Bizarre New Link In Berg Murder
CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zacarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before Sept. 11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.
The bureau had already dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password.
But in the wake of Berg’s gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger-than-fiction coincidence — an American who inadvertently gave away his computer password to one suspected al Qaeda operative, Moussaoui, is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative, Zarqawi.
Combined with the conflicting stories about whether Berg had been in US custody, it seems there’s a few things to be cleared up here.
UPDATE: And, via Constant Reader Timmy the Wonder Dog, it may already have been cleared up. Berg’s encounter with ‘terrorist’ revealed
Berg said his son cooperated fully with an FBI investigation into the matter.
“He was happy to cooperate, and that was never an issue,” he said. He emphasized that the individual was not a friend of his son’s or even an acquaintance — “just a guy sitting next to him on the bus.”
It’s still stranger than fiction.
Edward maybe you can incorporate this (Berg’s encounter with ‘terrorist’ revealed)
into your story.
I don’t know, man.
There’s some really strange fiction out there.
Have you ever read Ulysses?
Have you ever read Ulysses?
Only about 1/3. Saving the rest for …who am I kidding, short of being sent to prison, I’ll never get around to finishing it.
They’re forcing prisoners to read Ulysses? I’ve heard the penal system in this country is harrowing, but I didn’t know it was that bad.
LOL
there are worse punishments.
Um, how does the FBI know Berg’s college computer password?
The FBI knows everything, sidereal. Why do you ask — are you worried? Was your college password “deathtoamerika” or something?
No, it was ‘ifyoucanreadthisweliveinapolicestate’
While there is some disagreement about whether Zarqawi killed Berg, the current theory is leading to renewed interest in whether Bush should have implemented the three Pentagon plans to take out Kirma and Zarqawi before the war. As I recall, there were serious questions raised at tacitus.org about the practicality of doing so (getting the Kurds organized, difficult terrain). I don’t know how to grep the old site – perhaps someone here does, or could recapitulate the discussion?
Thanks.
No, it was ‘ifyoucanreadthisweliveinapolicestate’
Damn, must’ve taken you forever to log on.
One of my assignments in a college CS class was to write a password-guessing program. Besides trying all the entries in /usr/dict/words, we were encouraged to guess other possibilities. I had some good success with various obscene words and phrases.
As I recall, one result of that assignment was that the sysadmin for our VAXes decided to revoke read privileges on /etc/passwd from the general public.
If torture is reading “Ulysses” hook me up to the car battery and let’s go.
No, most of this stuff is Pynchonesque.
More interesting stuff, Aljazeera has an article taken almost word for word from blogs questioning the video of his death.
“decided to revoke read privileges on /etc/passwd from the general public”
That’s old school. These days everyone uses a shadow password file, readable only by root.
“…is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative, Zarqawi.”
Very badly reported story, because one thing Zarqawi — a very evil man — is not is al Qaeda. (Fuller link starts here.)