Michael Hastings: FBI Records Lead to Positive ID

Crash


By Dennis Romero Thu., Jun. 20 2013 at 12:57 PM



KTLA / YouTube

(Here's the video shown above)

The L.A. County Department of Coroner today confirmed that the burned body found in the charred Mercedes that crashed in Hollywood early Tuesday was indeed that of noted journalist Michael Hastings.

The remains of 33-year-old Michael Mahon Hastings were identified through fingerprint records "obtained from the FBI," coroner's Lt. Fred Corral told us:

The cause of death?

That determination could take as long as 10 weeks, he said. Coroner's investigators have ordered toxicology tests to figure out if Hastings had been drinking or was under the influence of drugs.

Hasting was involved in a horrific, solo-vehicle crash that was reported about 4:25 a.m. Tuesday just south of Melrose Avenue on Highland Avenue.

See also: Michael Hastings, Noted Journalist, Dies in Fiery Hollywood Crash (VIDEO).

A freelance TV video crew stopped at Highland and Santa Monica Boulevard taped a southbound car blazing through a red light just seconds before the crash.

See also: Michael Hastings Crash: Amazing Red Light Violation, Speeding Caught on Video.



But Hastings' work on the national-security beat, including coverage of the CIA, put conspiracy theorists in a frenzy about his death.

See also: Michael Hastings Probed the CIA Before Fatal Hollywood Crash.

The Rolling Stone contributor perhaps best known for taking down General Stanley McChrystal worked in L.A. as a staffer at Buzzfeed.

Oh, and yes, WikiLeaks says he told a lawyer for the organization he was being investigated by the FBI shortly before his death.


WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks

Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.
6:07 PM - 19 Jun 2013

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Send feedback and tips to the author. Follow Dennis Romero on Twitter at@dennisjromero. Follow LA Weekly News on Twitter at @laweeklynews.


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Michael Hastings, the FBI, and WikiLeaks: Death of Journalist Sparks Conspiracy Theories

Today at 9:47 AM


By Joe Coscarelli




The death of reporter Michael Hastings, best remembered for taking on General Stanley McChrystal and other powerful people, has been met with shock and grief in the journalistic community, especially from those fortunate enough to work alongside him. But one layer below the fond remembrances are a host of vague questions and inferences about the circumstances surrounding the 33-year-old BuzzFeed reporter's fiery solo car crash early Tuesday in Los Angeles. Bringing those suspicions to the forefront last night was WikiLeaks, never reticent to insert itself into a story, which teased, "Michael Hastings death has a very serious non-public complication. We will have more details later." And after three hours tweeted: "Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him."

"Yeah," BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith confirmed to Daily Intelligencer. "Before his death, Michael told a number of his friends and colleagues that he was concerned that he was under investigation."


But other, less reputable sources have taken the speculation much further. "Vince Foster-like murder plot emerging in Los Angeles? Did the Obama administration knock off a star reporter?" asked one blog early on Wednesday, adding to existing conspiratorial Twitter chatter. Another wrote, "Admit it, Michael Hastings’ Death is Weird and Scary." Hours before revelations about a potential FBI investigation, InfoWars, the Alex Jones website that serves as a catch-all conspiracy-theory clearing house, mentioned Hastings's death with an editor's note: "Journalists who mess with government and military power often die under mysterious circumstances." None had more than conjecture.


The circumstances are these: "Police said a vehicle was southbound on Highland about 4:20 a.m. when it lost control south of Melrose and smashed into a tree," the L.A. Times reported. Video purports to show Hastings's Mercedes-Benz running a red light at a high speed minutes before the crash. "It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night," a witness told the local news. "I couldn't have written a scene like this for a movie, where the engine flies from the car." Photos and video from the aftermath show extreme wreckage, and as of yesterday, the coroner had not officially identified the body because it was too badly burned.


But an automotive writer also fed the doubters:

I’m here to state that I’ve seen dozens of cars hit walls and stuff at high speeds and the number of them that I have observed to eject their powertrains and immediately catch massive fire is, um, ah, zero. Modern cars are very good at not catching fire in accidents. The Mercedes-Benz C-Class, which is an evolutionary design from a company known for sweating the safety details over and above the Euro NCAP requirements, should be leading the pack in the not-catching-on-fire category. Nor is the C-Class known for sudden veering out of control into trees and whatnot.


The crash is under investigation and there will be an official accident report (a toxicology report could take weeks). Whatever its findings, they can likely coexist with Hastings's mind-set at the time and a potential government investigation without representing something more sinister.


"He was incredibly tense and very worried and was concerned that the government was looking in on his material," said Hastings's friend and Current TV host Cenk Uygur. "I don't know what his state of mind was at 4:30 in the morning, but I do know what his state of mind was in general, and it was a nervous wreck." But Mother Jones editor Clara Jeffery put it plainly: "Ugh, the people posting Vince Foster style comments  do a disservice to his no BS truth telling." Let's wait for the facts.


Update: The L.A. Times reports that Hastings, prior to his death, "was researching a story about a privacy lawsuit brought by the Florida socialite Jill Kelley against the Department of Defense and the FBI." The paper also notes, "Since Hastings's death early Tuesday, wild conspiracy theories have bloomed on the Internet implying that he was murdered by powerful forces wanting to silence him."


Update II: The LAPD tells the Times "there appears to be no foul play in the one-vehicle accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings ... Officials are trying to determine whether there was a mechanical problem with the car." His body has been positively identified by the L.A. coroner.

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The McChrystal Rolling Stone article: the story behind the story

The McChrystal Rolling Stone article was written by a freelance reporter who ended up in an impromptu 'embed' with McChrystal because of the Iceland volcano.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal works aboard a C-130 over Afghanistan in this photo used in the McChrystal Rolling Stone article.
Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Mark O’Donald/NATO/Rolling Stone/AP

By Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer / June 23, 2010

The Rolling Stone McChrystal article might never have exploded in Washington Wednesday if the Eyjafjallajokull volcano hadn’t erupted in Iceland this spring.

At least, that’s how Rolling Stone correspondent Michael Hastings has explained how his two-day stint with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Paris turned into nearly a month-long “embed” with the US military officer who was, until Wednesday, in charge of the war in Afghanistan. Stranded in Europe, they traveled to Berlin together – and then later to Kabul and Washington.

Mr. Hastings, a salty Vermonter who earned his chops covering the Iraq war, was reached Wednesday by a number of US news outlets in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. He is reporting on the ramp-up to an offensive that has been billed as key to McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy, which the more diplomatic Gen. David Petraeus will now oversee.

The comments McChrystal and his staff made to Hastings have many in Washington shaking their heads over how a top commander could let down his guard with what one outlet characterized as “an antiwar reporter from an antiwar magazine.”

By all accounts McChrystal crossed a red line by disparaging senior members of the Obama administration, and allowing his aides to do so as well – something that even McChrystal acknowledges he, and he alone, is responsible for.

But this was not a case of failing to hold one’s tongue during a one-hour, cross-legged interview in soft lamplight.

The Rolling Stone profile was sussed out over weeks in which Hastings, who in the past had prided himself on getting sources “drunk and singing,” followed McChrystal’s band from Parisian hotel rooms to dusty Afghan outposts with a tape recorder and notebook in hand “three-quarters of the time.”

The result was a not only controversial but rich portrait of McChrystal – from editor of a West Point literary magazine to a dad who doesn’t mind his son’s blue mohawk, to a (possibly unwitting) player in the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire.

In interviews published by Newsweek and the Burlington Free Press in Vermont, where he went to high school, Hastings was quoted Wednesday as saying he was very surprised by the impact of his Rolling Stone profile.

But Hastings is not a naïve reporter, if only 30 years old. A veteran of Baghdad, where his girlfriend was killed after coming to join him, Hastings has – in his own words – spent time around Catholic school, county jail, rehab, and the presidential candidates of 2008.

His mission on the campaign trail, he wrote in a 2008 GQ piece, was “basically: Ride the buses and planes with the candidates, have big lunches and dinners on the expense account, get sources drunk and singing, then report back the behind-the-scenes story.”

Deriding Rudy Giuliani for making light of the war in Iraq, where he had a brother fighting, and curious about John McCain’s purported womanizing, Hastings said he had trouble being objective. But he was not apologetic.

"Objectivity is a fallacy,” he wrote.

He talked about the game in which “you try to be friendly and nonthreatening” with politicians’ aides to “build trust” – but dismissed the trust as an illusion. In the same GQ article, Hastings described trying to get presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in an unguarded moment – “swearing, or bringing in a hooker, or breaking out in spontaneous prayer.”

Hastings doesn’t try to come off as a saint, but on The Hastings Report, his blog that has 142 followers as of Wednesday, he says he greatly respects writers “who live their lives with integrity and without compromise.”

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Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0623/The-McChrystal-Rolling-Stone-article-the-story-behind-the-story

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