Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Snuff videos and black ops

Back in the olden days, you know "Before Television", 
imperialist governments that wanted to provide "evidence" to a 
sceptical press and public or to distract that same press and 
public from the imperialist government's own actions would turn 
to the "black operations" departments of their intelligence 
departments.

The skilled men and women in these highly secret establishments 
would most commonly manufacture an incriminating document that 
could be produced with great fanfare and expressions of shock. It 
would be written about, and extracts would be published, and the 
original shown perhaps to a few trusted opinion makers.

Some of these documents, such as the "Zinoviev Letter", became 
notorious, but they needed time to disseminate and they could be 
studied which too often led to them being exposed as fakes. The 
public became harder to fool, and in response imperialism became 
more sophisticated.

Today, if the US needs evidence to be found showing Osama Bin 
Laden to be the black-hearted anti-US terrorist leader that 
George Bush says he is, black ops produces not an incriminating 
piece of paper but a videotape, something that can conveniently 
be run on television everywhere.

I am sure we have all been struck by the propensity of the USA's 
enemies for shooting compromising videos of their activities, 
complete with incriminating interviews, and then leaving them 
lying around willy nilly, to be found just when they are most 
needed by the White House.

In most cases, these tapes could not have turned up at a better 
time for US propaganda purposes if the Pentagon's black ops units 
had planned it themselves. Which, of course, you and I know they 
would never, ever do — don't we?

Nevertheless, some unkind media types have even suggested that 
Pentagon black ops were involved in the Nicholas Berg kidnapping 
and beheading affair.

If you will remember, the body of the 26-year-old American was 
found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass. At the time, the Bush 
administration was up to its ears in the global outcry over the 
photos of torture and human rights abuses at the US-run Abu 
Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Just three days after Berg's body was found, pro-Bush outlets Fox 
News, CNN and the BBC ran the inevitable video — in this 
instance of Berg's supposed decapitation death by a knife-
wielding Iraqi terrorist.

The three Western news outlets claimed they obtained the video 
footage from "an Arabic-only al-Qaida-linked website" but the 
Arabic newsgroup Aljazeera reported on May 13 that it had been 
unable to locate it.

Berg, who disappeared in Baghdad on April 10, was variously 
described as an American businessman, a contractor to the US 
military administration, and even a mercenary.

Did he have Intelligence connections or did the US authorities 
consider him an "enemy" of the Bush administration?

His family company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service is in 
communications. It is claimed the FBI had interviewed him after 
September 11 because his computer password had been used by 
alleged al-Qaida terrorist Zaccarias Moussaoui.

Berg went to Iraq in December 2003, allegedly in search of 
reconstruction contract work for the family company. Curiously, 
among the places he inquired for this contract work was the Abu 
Ghraib prison.

He went home to the US on February 1 and returned to Iraq in mid-
March, shortly after his father Michael Berg had publicly 
endorsed an anti-war demonstration in Washington planned for 
March 20 by US group ANSWER.

Within one week of returning to Iraq, Berg was arrested for 
"suspicious activities". He was held incommunicado in prison in 
Mosul.

According to e-mails sent from a US consular officer in Baghdad, 
Beth Payne, to the Berg family, Nick Berg was being held in Iraq 
"by the US military in Mosul". The US State Department however 
denied this, saying Berg was being held by the Iraqi police.

However, on May 13, Associated Press reported that Iraqi police 
chief Major-General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi denied that Iraqi 
police ever held Berg, saying such reports were "baseless".

Berg was interviewed in detention several times by FBI agents who 
wanted to know if he had ever constructed pipe bombs or visited 
Iran. The FBI also questioned his parents in Philadelphia about 
why their son was in Iraq.

On April 5 his family filed a federal court case against the US 
Government alleging illegal imprisonment. Nicholas was released 
the next day. And apparently kidnapped just 72 hours later.

Doubts about the authenticity of the decapitation video arose 
almost immediately it was aired. The way Berg's captors act and 
speak has prompted speculation that they weren't native Arabic 
speakers (black ops US military personnel, perhaps?).

Berg appears to be wearing US military prison-issue clothing, 
sitting in what appears to be a US military-type white chair, 
virtually identical to those photographed as used at Abu Ghraib 
prison.

For forensic experts the way Berg's body reacts to the act of 
decapitation and the almost complete lack of blood, which would 
be expected to gush everywhere, suggest that he may have been 
dead already when the video was shot.

The Asia Times showed the tape to Dr John Simpson, Executive 
Director for Surgical Affairs at the Royal Australasian College 
of Surgeons in New Zealand, and to forensic scientist Jon Nordby, 
PhD and Fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death 
Investigators.

Simpson said he would "need convincing" that the taped scene was 
authentic, while Nordby said he thought the "best explanation" of 
it was that it had been staged.

Unfortunately for the Pentagon and the White House, the "Berg 
beheading" tape failed to divert attention from the shots of US 
prison torture. Those photos definitely were not staged.