Michael Hastings (journalist)

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Michael Hastings with Valerie Jarrett

Michael Mahon Hastings (born January 28, 1980 in Malone, New York , USA , † June 18, 2013 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American investigative journalist and writer . He was an associate editor for Rolling Stone and a correspondent for BuzzFeed. His 2010 article on the general , former JSOC commander and US commander in chief of NATO in Afghanistan , Stanley McChrystal , led to his immediate dismissal by US President Barack Obama . Hastings was most recently working on a story about CIA Director John O. Brennan , according to his widow Elise Jordan , who died in a car accident in 2013, according to the official police report. However, cameras recorded three explosions, and the engine block was a considerable distance away. There were various other circumstantial evidence, clues and testimonies, including from WikiLeaks , Richard Clarke and the “Buzz Feed” editor-in-chief Ben Smith, which make a murder appear more likely overall.

Life

Michael Hastings was born in 1980 in Franklin County , Malone, his parents Molly Mahon and Brent Hastings were both doctors, and he had two brothers, Jeffrey and Jonathan Hastings. He graduated from Rice Memorial High School in Burlington , Vermont in 1998 and then studied journalism at New York University , where he graduated magna cum laude in 2002 . He worked for the US magazine Newsweek International from 2002 to 2008 and quickly became known for his difficult stories and for his war coverage from Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009 his article Obama's War was selected for the anthology "Best American Political Writing 2009".

Between 2005 and 2007 he was the Baghdad - Correspondent for Newsweek, at a time of devastating violence in Iraq. At the age of 25, he was the youngest war reporter ever employed by the magazine . It was during this period that the tragic death of his fiancée Andi Parhamovich occurred. She went to Baghdad in August 2006 to work with Hastings and worked for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). Andi Parhamovich died on January 17, 2007 when her convoy was shot at during a Sunni insurgent attack . Hastings processed the experiences in the 2010 book "I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story" and founded the "Andi Foundation" in her memory with part of his author's fee. , which awards grants to female students.

Even after the death of his fiancée, he continued to report on theaters of war such as Iraq , Afghanistan , Yemen , Somalia and Libya . Hastings has written for the Washington Post , Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Policy magazine, as well as online magazines, Salon , Slate, and BuzzFeed .

On June 22, 2010, Hastings landed a big scoop with an article for the music magazine Rolling Stone : The young journalist succeeded in coaxing the commander-in-chief of the ISAF troops in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, into those scandalous remarks about the US government Insubordination and eventually even cost the job. McChrystal had a military career spanning more than 30 years, was a specialist in covert military actions and had only taken command in Afghanistan a year ago. Before that, McChrystal had been the head of all special operations in Iraq, the United States Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) , which he led , tracked down Saddam Hussein and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq . In his reportage, Hastings described how McChrystal and his staff at their headquarters in Kabul were blaspheming US President Barack Obama, other members of the government, diplomats and leading European allies. A McChrystal adviser disparaged US Vice President Joe Biden in the article with the pun: “Joe Biden, who is this? - Did you say Bite Me? ”McChrystal called Biden“ short-sighted ”and explained Biden's ideas about Afghanistan as a recipe for a“ Chaosistan ”. McChrystal felt “betrayed” by the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry .

A secret letter from Eikenberry leaked to the "New York Times" in January, in which Eikenberry warned of hopeless American involvement in Afghanistan and described President Hamid Karzai as an "inadequate strategic partner". “I like Karl,” McChrystal said in the article, “but he never spoke like that to us. He's one of those people who want to hedge for the history books. If we fail, they can say, See, we said so. ”Obama's security adviser, former Marine General James L. Jones , has been dismissed as a clown. The president's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, diplomat Richard Holbrooke , was also disrespected. McChrystal was annoyed to journalist Hastings about the fact that Holbrooke emailed him. And he doesn't even read it. This disrespect was all the more astonishing when McChrystal, as an allied commander in Afghanistan, also consciously played a political role in the counterinsurgency strategy . The magazine emphasized that all of the statements quoted had been expressly approved for publication by employees of the general.

Obama had the general flown into the White House for a report from Kabul on June 23 and forced him to resign. It was also the end of his entire staff. In 2010 Hastings was awarded the George Polk Award for the article "The Runaway General" .

In February 2012, Hastings released a document from the United States Department of Homeland Security showing how the US government was monitoring the Occupy Wall Street movement protesters .
An FBI document on Michael Hastings

In May 2011, Hastings married Elise Jordan, who also worked as a journalist and who was speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2008 to 2009 .

In 2011, Hastings made two more articles in Rolling Stone - "King David's War" about General David Petraeus' failed nation-building strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq and "Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on US Senators" about the illegal one Influencing the elected parliamentarians through the Pentagon's PR department - for headlines.

In 2012 he published with the New York Times - bestselling "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan," a more comprehensive critique of the US military adventure in Afghanistan. The book "The Operators" was optioned for a film by Brad Pitt's production company "Plan B". After the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, in which at least 15 people were killed, including the US ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens and three other employees of the embassy, ​​Hastings exchanged letters with the angry Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , Philippe Reines, which was published in full.

In 2013, Hastings' book Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign was published on Obama's second presidential campaign. Hastings's last article, which appeared on Buzzfeed on June 7, 2013, dealt with the nascent NSA scandal and the surveillance of citizens by the secret services. In this regard, he accused Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress of hypocrisy and, in his view, defended and expanded the same illegal espionage practices that they used to be in the opposition when Bush and the Republicans were in power, even as treason against the had demonized American values.

Event sequence for the death of Hastings

Palm tree at the scene of the accident in July 2013. Location

The day before his death, Hastings said his Mercedes could have been tampered with, so he asked his friend Jordanna Thigpen to lend him her car. He feels threatened and wants to leave the city. Hours before his death, Hastings emailed his friends and work colleagues that the FBI would be questioning his friends: "I'm on a big story and have to go off the radar for a while." The emails were countered on June 17, 2013 2 p.m. sent. Hastings died around 4:20 a.m. the next Tuesday morning, June 18, 2013. According to the police report, he was sitting alone in his Mercedes C250 on north Highland Avenue in Hollywood when he lost control of the vehicle for unknown reasons. The car came off the road, broke through a guardrail, and hit a palm tree at high speed without braking. The Mercedes exploded in a fireball, the engine block was a noticeably long distance from the car, and Hastings's body was so badly burned that the coroner was only able to identify it by his teeth two days later. According to the police report, it was a self-inflicted car accident and no evidence of outside interference could be found. Hastings was 33 years old.

Possible backgrounds and speculations about his death

After the Hastings accident, there was speculation that the car accident was deliberately caused. Since Hastings published a highly explosive document of the United States Department of Homeland Security in February 2012 , which shows how the US government monitors and exerts influence on the protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement and Hastings, among other things, a publication about the CIA director John O. Brennan worked, his journalistic work was seen as a threat to the interests of the intelligence service and it was suspected that secret services were involved in his death.

This does not seem absurd because the ex- NSA and CIA boss, General Michael V. Hayden said according to the Süddeutscher Zeitung: "Yes, we use targeted killings and I hope that the capabilities of the NSA will be used to the full" US Vice President Joe Biden , Sarah Palin , Mike Huckabee , Gordon Liddy and various other people directly or indirectly called for such targeted killing for Julian Assange and (ex-) whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg had previously warned.

As previously published in Operation Mockingbird or as recently published by Hastings in the matter of Occupy Wall Street , the FBI (and in some cases other US intelligence agencies) are instructed to take action against US citizens if, for example, they are whistleblowers and human rights defenders. Providing support to protectors like Edward Snowden or Thomas Drake (even indirectly) (see also under Lavabit ). For example, former police officer Allen Duncan (then New Jersey ), who was critical of the government, reported it as early as 2001 on WDR. Duncan: “At the moment, every criticism and dissenting opinion is being cracked down on in our country. Quite a few people with websites were harassed by the secret service for things they wrote. Their websites have been closed and their homes searched. I was warned that I was being watched and that I could put myself in danger. ”The incidents seem to have been caused by the new United States Cyber ​​Command (for the planning points, see US Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace ) and the expansion of the National Security Agency ( NSA) to be pushed further.

Regarding Hastings, longtime US security coordinator Richard Clarke said in the Huffington Post , “My rule has always been that you don't give up a conspiracy theory until it's really proven to be wrong. And in the case of Michael Hastings, the publicly available information suggests a cyber attack on the car. ”On June 18, 2013, a tweet from Wikileaks fueled further discussion:“ With Michael Hastings' death there are very serious, non-public ones Entanglements. More details later. ”Wikileaks then announced that Hastings had also contacted Wikileaks attorney Jennifer Robinson to tell her that he was being monitored by the FBI. Buzz-Feed editor-in-chief Ben Smith also confirmed that Hastings, shortly before he died, was concerned that the FBI was watching. Even the FBI's denial, unusual in such cases, fueled speculation. The news magazine of the broadcaster CBS "Inside Edition" reports in "Tragic Accident or Murder?" On the various conspiracy theories.

In July 2014, the Hastings accident was the reason for the NDR reporter Klaus Scherer and the filmmaker Rudolph Herzog to investigate whether the Hastings Mercedes on-board computer could have been hacked and remote-controlled.

After his death

Hastings was posthumously honored with the 2013 Norman Mailer Prize for Outstanding Journalism. His widow Elise Jordan found a novel on his laptop that was published in June 2014 under the title "The Last Magazine". It is a satirical key novel from the media world and famous colleagues like Jon Meacham and Fareed Zakaria can be recognized. The action takes place in the years after the 9/11 attack , a country has to be bombed, suddenly it is said that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction . Hastings vividly depicts how the tips of the magazine translate warmongering into journalism. In an editorial office of a magazine that can be equated with Newsweek , Hastings describes the profound media change in the press industry - and the gap between arrogant print veterans and young online users , who the old call the "faction of the dead trees".

Works

Books

  • I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story. Scribner, New York 2008.
  • The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan. 2012, New York, NY, Penguin / Blue Rider Press, ISBN 978-0-399-15988-6 .
  • Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign. 2013, New York, NY, Penguin / Blue Rider Press.
  • The Last Magazine (novel). 2014 (posthumous), Blue Rider Press, ISBN 0-399-16994-6 .

Reports

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Elise Jordan and Michael Hastings to wed May 21 in Hernando. ( Memento from July 1, 2013 on the Internet Archive ) In: The South Reporter. May 2011.
  2. ↑ Hastings' widow: 'Taking it day by day'. on CNN, Aug 6, 2013.
  3. ↑ Rolling Stone To Publish Michael Hastings' Profile Of CIA Director John Brennan on abovetopsecret.com, August 6, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b c In the sights of the hackers. ( Memento from August 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: ARD Documentation (45 min.). A film by Klaus Scherer and Rudolph Herzog, first broadcast on July 15, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b Windbag Alex Jones Parroting Hastings Engine Lie. In: Farganne. July 21, 2013.
  6. ↑ Melissa Jeltsen: Michael Hastings Sent Email About FBI Probe Hours Before Death In: The Huffington Post. June 22, 2013.
  7. ↑ Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him. on WikiLeaks , published June 19, 2013 3:07 pm.
  8. ↑ Car accident - or is it murder? In: Frankfurter Rundschau , fr-online, June 21, 2013.
  9. ↑ Jessica Jerreat: 'Paranoid' Michael Hastings told WikiLeaks lawyer he was being investigated by the FBI only a few hours before deadly car crash. on dailymail.co.uk, June 20, 2013, 10:12 p.m.
  10. ↑ a b Mike Hogan: What was Michael Hastings' Car Hacked? Richard Clarke Says It's Possible. In: The Huffington Post. June 26, 2013.
  11. ^ Margalit Fox: Michael Hastings, 33, Winner of Polk Award , nytimes.com. 19th June 2013. 
  12. ↑ Mission and Vision , theandifoundation.org, accessed on July 16, 2014.
  13. ↑ At McChrystal's resignation, President Obama said: “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe that it is the right decision for our national security. The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan ”; quoted from Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone on the Story that Brought Down Gen. McChrystal In: Democracy Now! from July 1, 2010.
  14. ↑ Obama fires General McChrystal on Deutsche Welle on June 23, 2010.
  15. ↑ Michael Hastings' wife Elise Jordan . In: Daily Entertainment News , June 18, 2013. 
  16. ↑ MICHAEL M. HASTINGS Obituary: View Michael Hastings's Obituary by The Burlington Free Press . Legacy.com. Retrieved July 16, 2014.
  17. ↑ Brad Pitt to Star as General McChrystal in 'The Operators' Movie
  18. ↑ Hillary Clinton Aide Tells Reporter To “Fuck Off” And “Have A Good Life” , buzzfeed.com, Sept. 24, 2012
  19. ↑ Hastings thought his car was being tampered with , usatoday.com, August 22, 2013
  20. ↑ Car accident - or is it murder? fr-online.de, June 21, 2013, accessed on October 27, 2013 .
  21. ↑ Michael Hastings Sent Email About FBI Probe Hours Before Death (UPDATE) In: The Huffington Post . June 25, 2013.
  22. ↑ a b Michael Hastings: Exclusive: Homeland Security Kept Tabs on Occupy Wall Street. Leaked internal report warns of “potential for violence,” need to “control protesters”. In: Rolling Stone. February 28, 2012.
  23. ↑ Steve Przybilla: Terror Danger: The Externally Controlled Car as a Pretty Real Threat. wz-newsline.de, October 9, 2013, accessed on October 27, 2013 .
  24. ^ Brendan Sasso: Ex-NSA chief: 'I certainly hope' agency involved in targeted killings. In: The Hill March 10, 2013.
  25. ↑ Ex-NSA boss jokingly puts Snowden on death list In: Süddeutsche Zeitung October 4, 2013.
  26. ↑ United Stasi of America In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 11th 2013.
  27. ^ How Snowden's mail provider wrestled with the FBI In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 3rd October 2013.
  28. ↑ The Snowden Case: Thomas Drake. What the role model has to say. ARD, as of April 15, 2014.
  29. ↑ Willy Brunner, Gerhard Wisnewski: Script for the WDR documentation Aktenzeichen 9/11 unsolved ( memento from September 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on WDR, 2001.
  30. ↑ Who Killed Michael Hastings? In: New York November 10, 2013.
  31. ↑ Conspiracy Theories Surround Reporter Michael Hastings Death , insideedition.com from June 24, 2013
  32. ↑ When ships are "targeted by the hackers". On rp-online.de from July 14, 2014.
  33. ↑ Hastings, Michael, 1980-2013. Library of Congress
  34. ↑ Hillel Italie: Maya Angelou accepts Mailer Center lifetime award . In: Associated Press . October 17, 2013. Archived from the original on October 18, 2013. Retrieved on December 3, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Hastings, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hastings, Michael Mahon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American investigative journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Malone, New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 2013
Place of death Los Angeles , California