WHO KILLED NICK BERG?
Richard Neville

Despite Harry Potter, print is losing its power in a culture captivated by image. All the fine words which depicted Coalition atrocities prior to the revelations at Abu Ghraib, whether against prisoners or civilians, counted for little in democracy’s heartland. A digi-cam in the rubber gloved hands of a soldier altered the fortunes the war. Iraq in flames, Washington an object of global 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 five perpetrators being masked, the vile deed is pronounced to be the work of Al Q’aida. The clip was first “discovered” on “an Islamic website in Malaysia associated with al Q’aida”. The Arabic title of the clip 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 on his Afghan base. The $US10 million price on his head has just been upped to $US25million. As Al-Zarqawi’s image is widely known and the title credit grants him authorship of the deed, why does he wear a mask?


The timing of the beheading video was brilliant for the West and bad for Arabs. Those members of US Congress gunning for Donald Rumsfeld suddenly lost their oomph. Media pundits deemed the crime to be a deeper kind of evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis. In at least six US states, high school teachers showed the snuff video to their students, as a way of reminding them that America’s role in Iraq was noble.
Perhaps a closer look at this video proves opposite.
For al Qaeda to have performed this act at such a time is so dumb, that some people sensed the aroma of rat. If not al Qaeda, then who? Surely not Uncle Sam. That’s too dark, even for the CIA. Too risky. What if the plot is discovered?
While this video shows a human body having its head chopped off, it does not necessarily portray an act of murder.

WHY LIE ABOUT CUSTODY?

Berg’s body was found on a Baghdad roadside on Saturday, May 8, presumably headless. Three days later the “live beheading” clip was uploaded from London to a website in Malaysia - www.al-ansar.biz. The statement in the video is signed off with Zarqawi's name, dated 11 May. After Fox news and CNN were tipped off about its contents, the video disappeared from the site. (Al Jazeera was unable to find it). As no autopsy is available, little is known about the overall condition of the body. No time of death, no forensic analysis. On April 6, a month prior to the discovery of the corpse, Nick Berg had been released from custody. But whose custody?

Dan Senor, adviser to the US Presidential Envoy in Iraq, has said Berg was never held by the Americans. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the Coalition's deputy head of operations, claimed he was in the custody of Iraqi police in Mosul 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. Take it from me... such reports are baseless.” Another Police official, Safwan Talal, said the only American arrested in recent months was a woman, later released.
Nick’s father, Michael, said the identity of his son’s jailers was not in doubt – it was the US military. This had been confirmed to him by the FBI and the US consulate. He even produced an email from a Baghdad consular official, Beth A. Payne, saying that his son was in the hands of the US. (Later, another official said the email was an error). On April 5 in the Philadelphia office of the US Supreme court, the Berg family launched an action against the military for false imprisonment. The following day Nick was released .
The issue of custody is significant, considering the clothes Nick was wearing in his final moments on screen – an orange jumpsuit of the kind familiar to viewers of footage from Guantanamo Bay.

Brigadier General Kimmit said that U.S. forces kept tabs on Berg during his confinement to make sure he was being fed and properly treated as ''he was an American citizen.'' Reasons for Nick’s arrest have been given as “lack of documentation” and “suspicious activities”. Berg also carried sensitive electronic equipment. While in custody, he was visited three times by agents of the FBI. Such interviews would have been recorded, though no transcripts are available. After his release, Nick Berg travelled to Baghdad and checked into the $30-a-night Al-Fanar Hotel, buzzing with NGO types and “peace protestors”. Next door is the Baghdad Hotel, a CIA hot spot.

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE TURMOIL



Al-Fanar staff remember Berg as a ''nice guy who always smiled” . He was muscular and “liked the Internet.'' Nick’s routine was to leave the hotel early in the morning and return around 10 pm, “carrying a sack of beer and mineral water.” Later, his father described Nick as “the kindest, gentlest human being I know or have ever known”.

Fellow hotel guest Hugo Infante, a Chilean reporter, told Newsday that Berg recounted how Iraqi police had quickly handed him to U.S authorities and that he had been held the entire time in a jail where his guards were U.S. soldiers. Nick had come to Baghdad to win contracts for his family firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, a provider of communications facilities.

The family last heard from Nick on April 9, when he said he was planning to leave Iraq via Kuwait as soon as it was safe. The following day an American diplomat offered to arrange a flight for him to Jordan, which Nick declined (CBS). Berg was last seen the same morning, walking down the road with his bags, apparently hoping to wend his way through the terrible turmoil engulfing the city and make it to the border.

NIGHT WORK AT ABU GHRAIB

On March 7, 2004, two weeks before his arrest in Mosul, an "enemies list" was posted on a conservative website, FreeRepublic.com. The list was compiled from signatories to an anti-war petition. The purpose of the posting was to encourage readers to harass those it named.
Nick Berg's father was on that list, as was Prometheus, the family firm with a remarkably thin paper trail. Could this list have prompted Nick’s arrest in Iraq?
There is the odd affair of Nick’s email address being purloined by the "20th hijacker", Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be charged in connection with the September 11 attacks on America. Moussaoui and Nick attended the same Oklahoma college, though it is not known if they met.
Berg who has been reported as arriving in Baghdad with anti zionist leaflets, and a copy Koran. During his time in Iraq, according to Associated Press, he “struggled with the Arabic language and worked at night on a tower in Abu Ghraib”. This has led to speculation that he may have been aware of activities inside the jail. A phrase in an email home mentioned he had taken “nice pictures”. On a previous visit in January, Nick had reportedly sought contract work at Abu Ghraib.

One web sleuth makes a connection between Nick Berg’s firm and the similar sounding Prometheus Radio Project, both in Philadelphia an underground radio station partly funded by anti Bush millionaire, George Soros: “I cannot help wondering”, notes a newsgroup post, “if Nick was in Iraq to set up a way to intercept communications and therefore get evidence to get Bush out of office…”
One more oddity, at the risk of teetering on the edge of the matrix, are the confirmed reports during this period that the US Department banned all emails between soldiers in Iraq and their families at home.
The true nature of Nick’s politics is not clear. Michael Berg has described his son as a “staunch supporter” of US President W Bush. Friends said Nick believed he could help rebuild that war-shattered country one radio tower at a time. According to the New York Times, he was attracted to the Hebrew concept of tikkun olam — healing the world through social action. After Nick’s death, his father told reporters “the al-Qaeda that killed my son didn't know what they were doing …. "They killed their best friend”.

DECONSTRUCTING THE VIDEO
The first few seconds of the tape shows Nick sitting on a white plastic chair in an orange jumpsuit jumpsuit. He speaks directly to camera in a relaxed way: "My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael... I have a brother and sister, David and Sara. I live in Philadelphia." The chair on which Nick is sitting is identical to the one seen in the pics of the Abu Ghraib porno tortures. These chairs are probably common in Iraq. Considering what follows, it is highly likely that this opening segment is edited from the statements made by Nick Berg during his 13 days of custody in Iraq, perhaps to the FBI.

In the next scene, Nick is sitting on the floor with five masked figures standing behind him. We do not see the figures enter. Nick looks lifeless, though his body appears to make slight movements.
The man reads a lengthy statement in a passionless monotone. He is identified as 'Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , the Jordanian associate of Osama bin Laden who is tied to dozens of terrorist acts including the al Qaeda-linked suicide attacks in Istanbul and last year's bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
Yet a leaflet recently circulated in Falluja, by no means a reliable source, claims that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniya mountains of northern Iraq during a US bombing. A US military report in April 03, has been cited as claiming Zarqawi was killed in the bombing of Falluja. Colin Powell and others have said that Zarqawi was fitted with a prosthetic leg in a Baghdad hospital. The tape displays no evidence of a limp. CNN staff members familiar with al-Zarqawi's voice have been quoted as saying the voice on the tape did not sound like him.

HEAVY METAL ROADIES
TRAPPED IN A CHAPEL

Among the many curiosities raised on the web about the fanatical five are:

* They are well fed, fidgety, and reveal glimpses of white skin.
* Their Arabic is heavily accented,(Russian,Jordanian, Egyptian)
* An aside in Russian has been translated as “do it quickly”.
* One character wears a gold ring, unusual for a devout follower of the Koran (“men who wear gold and silk will not enter Paradise”), though not all that uncommon. Another wears bulky white tennis shoes.
* The man on the far left in the video is standing in the familiar “at ease” military posture, the habit of a trained soldier.
* Some insist that the scarves worn in the video were donned and tied by people who “haven’t a clue … like actors in Hollywood movies”.
* Three green dots are tattooed on the back of Zarqawi’s’left hand, according to the International Herald tribune (February 10, 2003) . These are not apparent in the video.
* Firearms experts sate that the weapon brandished by one ‘executioner’ is a Galil, an Israeli-made upgrade of an AK 47, not used by insurgents.
* The report that al Qaeda was invoked by the perpetrators is based on the official U.S. translation: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" The word on tape is ‘al qaed’, which carries a different meaning. It was part of a pep talk to all insurgents.
* The wall and skirting board at the killing site is similar to interior of Abu Ghraid prison
On the whole, the fidgety five look like heavy metal roadies trapped in a chapel. There is even a voice at the end of the tape that seems ask in English, “How will it be done?” Check the soundbyte yourself:

None of this proves a grand conspiracy, but it does raise questions.

The final segment of the tape is hideous and revealing. When Berg is thrown to the ground, he doesn’t move. During the decapitation, starting at the front of the throat, there is hardly any sign of blood. The scream is wildly out of sync, sounds female, and is obviously dubbed. [This could be due to the compressing of its original format for uploading on the web]. Neither Berg's severed head, the floor, Berg's clothes, and even the hand of the "Arab" who decapitated Berg shows much sign of blood.


Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, told Ritt Goldstein of the Asia Times, "I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it [the video] was genuine,". This echoed the conclusion of Dr Raul Castro Guevara, a surgeon and forensic expert in Mexico City consulted by other researchers, who said "there is no way that the individual in the video was alive and his heart pumping while his neck was being cut". He judged the video a fraud.

Asia Online asked another forensic “death expert” Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it."

A PSY-OPS BLACK OPERATION?
According to Goldstein, both doctors perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. Nordby noted that Berg failed to “ register any sort of surprise or any change in his facial expression when he's grabbed and twisted over, and they start to bring this weapon into use".

All three doctors concurred with the verdicts of numerous web detectives, that the decapitation sequence was performed on a corpse.

But there is still the problem of the slight body movements exhibitied by Berg while sitting on the floor, prior to the beheading. According to blogger Nick Possum, “This footage was subsequently modified frame by frame to make Berg’s body move very occasionally”. Apparently, this can be achieved through “commonly available software”.
Like many others, Possum believes “most of the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a “black operation” by US psychological warfare specialists, the purpose of which was to provide the media with a “moral relativity” argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib”.



The use of FBI footage in the opening sequence, if confirmed, suggests the involvement of high-level US Government operatives.

I do not know who killed Nick Berg, or how he died. Some maintain the video was produced in Abu Ghraib jail; others detect a “military cap” in the side of a frame, and draw sinister conclusions. All I can say for sure is that there’s something fishy about this video.


NICK WAS THERE TO WIN THE PEACE
In any tale of dark deeds, there are heroes. Maybe one of these is Nick Berg himself, whos final days must have been horrific. Certainly Nick is a hero to his father, and his father is becoming a hero to many. On May 16, Michael Berg sent this message to the organisers of the stop the war coalition:

“Nick Berg was a soldier of peace in Iraq to help the people without any expectation of personal gain. The trouble was he was only one man, but through his death he has become many. For all of the soldiers and family of soldiers in Iraq on either side who believe they were in Iraq working for peace, I say: Nick is your brother. Nick was there to help win the peace not only by helping to rebuild what was torn down, but by spreading his message of peace and love”.

Berg’s body has been flown back to the Dover Airforce Base, the place where the young boy trained as a Boy Scout of America, although his family were not permitted to witness the arrival of the coffin. When the Scouts had wanted to teach Nick how to fire a handgun, he quit.

A workmate recalls that “ Nick was real good at recognizing physical danger; it's part of the job. But he didn't do too well at recognizing human danger because he never thought anybody was going to hurt him." In the end the question is this. Who really killed Nick Berg, and why? In this dirtiest of wars, anything is possible.

www.richardneville.com