Michael Hastings Dies in Suspicious Car 'Crash'.....

[Peter Lemkin]

The investigative journalist Michael Hastings has died at the age of 33 in a Los Angeles car crash. Reporting extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan, Hastings' widely read stories showed the grim realities of war. His 2010 Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, sparked a political controversy after McChrystal and his aides were quoted making disparaging remarks about top administration officials. The article exposed longstanding disagreements between civilian and military officials over the war's direction and led to McChrystal's firing. In a statement provided to Democracy Now!, the film director Oliver Stone said: "Michael Hastings went far in the span he had. One of our finest young investigative journalists, high stakes reporting in a sense cost him his life. We desperately need more and more young men and women such as Michael, willing to protest the intolerable war crimes and arrogance of our supremacy-seeking society." Rolling Stone issued this statement: "Hastings' hallmark as a reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power. He leaves behind a remarkable legacy of reporting." We look back on two of of Hastings' appearances on Democracy Now! in 2010 and 2012.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: And the journalist Michael Hastings has died at the age of 33. Hastings was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles early Tuesday morning. Reporting extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan, Hastings' widely read stories showed the grim realities of war. His 2010 Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, sparked a political controversy after McChrystal and his aides were quoted making disparaging remarks about top administration officials. The article exposed longstanding disagreements between civilian and military officials over the war's direction and led to General McChrystal's firing.
Speaking to Democracy Now! in 2012, Michael Hastings said the Afghan War, like the invasion of Iraq, was based on a false premise.

MICHAEL HASTINGS: If WMDs were the big lie of the Iraq War, the safe haven myth is the big lie of the Afghan War. And what I mean by thatand this was true in Iraq, as wellbut 99 percent of the people, maybe even higher, honestly, the people we're fighting, whether it was Sunni insurgents in Iraq or Shiite militias in Iraq or in Afghanistan, the Taliban never actually posed a threat to the United States homeland. So the question one has to ask oneself is that if everything we're doing and everyone we're fighting is not actually a threat to the United Statescertainly not a direct threat, by any means, by any meansthen why are we expending so many resources, $120 billion a year, you know, with all the lives lost, to do it? And that'sand again, this is the big lie of counterinsurgency, which I know we've discussed on your show. To justify this tremendous outlay of resources, they have to say, "Oh, no, we're killing terrorists." But everybody knows that that's not true.

AMY GOODMAN: At the time of that interview, Michael Hastings had just come out with his book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan.
Tributes began spreading across the Internet Tuesday evening after news broke of Michael Hastings' death. His former magazine, Rolling Stone, said, quote, "Hastings' hallmark as reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power. He leaves behind a remarkable legacy of reporting," they wrote. In a statement provided to Democracy Now!, the film director Oliver Stone said, quote, "Michael Hastings went far in the span he had. One of our finest young investigative journalists, high stakes reporting in a sense cost him his life. We desperately need more and more young men and women such as Michael, willing to protest the intolerable war crimes and arrogance of our supremacy-seeking society," Stone wrote.
In his first interview with Democracy Now! in 2010, Michael Hastings discussed the foundation he established to honor the memory of his former fiancée, Andrea Parhamovich, who was killed by an IED in Iraq in 2007.

MICHAEL HASTINGS: It's called the Andi Foundation. It's a fund that helpsthere's domestic sort of scholarships we give out, but we've also, along with the National Democratic Institute, have an annual fellowship where we bring a young woman from a developing nation over to Washington, D.C., to learn about human rights and democracy, and so then they can go back to their own home countries and try to institute these rule-of-law programs. We brought over one woman last year from Iraq. It was really incredible. She was even able to spend Christmas with the Parhamovich family. And this year we have another candidate who came over from, I believe, Burma. So, you know, the war has been pretty tough on a lot of people. But you've got to just figure out a way to sort of take what happens and go forward and try to do the best you can.

Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories: Car Accident And Dead Body Fuel Speculation On Reddit, Twitter

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By Christopher Zara | June 19 2013 12:24 PM

Photo: YouTubeLos Angeles police are still investigating a fiery car crash that reportedly ended the life of journalist Michael Hastings.

The apparent death of Michael Hastings, the young investigative journalist known for ruffling feathers among the nation's power elite, has brought with it a wave of unanswered questions and speculation. Best known for a Rolling Stone article that led to the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the 33-year-old BuzzFeed reporter died in a car accident in Los Angeles early Tuesday morning, according to a statement released by Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief.
While the journalistic community has largely reacted to the news with an outpouring of grief, online forums have been running wild with conspiracy theories, and why wouldn't they? Some of the details surrounding the story read like a poorly written political thriller. As of Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles County coroner's office had still not determined that an "unrecognizable" body pulled from a fiery solo car crash was actually Hastings, according to the Los Angeles Times. (The body is identified only as "John Doe 117.")

Meanwhile, LA Weekly reports that Hastings was reporting extensively on the CIA at the time of his death, and the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald pointed out that Hastings' last article for BuzzFeed was on the NSA and the Democrats' love for spying on Americans.
In Hastings' 2012 book, "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan," Hastings

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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Michael Hastings murdered by bomb on gas tank




This story is not complete and will receive edits

The mainstream press is trying to front this as a high speed car crash, and IT WAS NOT. Take a look at the following screen capture of this "crash" and observe a few things:
1. There is no impact damage to this car. The only damage there is is BLOWN OUT, not smashed in.


2. This was a Mercedes, not a Pinto, which means it did not burst into flames on its own. One (seldom quoted) eyewitness said the car "exploded". Interesting stuff.


3. Here is where it starts to get REALLY damning - LOOK AT THE DOOR. The paint is PERFECT yet the car is ablaze. This means that whoever photographed this was expecting it to happen, and was on scene with a camera ready to film this in the wee hours of the morning, and nail it before the fire scorched the paint.

4. Unlike what the so called single "eyewitness" report says, the car did not impact a tree. The car did not impact ANYTHING. Look at where the car stopped. See much damage there? The front only touched the tree as the car rolled to a stop.


5. The car was not speeding, as said in the "eyewitness" report. The level of damage to that car is that of a 25 mile an hour impact AT MOST. On top of that, it does not appear to have impact damage, it is blown out and not crunched in. It sure looks like an explosion pushed that door out, and nothing crunched it in.


AND FINALLY, THE MOST DAMNING THING OF ALL -
Here we have a car FULLY, and I mean FULLY in flames, from front to back, with NO SCORCHED PAINT because the flame is too new, which means it went from the back of the car to the front of the car instantaneously, before it had a chance to scorch anything, which means ONE THING - A BOMB ON THE GAS TANK, and a PHOTOGRAPHER READY TO SNAP THE PHOTO VERY EARLY ON. Even rapid car fires take time to progress through the car, and totally scorch the paint as they progress. This flame was blasted into the entire car instantly. That's the only explanation for the shiny paint while it sits completely engulfed in flames. Gasoline had to have been blown under the car, all the way to the front. That flame did not progress through that car, it was blown through it with force and the photographer was on the scene the moment it happened and bagged a perfect shot. I'd like to know how that happened - early morning walk?

http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/hastingsmurdered.html


Michael Hastings, 'Rolling Stone' Contributor, Dead at 33

The bold journalist died in a car accident in Los Angeles

Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33.

Hastings' unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone, "The Runaway General," captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and the general resigning his post. "The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be met by set by a commanding general," Obama said, announcing McChrystal's departure. "It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/new...3-20130618