Real History, the CIA, and the Iraq War The [In which the print media continue to catch up with the Internet slowly] [All ] Sydney, Australia, May 29, 2004 Who killed Nick Berg? Conspiracy theories about how the kidnapped American died in Iraq are flying around the world. Richard Neville explores the explanations. IRAQ in flames, Washington an object of disgust. What to do? At this pivotal moment, CNN and Fox News are tipped off to a clip of an American citizen being beheaded.
The victim is a 26-year-old idealist from Pennsylvania, Nick Berg . Despite the perpetrators being masked, the vile deed is deemed the work of al-Qaeda. The clip was first “discovered” on an Islamic website in Malaysia.
Its Arabic title reads ” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American”. al-Zarqawi is a 38-year-old Jordanian militant who fled to Iraq in 2001 after reportedly losing a leg in a US missile strike. al-Zarqawi’s face is widely known and he credits himself with the deed, so why a mask? The timing of the video was brilliant for the West. Media pundits judged the crime a deeper evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis. But some people sensed a rat. But if it was not al-Qaeda, who?
Surely not Uncle Sam. That’s too dark, even for the CIA. While this video shows a human body having its head chopped off, it does not necessarily portray an act of murder. Berg’s headless body was found dumped on a Baghdad roadside on Saturday, May 8. Three days later , the “live beheading” clip was uploaded from London to the Malaysian website http://www.al-ansar.biz . The statement in the video is signed with al-Zarqawi’s name, dated May 11.
After Fox News and CNN had downloaded the video, it disappeared from the site. As no autopsy is available, little is known about the state of the body. No time of death, no forensic analysis.
On April 6, a month before the discovery of the corpse, Berg had been released from custody. But whose custody? Dan Senor , left, [ Website note: Hebrew University educated ] adviser to the US Presidential Envoy in Iraq, has said Berg was never held by the Americans. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt , right, the Coalition’s deputy head of operations, claimed he was in the custody of Iraqi police from March 24 to April 6.
However, the Iraqi police chief, Major-General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi , told Associated Press “the Iraqi police never arrested the slain American”. Berg’s family are certain his jailers were the US military. His father, Michael , had been told so by the FBI. He has produced an email from a US consular official in Baghdad, Beth Payne , confirming that his son was in the hands of the US. (Later, another official said this was an error.)
On April 5 in the Philadelphia office of the US Supreme Court, the Berg family had launched an action against the US military for false imprisonment. The following day, Berg was released. The issue of custody is significant; in his final moments on screen Berg is wearing an orange jumpsuit of the kind familiar from Guantánamo Bay. The official reasons for Berg’s arrest were “lack of documentation” and “suspicious activities”.
He carried sensitive electronic equipment for which he lacked documents. In custody, he was visited three times by the FBI. Such interviews are bound to have been recorded but no transcripts have been produced. After his release, Berg travelled to Baghdad and the $30-a-night Al-Fanar Hotel.
A fellow hotel guest told Newsday that Berg recounted how Iraqi police had quickly handed him to US authorities in Mosul and that he had been held the entire time in a jail where his guards were US soldiers. Berg was in Baghdad to win contracts for his family firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, a provider of communications facilities. He often “worked at night on a tower in the neighbourhood of Abu Ghraib”, according to The New York Times . The family last heard from him
on April 9, when he said he was planning to leave Iraq via Kuwait as soon as it was safe. Berg was last seen walking with his bags the following day, apparently hoping to find his way through the turmoil engulfing the city and make it to the border.
On March 7, 2004, two weeks before his arrest in Mosul, an “enemies list” had been posted on a conservative website, FreeRepublic.com . The list was compiled from signatories to an anti-war petition, and its implied purpose was to encourage readers to harass those it named.
There was originally placed here a diagram, but on this website received an email from author ” Nick Possum ” (sic) reading: ” — It has come to my notice that you have reproduced an illustration from my website on your website . . . The illustration is the one showing three shots from the Berg execution video on a black background with commentary in white text. “You will have noticed on visiting the site that on each page there is, prominently placed, a notice asserting