The confirmation "is highly significant," Specter said. "That makes it squarely an al-Qaeda operation... . There now appears to be clear-cut evidence of a connection between al-Qaeda and the insurgency and the militia action in Iraq today."
•
Nick Berg came home on a military transport plane after all. His body was flown home to U.S. soil Wednesday.
The family had requested permission to meet the plane in Dover. It was denied.
They spent the week grieving inside their home under the intense scrutiny of worldwide media, condolences pouring in from around the globe, flower arrangements piling up in front of the house.
Occasionally, a family member would come out to ask the media to go away and to beg that they not attend the memorial service. Those requests were denied, too.
On Thursday, Michael Berg made angry comments about President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying they had as good as caused his son's death. He planted an antiwar sign in his yard.
While Nick Berg had supported this country's intervention in Iraq, Michael Berg vehemently opposed it. Long ago, they had just agreed to disagree.
On Friday morning, as flags throughout Chester County flew at half-mast, Nicholas Evan Berg was buried in Jenkintown.
That afternoon, hundreds of people filed into a West Chester synagogue to memorialize the man they had lost - grandson, son, brother, student, friend.
Yesterday morning, Michael Berg came out onto his front lawn one more time. He straightened the peace sign, which had blown over, and declared, "If peace is radical, I'm a radical."
He said he knew "in my heart that the vast majority of people in this country and in Iraq... want peace."
But, he said, "we're not politicians. We're not power-brokers... . We're people out here cutting our grass on a Saturday morning.
"What we want is peace, and what we want is our sons and our daughters back."
I dont think Mr. Berg and Nick agreed on politics at all, Nick Berg was a Bush supporter according to his friends. JMHO
Posted on Sun, May. 16, 2004
R E L A T E D L I N K S
• Peace is the answer, Berg's father says
• U.S. kills 18 loyalists of radical cleric Sadr
• Rumsfeld OKd prison plan, report says
• More on Iraq
A life lived fearlessly, but lost too soon
Idealistic, trusting, brash, Nick Berg went to Iraq to help. It cost his life.
By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer
He was 26 years old.
He introduced himself in Arabic as bogdne - "tower guy."
He traveled the Iraqi countryside, climbing 1,000 feet into the air to inspect and repair communications towers.
In chatty, quirky e-mails to family and friends, he sounded upbeat, even happy.
He came across as someone who felt safe, someone on a mission that was worthwhile. With a bit of adventure tossed in.
But by the time Nick Berg was released after 13 days in an Iraqi prison, hostilities had escalated dramatically.
By then, getting from his Baghdad hotel to the airport and a flight home was the equivalent of "crossing a pit of fire to get to the golden oasis," said a friend, Tom Clardy.
Berg checked out of his Baghdad hotel about 7 a.m. on April 10 and told the receptionist, "Inshallah [God willing], I will be back in a few days."
A porter put his bags on a cart and they walked toward busy Saadoun Street. But the U.S. Army had blocked it. A soldier motioned for them to turn around.
The porter dropped the bags and turned back. Berg picked them up and kept walking.
His decapitated body was found 28 days later, on May 8, at a Baghdad highway overpass.
•
Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc. was the whimsical name Nick Berg cooked up for his West Chester company.
According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gave it to man.
Maybe Berg had a little of that brashness in him, too.
At the base of a radio tower taller than One Liberty Place, he'd grab hold and begin climbing. Sometimes it would take two hours to get to the top.
On the way, he'd inspect the structure, the guy wires, electrical cables. He'd repair things.
He'd done it in Texas and across the Mid-Atlantic. On Dec. 21, he left to do the same thing in Iraq.
After a conference about business opportunities in Iraq, he hooked up with Aziz Taee, Philadelphia director of the American-Iraqi Council, who agreed to give him Baghdad office space.
Berg's family said he was an idealist who had traveled to Third World countries on other projects. He wanted to help.
He quit several colleges. A hands-on guy, he disdained "the kind of job where the engineers are afraid to get their Jaguars dirty," his father said.
"The game plan was to make the towers in Iraq serviceable again," said Berg's U.S. foreman, Scott Hollinger.
In the north, Berg inspected a tower at a broadcast site near Kurdish-controlled territory.
It was kind of un-nerving to inspect this thing with so many incongruities... . Still, it was beautiful, a really superb piece of engineering nestled on a beautiful riverside... .
Before visiting a country, Berg would immerse himself in its culture, history and language, Hollinger said. He read Livingstone before he went to Africa. When he went to Iraq, he was reading A.J. Barker's Arab-Israeli Wars.
He always carried a copy of the Torah, Hollinger said. "He was a glutton for information. It wouldn't surprise me that he had the Koran with him, too."
The night before he went home from that first trip, Berg was mugged, Taee said. "I was always pressuring him to keep a low profile, but he ignored all my caution and advice." He was out late at night and took public transport.
When Berg got home on Feb. 1, "we breathed a sigh of relief," his father said.
His parents hadn't wanted him to go. They'd been afraid for him. They had even done their best to talk him out of it. At least now he was home safe.
Then he shocked them again.
He said he was going back.
•
Nick Berg infuriated his family sometimes.
He was so trusting, he'd leave his apartment door unlocked.
He believed in people.
He didn't believe, Michael Berg said, "that people would" - he paused - "do things."
Back in high school, he was the energetic one, the one who was outgoing, funny, inquisitive. The one who was always rigging up a zany device to demonstrate a physics principle.
They should have known he'd go to high places, his family and friends joked. On a family trip to the Grand Canyon, he went to the edge. When the 2000 Republican National Convention came to town, he went to the ceiling to rig wires.
He was fearless.
•
Nick Berg left the second time for Iraq on March 14.
He invited Taee to go to Mosul with him, but Taee said it was too dangerous.
By now, lots of tower companies were in Iraq. Hollinger said Berg looked to be more of a service broker.
He was compiling a database of all the towers in Iraq and what they needed. He had a likely customer: Harris Corp., a company with a $96 million contract.
"He climbed every tower in Iraq," Hollinger said. "He didn't care if he had to climb them in the dark. That was his nature."
The game plan was to score a contract, Hollinger said. Berg wanted to cover his costs.
But he also had a wedding to go to. A friend, Doug Strickland, was getting married April 3.
Berg was to be on a March 30 flight from Jordan to New York.
Michael Berg met the plane, but Nick wasn't on it.
•
April 2 was Nick Berg's birthday, and he spent it in an Iraqi prison, doing push-ups.
He was placed in an Iraqi police cell block with 70 criminals. He found humor in it, comparing it to the song "Alice's Restaurant": "I felt... like Arlo Guthrie walking into a cell full of mother-rapers and father-stabbers as an accused litterbug."
By April 2, he had already been in prison nine days. Just two days earlier, the FBI had come to the Bergs' home to ask them about Nick; the Bergs felt they had verified who he was.
But still, Nick wasn't released.
On April 5, they filed a federal suit, claiming he was being held illegally by the U.S. military.
But the question that rankled and escalated last week was: Who was really holding Nick Berg?
The U.S. government said the Iraqi military kept him. A Mosul police official said they didn't.
Michael Berg produced an April 1 e-mail from a U.S. consular officer in Iraq: "I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe... ."
A government official later said the e-mail was in error.
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has vowed to sort out the truth. "The inquiries will be very intense," the Pennsylvania Republican said.
Meanwhile, various news events swirled around the vortex that had become Nick Berg.
It turned out that the FBI had questioned him a few years ago over a possible connection to accused 9/11 coconspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Michael Berg said Nick had simply shared his computer with a fellow student at the University of Oklahoma. It was a coincidence.
But apparently, when Berg revealed that to FBI officials in Iraq, it delayed his release.
Michael Berg has contended that if his son had been released earlier, he would be home safe today. The "terrorist" connection enraged him.
"In the '50s, if you called someone a communist, you didn't have to prove it; just calling him a communist relieved him of all his rights," he said. "And that's what the word terrorist means today."
•
After he got out of prison, was Nick Berg scared?
"It's kind of difficult to say," Michael Berg said. "You're talking about a 26-year-old male who would like the world to believe he's not scared of anything. But... reading between the lines, I'd have to say yes."
The government says he refused its offer to "facilitate safe passage" out of the country.
Hollinger thinks he knows why Berg might have been reluctant to leave: "He was close to getting some... contracts."
The days after his release are murky territory. One guest at Berg's hotel told a reporter they had had beers together and Berg had told him he intended to go sailing in Turkey.
Hollinger can't believe it. "Nick never had a beer in his life. He was absolutely vice-free."
Berg told his parents he was looking for a way out. He might go through Kuwait. Or get to Turkey. He felt it was too dangerous to try to get to the airport on the other side of Baghdad.
Michael Berg told him on April 9: "Use your judgment. Get home as fast as you can. But don't take any chances."
They never heard from him again.
Aziz Taee did, however. He said Berg called him April 10 "to say he found some friend to travel with to Jordan... . I told him to have a nice trip."
Now, amid the outpouring of concern and compassion, some have wondered why Nick Berg was there in the first place.
He was an anomaly: alone, unauthorized, a guy trying to find work. Was his idealism misplaced or naive?
On April 14, four days after Berg disappeared, the U.S. Commerce Department held a conference in Philadelphia to promote working and investing in Iraq.
William H. Lash 3d, chairman of the department's Iraq and Afghanistan Reconstruction Task Force, said: "Don't think of it as an economic opportunity; think of it as a moral obligation."
•
Last week, a militant group released a video of Nick Berg in an orange jumpsuit, his hands and ankles bound, as five masked men stood behind him and read a statement.
Then one of them pulled out a very large knife.
The Defense Department confirmed that the voice on the gruesome video was that of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The confirmation "is highly significant," Specter said. "That makes it squarely an al-Qaeda operation... . There now appears to be clear-cut evidence of a connection between al-Qaeda and the insurgency and the militia action in Iraq today."
•
Nick Berg came home on a military transport plane after all. His body was flown home to U.S. soil Wednesday.
The family had requested permission to meet the plane in Dover. It was denied.
They spent the week grieving inside their home under the intense scrutiny of worldwide media, condolences pouring in from around the globe, flower arrangements piling up in front of the house.
Occasionally, a family member would come out to ask the media to go away and to beg that they not attend the memorial service. Those requests were denied, too.
On Thursday, Michael Berg made angry comments about President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying they had as good as caused his son's death. He planted an antiwar sign in his yard.
While Nick Berg had supported this country's intervention in Iraq, Michael Berg vehemently opposed it. Long ago, they had just agreed to disagree.
On Friday morning, as flags throughout Chester County flew at half-mast, Nicholas Evan Berg was buried in Jenkintown.
That afternoon, hundreds of people filed into a West Chester synagogue to memorialize the man they had lost - grandson, son, brother, student, friend.
Yesterday morning, Michael Berg came out onto his front lawn one more time. He straightened the peace sign, which had blown over, and declared, "If peace is radical, I'm a radical."
He said he knew "in my heart that the vast majority of people in this country and in Iraq... want peace."
But, he said, "we're not politicians. We're not power-brokers... . We're people out here cutting our grass on a Saturday morning.
"What we want is peace, and what we want is our sons and our daughters back."
I dont think Mr. Berg and Nick agreed on politics at all, Nick Berg was a Bush supporter according to his friends. JMHO
Master Blaster
Member
Berg had a towering achievement in mind
By Nancy Petersen
Inquirer Staff Writer
At the time of his death, Nick Berg's dream was finally taking shape.
On a small Lancaster County farm near Quarryville, Pa., in a wooded area halfway up a hill, a grid of steel rods crisscrossed the bottom of a 12-by-12-foot pit dug about five feet into the ground.
It was the foundation for a 199-foot-tall communications tower that would be built from massive, interlocking concrete blocks made and designed by Berg. Each of the blocks would be at least 4 feet long, and fit like giant Legos.
He called them bovl blocks. Bovl, according to the Yiddish Dictionary Online, can mean to grant or to accord.
"We were going to build the first permanent [concrete] tower here," Scott Hollinger, Berg's crew foreman, said standing over the hole. "It seemed like an idea with merit."
A huge, concrete radio tower is probably not a practical idea for this country, but in the Third World, where a conventional steel tower would not only be prohibitively expensive, but hard to come by, it would likely be a hit, Hollinger said.
By building them from his concrete blocks, Berg could make the towers out of whatever kind of sand or dirt was at hand. They would be easy to build, maintenance-free, and readily available. And they would be the perfect vehicle for countries struggling to get ahead in the 21st century.
Indeed, he had already set up a subsidiary of his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., in Kenya.
"This was the master plan - he would be the owner of multiple towers and then rent space on them," Hollinger said. "That was how he was going to build his empire."
Hollinger, 37, a tree surgeon, landscaper and Marine Corps veteran, met Berg when he answered Berg's ad for a climber.
"I was always interested in the tower game, and the pay was good," he said. He joined Berg's company in January 2003.
Hollinger said the idea for a concrete tower first took shape several years ago when Berg traveled to Uganda as a college student. Later in Kenya, he worked with Masai villagers to craft early versions of the bovl blocks, showing them how to build towers that served double duty as both anchors for radio gear and storage containers for fresh water, Hollinger said.
By last fall, Berg was ready and eager for the engineering community to see the foundation of his dream.
He buttonholed Dale Gehman, vice president of the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, and said he wanted to be a vendor at the organization's annual engineering conference that was held at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center last October.
His exhibit: a 20-foot model of his concrete tower.
"I had to get a special exception from the convention center because the tower was so heavy," Gehman said. "But to me, it was totally fascinating."
The night before the conference opened, Berg arrived with the concrete blocks, a flatbed truck on which he had rigged up a crane, Hollinger, a few friends - and plenty of energy.
"He started to set up at 6 p.m. and when I left at midnight, he was still working," Gehman said. "I came in in the morning and he had an American flag on top of it. It was one of the highlights of our show."
Edd Monskie, vice president for engineering at Hall Communications, a Lancaster, Pa., firm that owns radio stations, said that in his 30 years in the broadcasting business, he had never seen anything like it. But he liked the concept.
"For Third World countries, it sounded like a great idea," Monskie said. "They would just come right into the 21st century."
Berg was an idealist who wanted to help people and make the world a better place, said his friend Tom Clardy. And the concrete tower was a typically down-to-earth approach to solving a world-class problem, he said.
"For his solutions to work they had to be practical and they had to use the materials at hand," Clardy said. "He would do things the way he thought they ought to be done."
By Nancy Petersen
Inquirer Staff Writer
At the time of his death, Nick Berg's dream was finally taking shape.
On a small Lancaster County farm near Quarryville, Pa., in a wooded area halfway up a hill, a grid of steel rods crisscrossed the bottom of a 12-by-12-foot pit dug about five feet into the ground.
It was the foundation for a 199-foot-tall communications tower that would be built from massive, interlocking concrete blocks made and designed by Berg. Each of the blocks would be at least 4 feet long, and fit like giant Legos.
He called them bovl blocks. Bovl, according to the Yiddish Dictionary Online, can mean to grant or to accord.
"We were going to build the first permanent [concrete] tower here," Scott Hollinger, Berg's crew foreman, said standing over the hole. "It seemed like an idea with merit."
A huge, concrete radio tower is probably not a practical idea for this country, but in the Third World, where a conventional steel tower would not only be prohibitively expensive, but hard to come by, it would likely be a hit, Hollinger said.
By building them from his concrete blocks, Berg could make the towers out of whatever kind of sand or dirt was at hand. They would be easy to build, maintenance-free, and readily available. And they would be the perfect vehicle for countries struggling to get ahead in the 21st century.
Indeed, he had already set up a subsidiary of his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., in Kenya.
"This was the master plan - he would be the owner of multiple towers and then rent space on them," Hollinger said. "That was how he was going to build his empire."
Hollinger, 37, a tree surgeon, landscaper and Marine Corps veteran, met Berg when he answered Berg's ad for a climber.
"I was always interested in the tower game, and the pay was good," he said. He joined Berg's company in January 2003.
Hollinger said the idea for a concrete tower first took shape several years ago when Berg traveled to Uganda as a college student. Later in Kenya, he worked with Masai villagers to craft early versions of the bovl blocks, showing them how to build towers that served double duty as both anchors for radio gear and storage containers for fresh water, Hollinger said.
By last fall, Berg was ready and eager for the engineering community to see the foundation of his dream.
He buttonholed Dale Gehman, vice president of the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, and said he wanted to be a vendor at the organization's annual engineering conference that was held at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center last October.
His exhibit: a 20-foot model of his concrete tower.
"I had to get a special exception from the convention center because the tower was so heavy," Gehman said. "But to me, it was totally fascinating."
The night before the conference opened, Berg arrived with the concrete blocks, a flatbed truck on which he had rigged up a crane, Hollinger, a few friends - and plenty of energy.
"He started to set up at 6 p.m. and when I left at midnight, he was still working," Gehman said. "I came in in the morning and he had an American flag on top of it. It was one of the highlights of our show."
Edd Monskie, vice president for engineering at Hall Communications, a Lancaster, Pa., firm that owns radio stations, said that in his 30 years in the broadcasting business, he had never seen anything like it. But he liked the concept.
"For Third World countries, it sounded like a great idea," Monskie said. "They would just come right into the 21st century."
Berg was an idealist who wanted to help people and make the world a better place, said his friend Tom Clardy. And the concrete tower was a typically down-to-earth approach to solving a world-class problem, he said.
"For his solutions to work they had to be practical and they had to use the materials at hand," Clardy said. "He would do things the way he thought they ought to be done."
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