John M. Berger

Zacarias Moussaoui writes the phone number for the private security contractor Blackwater in his notebook. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria District, 7/31/2006 ] It is unclear why he writes the phone number down or whether he has any actual contact with Blackwater, but terrorism analyst J. M. Berger will later comment: “The discovery may best be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, and a large one at that. The phone number is publicly available and connects to a Blackwater training center in North Carolina. Moussaoui was researching physical and combat training options while he was in the United States. The simplest and most innocent explanation is quite possibly the correct one. Nevertheless, a glimpse of the controversial company’s contact information nestled among Moussaoui’s handwritten notes inspires the jaw to drop in a not-entirely unreasonable manner.” [Intelwire(.com), 8/1/2006]