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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / Long Read: “Who Killed Michael Hastings?”

Long Read: “Who Killed Michael Hastings?”

by Anne Laurie|  November 15, 20131:23 am| 48 Comments

This post is in: Military, Daydream Believers, Security Theatre

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It’s never simple, badly as we want it to be. Benjamin Wallace, in NYMag:

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 Scahill’s film Dirty Wars, which seeks to expose “the hidden truth behind America’s 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 Department’s 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…

Sergeant Joe Biggs, who met Hastings in 2008, when the reporter, on assignment for GQ, was embedded with his unit in Afghanistan, hadn’t spoken to his friend in three months, but Hastings had BCC’d him on the June 17 e-mail to BuzzFeed colleagues. “I tried calling him when I got that e-mail,” Biggs says, “ ’cause I felt so fucking scared, because it didn’t seem like him.” Biggs e-mailed BuzzFeed, too. “They weren’t helpful at all. I kept e-mailing back, ‘What should we do? I’m not a journalist. I don’t know how to go about this stuff.’ They never responded to me.” Biggs tried contacting other media to let them know about the ominous e-mail; the only person who got back to him was a local L.A. reporter. “If that thing didn’t get released,” Biggs told me when I first called him, two weeks after Hastings’s death, “people would keep thinking it was an accident.”

Hastings lived as he died. On the small side, with blue eyes and scruffy good looks that suggested Jude Law’s little brother, he did everything fast: chain-smoking Parliament Lights, calling and e-mailing people late at night, speaking in a jittery torrent, churning out copy. (The first, long draft of his McChrystal article was a 48-hour production.) “The dude was exhausting,” Farwell says. “He just kind of vibrated energy. He had a deep well of moral outrage and sadness that I think goes back to a lot of the hypocrisy he saw and felt.”

After his death, there was an outpouring of grief. For all his abrasiveness, and sometimes because of it, he had endeared himself to a lot of people, and the posthumous adoration of Hastings’s colleagues was striking: Rachel Maddow attended his memorial service in Vermont; BuzzFeed established a national-security-reporting fellowship in his name; and last month, he was honored with the Norman Mailer Award for Emerging Journalist. His publisher, Blue Rider Press, recently announced that it will bring out a novel Hastings wrote some years ago, a roman-à-clef ­satire about his time working at Newsweek.

Most interesting was the viral fascination of strangers who, at a time when journalists rank lower than chiropractors in public opinion, saw Hastings as a valiant exception. What he stood for, to these people, was so important and rare that surely his death must hold more meaning than a senseless random event….

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Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 15, 2013 at 1:31 am

    AL, do you have a point? Please state it.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    November 15, 2013 at 1:33 am

    What a tangled load of ambitious crap.

    It demeans Hastings and demeans the reader more than anything else.

  3. 3.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 15, 2013 at 1:42 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Jesus, there is nothing in that story that benefits anyone, Hastings, his targets, or anyone else. Why publish it?

  4. 4.

    Thomas

    November 15, 2013 at 1:47 am

    Anne, the Ballon Juice readership doesn’t countenance hearing any news that might reflect poorly on our besieged president. It’s time for you to get with the program!

  5. 5.

    piratedan

    November 15, 2013 at 1:53 am

    whis·tle-blow·er
    [hwis-uhl-bloh-er, wis-] Show IPA
    noun
    a person who informs on another or makes public disclosure of corruption or wrongdoing.
    Also, whistle blower.

    Origin:
    1965–70

    So.. back to Manning – the idea on his/her/their document release was to expose the US for firing on unarmed civilians, which was shown to be false because when the “unedited” video came about, it documented that US service personnel were taking fire and had been fired upon. Then there was that small matter about ALL of the other classified documents released that had no relevancy to showing any wrongdoing being done.

    Assange – do we really want to go here in regards to Julian’s bonafides?

    the AP story… how did that turn out again?

    You know, when my government is doing something wrong and illegal and someone discovers it, there are actual policies in place to report such transgressions or illegal acts and if there is no satisfaction, then you have the option of taking it to an elected official, any elected federal official for examination and oversight.

    Barring those options, for whatever reason, you can then go to the press and then if you’re making a stand on principals, be prepared to have your day in court. Until someone can actually come up with something compelling, I’m going to have to ask you guys to stop watching The Parallax View and thinking it’s a documentary about the government.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 15, 2013 at 1:57 am

    @Thomas: Explain it to us. Don’t do a drive-by. Be brave and say what you want to say. I would guess that I will wake up days from now without seeing you making your point.

  7. 7.

    David Koch

    November 15, 2013 at 2:33 am

    This is looney left version of Hillary and Bengazhi.

  8. 8.

    Yatsuno

    November 15, 2013 at 2:34 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Jesus, there is nothing in that story that benefits anyone, Hastings, his targets, or anyone else. Why publish it?

    Pay by the word count?

  9. 9.

    amk

    November 15, 2013 at 3:07 am

    Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,”

    Has the shark been jumped yet?

    @David Koch: Yep.

  10. 10.

    Alison

    November 15, 2013 at 3:25 am

    @David Koch: Yeah, this was my thought too…

  11. 11.

    max

    November 15, 2013 at 3:28 am

    Long Read: “Who Killed Michael Hastings?”

    Dude. It was you and me.

    max
    [‘Or so I heard.’]

  12. 12.

    Churchlady

    November 15, 2013 at 3:34 am

    @Thomas: I freaking hope you’re serious. I’d just like to know where Hastings (of whom I’d never heard before his death), Assange, GG, Snowden, et al. were during the years actual, unwarranted hacking and eavesdropping WERE occurring against Muslims and their allies. NOT traitors or terrorists – citizens and simply, you know, Muslims. And I think I just answered my own question. Muslims. A few civil liberties, anti-hate crimes people. Who the hell cared? Not any of these ‘whistleblowers’ who thought monitoring “those people” and the war were all just ducky.

  13. 13.

    karen

    November 15, 2013 at 3:51 am

    So Annie Laurie you’re blaming Obama for Hastings death? I guess you really are a PUMA.

  14. 14.

    e.a.f.

    November 15, 2013 at 4:05 am

    It might have helped readers, unfamiliar with Mr. Hastings, if you had explained what he had been working on at the time of his death and how he died.

  15. 15.

    Van

    November 15, 2013 at 5:05 am

    So Hastings has become an antiwar liberal/leftist hero? That’s funny because every-time I saw him on TV he was arguing for the US military to stay in Iraq. His argument seemed to be that we she stay until we built a stable peaceful country. To be honest I wasn’t unsympathetic to his views, except that they didn’t seem realistic.

  16. 16.

    Thlayli

    November 15, 2013 at 5:14 am

    “A guy with a well-documented history of substance abuse drives his car into a tree at 100mph. I blame Obama.”

    Except they’re serious.

  17. 17.

    sm*t cl*de

    November 15, 2013 at 5:30 am

    journalists rank lower than chiropractors in public opinion

    So chiropractors are now the standard of public loathing and contempt? That cheered me up, anyway.

  18. 18.

    The Raven on the Hill

    November 15, 2013 at 5:40 am

    Cars rarely explode in accidents. That happens in movies a lot more than real life. And people have been covertly drugged and poisoned by security agencies, or just hounded to death. And Hastings had enemies among security agencies.

    Scary. Hope that’s not what happened.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 15, 2013 at 5:55 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: I suspect this @The Raven on the Hill: is the point. I’ll give this one a half point for actually going full Ludlum, if I suspect that “not” is not completely honest.

  20. 20.

    Anya

    November 15, 2013 at 6:01 am

    This is a very weird post. If AL believes Obama had something to do with Michael Hastings’ death, then she should be brave enough to actually state that.

    Reading about the “ominous e-mail,” Sergeant Briggs received from Hastings makes me wonder if maybe Mr. Hastings was dealing with mental health issues. Ofton, individuals will display unusual behaviors prior to the onset of the acute psychotic episode. In addition, it is not uncommon for people suffering from mental health issues to try to “self -medicate” with mind-altering drugs to deal with the symptoms.

  21. 21.

    David Koch

    November 15, 2013 at 6:20 am

    @The Raven on the Hill: you’ve never seen a car explode, I have. A pick up drove right into a telephone poll – booom!

    Here’s another car exploding during a high speed chase on live tee vee. Funny how mechanics work. You drive a car a 100 mph straight into a solid pillar, and BAM – the damn thing explodes.

    See. this is why I’m against legalizing weed. It produces too much paranoia.

  22. 22.

    Botsplainer

    November 15, 2013 at 6:22 am

    Purity progressive porn. The evil centrist Democratic president killed the crusading hero journalist by getting him stoned on the same shit he always got stoned on, and convinced him to drive 100 miles an hour into a palm tree. Fap fap flappity fap.

    It’s something like Gohmert could come up with, only dumber.

  23. 23.

    currants

    November 15, 2013 at 6:23 am

    @Anya: @The Raven on the Hill: IMO both of these (mental illness and security agency assassinations) are entirely plausible, and not necessarily mutually exclusive.

  24. 24.

    xian

    November 15, 2013 at 6:56 am

    i’m more concerned about who killed Walter Reuther and Paul Wellstone.

  25. 25.

    Mopesy

    November 15, 2013 at 8:08 am

    You know AL, when Charles P. Pierce posts “Long Reads” he at least writes them himself.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    November 15, 2013 at 8:17 am

    Lara Logan needs to get on this.

  27. 27.

    dmbeaster

    November 15, 2013 at 8:19 am

    There is a simple answer to this question.

    Dude killed himself due to crazy driving at 4 am (traces of drugs in system, but not believed to be the cause, although family member had arrived the day prior as part of an intervention to get him into rehab. He was probably coming down from a binge, as the family member reported him passed out at 1 am). Died from blunt force trauma due to high speed head-on impact with palm tree. Fact that car burned was incidental (and not unusual). This whole story is a nothing-burger, and obsessions about his “unusual” or “unexplained” death is just conspiracy p0rn.

  28. 28.

    joshua buhs

    November 15, 2013 at 8:20 am

    “viral fascination”? wtf?

  29. 29.

    rea

    November 15, 2013 at 8:28 am

    Considring that nobody had ever heard of this guy before he died, it seems highly unlikely that the government had him killed.

  30. 30.

    lol

    November 15, 2013 at 8:28 am

    Paranoia is a helluva drug.

  31. 31.

    burnspbesq

    November 15, 2013 at 8:31 am

    @The Raven on the Hill:

    Hope that’s not what happened

    Is there even one shred of actual, reliable evidence that suggests that Hastings’ death was other than accidental?

  32. 32.

    burnspbesq

    November 15, 2013 at 8:37 am

    @Baud:

    Lara Logan needs to get on this.

    Naw. This is a job for Jack Bauer. A fictional investigator for a non-existent crime.

  33. 33.

    Marc

    November 15, 2013 at 8:44 am

    From Hastings:

    “first they came for manning. Then Assange. Then fox.

    Fox?

  34. 34.

    handsmile

    November 15, 2013 at 8:50 am

    @rea:

    Actually quite a lot of people “had heard of” Michael Hastings through his reporting of the Iraq War. Google “Andrea Parhamovich” for one example. And this was several years before his 2010 profile of Stanley McChrystal, “The Runaway General,” in Rolling Stone (for which he won the prestigious George Polk Journalism Award).

    People really should refrain from substituting the word “nobody” for “I.”

  35. 35.

    Cassidy

    November 15, 2013 at 8:55 am

    @Marc: What did Fox say?

  36. 36.

    Culture of Truth

    November 15, 2013 at 8:56 am

    People really should refrain from substituting the word “nobody” for “I.”

    I prefer “The American People”

  37. 37.

    Woodrowfan

    November 15, 2013 at 9:01 am

    @David Koch: He was shot from the grassy knoll by a brainwashed gunman using nanothermite. The proof can be seen if you watch “the Shinning” carefully. It was the same technology used to fake the moon landings in “2001.” WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

  38. 38.

    Tripod

    November 15, 2013 at 9:14 am

    My experience with junkies making a 4am bomber runs is they’re looking to score. Maybe he thought he knew of a liquor store open, or a dealer willing to drag theirself out of bed at that hour.

  39. 39.

    Citizen_X

    November 15, 2013 at 9:52 am

    @David Koch:

    See. this is why I’m against legalizing weed. It produces too much paranoia.

    But at least it makes you drive slower.

  40. 40.

    kindness

    November 15, 2013 at 11:03 am

    Hastings made some clearly very bad decisions. Drugs (including alcohol), addictions and compulsions. God knows all that can do the best folk in. I know that all too well. Drugs and fast cars. How did I ever survive my teens/20’s? No clue. Must be something karmic. Hastings wasn’t as lucky. Then again, I stopped doing the powders when I turned 30. I was never addicted so again, lucky, thankful.

  41. 41.

    LAC

    November 15, 2013 at 11:03 am

    @Thlayli: Indeed. And post pointless long reads because they heard the the name “Michael Hastings” whispered in the garden. Sorry, but a junkie killing himself is that simple, Bugs Raplin.

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    November 15, 2013 at 11:24 am

    @burnspbesq:

    The second most likely possibility is suicide. Single car crash at high speeds when his friends/family are worried about his state of mind and working to get him into a mental health care/rehab facility? High probability of it having been suicide.

  43. 43.

    Matt

    November 15, 2013 at 11:24 am

    The gullible dupes who believe Michael Hastings’s death was just an accident are the same ones who buy the pathetically absurd “line gunman” theory of the coup against JFK.

    As General Honore said, you can’t “fix stupid”… Ok sheeple, do your worst…

  44. 44.

    Cassidy

    November 15, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    @Matt: What’s a “line gunmen”? Is that like a line cook?

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    November 15, 2013 at 12:25 pm

    @Matt:

    Let me guess, you also think Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain because depressed people doing too many drugs never, ever kill themselves either accidentally or on purpose.

  46. 46.

    dmbeaster

    November 15, 2013 at 12:35 pm

    @Matt:

    The gullible dupes who believe Michael Hastings’s death was just an accident…

    Like gambling, I think they need to reclassify the conspiracy mindset as an addiction.

  47. 47.

    handsmile

    November 15, 2013 at 12:43 pm

    @Cassidy:

    You have to admit though, that “line gunman” theory is “pathetically absurd.” As is the “loge gunman” theory that Kennedy was shot from a theater box.

    There are a lot of “Matt” nyms around here, so I can’t be certain of this particular one, but I think I hear a buzzing sound on my snarkometer.

    – Dr. Pangloss

  48. 48.

    Warren

    November 15, 2013 at 3:57 pm

    I subscribe to the “loogie gunman” theory. It wasn’t a magic bullet, it was a magic throat oyster.

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