Home > The Nick Berg Cover-up: Officials Refuse to Answer a Simple Question about Him

The Nick Berg Cover-up: Officials Refuse to Answer a Simple Question about Him

by Open-Publishing - Friday 5 August 2005
2 comments

International Attack-Terrorism USA Michael P. Wright

Michael P. Wright
Norman, Oklahoma, USA
mpwright9@aol.com

Readers are invited to review my earlier post about the Oklahoma City television station suppressing its broadcast reporting that an airline ticket for a 9/11 hijacker was purchased from a University of Oklahoma (OU) library computer terminal. Before the news report, a librarian there had told me that the purchaser was a temporary library employee and not a hijacker. He was a white American male. The fact that he was never arrested raises the suspicion that he was a covert CIA operative. Here is the earlier post with details and links:
 http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php...

Ever since I heard about Nick Berg’s beheading in Iraq last year, along with the fact that he had been a student and later an OU employee, I have suspected that he was the white American male who bought the 9/11 hijacker’s ticket from the OU library, that he was acting as a CIA covert operative when he did it, and that they set him up to be killed in order to let the secret die with him.

If I am correct, this would account for this strange array of facts, which became publicly known, about the Nick Berg experience in Iraq:

1. not long after his arrival there in March 2004, Berg announced an intention to leave;

2. before his announced date of departure, Berg was detained by authorities, but no criminal charges were brought against him;

3. American officials first denied their involvement in this, but later his father was able to ascertain that Iraqi police detaining Berg were doing so in response to influence from American authorities;

4. Berg was released in early April, a time of escalated violence, and captured by Islamic militants;

5. although military officials knew of it months earlier, they chose this month as the time to leak the prisoner abuse scandal to the press;

6. Berg was beheaded by the militants, who cited retaliation for the prisoner abuse as the reason;

7. CNN reported that Berg’s email password had been found on Moussaoui’s laptop.

CNN broadcast an entirely bogus story to account for this. They said that Berg allowed a stranger he met on a bus to send an email on his laptop, when he was an OU student. We are next told that the stranger turned out to be an associate of Moussaoui.

One of several problems with this CNN story is that Berg was an OU student only for the fall 1999 semester, and Moussaoui did not arrive in Norman, home of OU, until February 2001. These facts were ignored by CNN. The more likely explanation is that Berg was an acquaintance of Moussaoui and that he was infiltrating Al Qaeda for the CIA. CNN reporter Kelli Arena did not return my call after I left a message on her answering maching with this information. See this for confirmation of Berg’s brief history as an OU student:
 berg99

Some argue that the beheading was totally staged by the CIA. That might be true. Either they staged the beheading and blamed the Islamic militants, or they manipulated them into doing it themselves. One likely technique would have been to use infiltrators to spread the rumor that Berg was an Israeli spy. There have been newspapers reporting that he stated that he had earlier been greeted with this suspicion.

One interesting fact which has not been widely reported is that Berg’s apartment was searched and his notes were stolen while he was in detention.
I learned this from corresponding with the creator of the Nick Berg memorial website:
 http://www.nickberg.org/

Here are the exact words of Luke, a personal friend of Berg:

"We are still trying to find a legitimate reason for his capture and stay - in an IP prison under American control. Berg did not seem angry upon release, but did seem annoyed that he had to be arrested for no reason and his stuff was stolen from his apartment in the meantime.

"This part we are really wondering about. Berg took prolific notes of his journeys and these are gone too."

Wondering, indeed.

I have encountered enormous stonewalling* from OU, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Social Security Administration (SSA), in response to my simple question about whether Berg was employed by the OU library in the summer of 2001. This is just directory information. He was listed as an employee of the Lloyd Noble Arena in the 2000-01 OU directory:
 berg2000

From a message on my answering machine, readers can hear an OU payroll employee refusing to answer my question about the library. See the control panel near the entry of February 5, 2005:
 http://www.bushbusiness.com/Wright_...

I have attached a reply from a Freedom of Information Act request to the SSA. This was an appeal of an earlier refusal to cooperate. In my correspondence to them, I have always emphasized that I am NOT asking for earnings information about Berg — only directory information. Yet they have erected the pretense that I am asking for earnings information, and then they cite law telling me I can’t have it. Thomas Crawley writes:

"Although you state you are requesting ’simple directory information,’ about Mr. Berg, you are requesting his place of employment in 2001. Employment information includes where an individual worked, as well as his/her earnings."

What a tortured sentence. He observes that I "state" that I am requesting only directory information, but makes a pretense of believing that I really want something else. Then he tells me that I can’t have it. 1984ish enough?

On the next page, Crawley proceeds to tell me that SSA would not know the answer to my question anyway. I assume that SSA has access to IRS returns, and may even be provided with copies of them as a routine part of their operation. Is that a fair assumption? Readers who know of any sources which either confirm or contradict this are encouraged to describe them in comments or contact me — mpwright9@aol.com .

Scans of Crawley’s two-page letter are here: berg 1, berg 2

At the signature line of the IRS 1040 form, we are instructed to report our occupation. If I am correct about Berg, he would have written "library assistant" there, for his 2001 return. That is the only piece of information I have asked IRS to disclose.

Readers who are on good terms with any organizations which have the resources for a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit are encouraged to call their attention to this. Perhaps the various corrupt officials who will not answer my question are relying upon the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection to justify their secrecy. That law was intended to protect the identities of covert CIA agents and operatives. By refusing to answer my question, are they answering it?

*For readers whose native language is not English, "stonewalling" is an American expression which came into use during the Watergate scandal. It means refusing to answer investigators’ questions. This has become a deeply-entrenched tradition among corrupt officials.

Forum posts

  • Hi! This is interesting. I worked on a couple of beheading murder cases as a criminal lawyer and took an interest in the Berg case from afar. A lot of the facts do not add up and with my forensic knowledge of murder by knife to the throat, I personally believe the Berg execution video was staged. In the cases I worked on, all the medical experts testified that a victim absolutely cannot scream loudly while their throat is being slashed from side to side and if there is any degree of major pressure exerted on internal neck structures, it will impair function of the vocal cords. This expert testimony appeared in more than one case and was a turning point for explaining why witnesses did not hear a victim scream in the next room... Also, any type of neck slashing is an EXTREMELY bloody deed -a veritable evidence trail-, and would have been far more bloody than the incident depicted on that tape. When the arteries in the neck are cut on a live person, they would spurt blood violently, especially in a healthy, fit young man like Nick Berg. Keep up the investigation! I am very skeptical about the whole "execution" based on my knowledge of verified, non-political, criminal cases. The timing of the release of all of these tapes has been questionable, including the one before the election and the recent threat from the Al Queda leader just when support for the war is waning due to casualties... Hmmm...