Who Killed Michael Hastings?
By Benjamin Wallace
At the end of his life, Michael Hastings, like many of the progressive journalists he counted among his friends, felt besieged by an overreaching government. Hastings was living in Los Angeles, and at a Beverly Hills theater in April, he took part in a panel discussion about the documentary War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State. Interviewed in May on The Young Turks, a talk show on Current TV, Hastings railed against the Obama administration, which has clearly declared war on the press; the only recourse, he said, was for the press to respond: We declare war on you. On May 31, he dashed off an urgent tweet: first they came for manning. Then Assange. Then fox. Then the ap.drake and the other whistle-blowers. Any nyt reporters too. He attended screenings of his friend Jeremy Scahills film Dirty Wars, which seeks to expose the hidden truth behind Americas expanding covert wars, and when leaks about the NSA began appearing in The Guardian, and Edward Snowden was charged with espionage, Hastings was deeply troubled by the revelations and the Justice Departments response. On June 7, his last post for BuzzFeed, where he was a staff writer, focused on Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans, and at the time of his death, Hastings was working on a profile of CIA director John Brennan for Rolling Stone.
It was for Rolling Stone, where Hastings had a contract, that hed written The Runaway General, the 2010 article that resulted in the cashiering of General Stanley McChrystal, Americas commander in Afghanistan, and made his name as a journalist. Mark Leibovich, in this summers inside-the-Beltway big read, This Town, describes Hastingss McChrystal piece as the most consequential journalism of 2010 and possibly Obamas entire first term. But despite going after big game, Hastings tended to be nonchalant about possible repercussions. Whenever Id been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people, he said once, one of them would usually mention that they were going to kill me.
By the middle of June, though, Hastings, then 33, had become openly afraid. Helicopters are a common sight in the Hollywood Hills, but he had told Jordanna Thigpen, a neighbor hed become close to, that there were more of them in the sky than usual, and he was certain they were tracking him. On Saturday the 15th, he called Matt Farwell, his writing partner, and said Farwell might be interviewed by the FBI. Farwell was unsettled. He was being really cagey over the phone, which was odd, very odd, Farwell says. On the 17th, Hastings e-mailed colleagues at BuzzFeed to warn them that the Feds are interviewing my close friends and associates?; he was onto a big story and needed to go off the rada[r] for a bit
hope to see you all soon.
He was deeply agitated, says The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur. Since Hastings didnt want to say anything more over e-mail or the phone, Farwell, who lived in Virginia, set up a lunch for him the following Thursday with a trusted friend of Farwells, also in L.A., so that she could pass along whatever Hastings had to tell him on her forthcoming trip East.
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http://nymag.com/news/features/michael-hastings-2013-11/?
snot
(10,538 posts)And got his brother to look at it with him, and tried to borrow a neighbor's car before going out? Did I get that right?
And no significant drugs or alcohol found in his system . . .
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)IdaBriggs
(10,559 posts)Sigh.
stopbush
(24,396 posts)A: Michael Hastings
B. A tree.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Ive deliberately rammed my truck into a stationary object to seek some quietus, says Farwell, whos written about his own post-Afghanistan struggles with PTSD, and I know the emotional state he was in, and he was not in that state. Jeff Hastings agrees: One thing I will say with as much certainty as one person can have: He did not commit suicide. Mike wasnt planning on dying. But Jeff also said something echoed nearly verbatim by several other friends I spoke to: Hastings wasnt the least likely person they knew to die the way hed died
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What about the engine trajectory? That is the Building Seven in this case.
I believe he was targeted by a black ops government agency.
they are saying hes a drug addict and insane, out of his mind? Its a government smear campaign.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)in a manic episode.
What I have not heard is what happened to the car and has there been a report as to how it became a fireball. Has there been an independent report. Was the onboard computer recovered, damage to the gas tank, etc...
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)over various stuff to explode. Cars can be engineered to prevent fires in the vast majority of collisions, but they're not tanks.