Thread: Evidence Indicates Michael Hastings Was Assassinated: working on a story on the CIA

Evidence Indicates Michael Hastings Was Assassinated

Rolling Stone journalist made enemies in FBI, CIA



Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 20, 2013

The revelation that Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings was working on a story about the CIA before his death and had contacted a Wikileaks lawyer about being under investigation by the FBI hours before his car exploded into flames has bolstered increasingly valid claims that the 33-year-old was assassinated.

Hastings died early Tuesday morning in Hollywood when his car allegedly hit a tree at high speed. The Los Angeles Coroner’s office has not yet been able to officially identify the body as Hastings because it is so badly burned.

Skeptics of the official narrative have highlighted eyewitness accounts which state that Hastings’ Mercedes “exploded”.

Images of the vehicle appear to show more damage to the rear, around the area of the fuel tank, than the front, leading to speculation that a car bomb which ignited the fuel could have been responsible for the incident.

“No matter how you slice this particular pie, a Mercedes is not just going to explode into flames without a little assistance,” writes freelance journalist Jim Stone. “Car fires in new cars happen for three main reasons — running the engine out of oil, or running the engine out of coolant, or after an absolutely huge car mangling accident, having the hot side of the battery short out against the frame before it reaches the fuse panel. And for all 3 of those normal reasons, which account for virtually all car fires in modern cars, the fire would have started in the engine compartment, progressed slowly, and scorched the hell out of the paint before ever reaching the gas tank. That clean paint is the be all tell all, Michael Hastings was murdered, and the rest is detail.”

Stone also questions why a white sheet has been draped over the vehicle in the image below.

The questions surrounding the precise nature of the “accident” that killed Hastings are given more weight by the fact that the journalist had made enemies within both the FBI and the CIA.

“Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him,” the official Wikileaks Twitter account announced yesterday.

Hastings “had the Central Intelligence Agency in his sights” and was set to release an article exposing the agency, according to L.A. Weekly.

The Obama administration and the Justice Department have openly claimed the authority to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world if they are deemed a national security threat. A number of American citizens have already been killed as a result of this policy. Is it really that crazy to suggest that Michael Hastings was merely the latest victim of this doctrine?

The New York Daily News highlights the fact that Hastings had received multiple death threats before his demise.

Following his role in bringing down Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Hastings was told by a McChrystal staffer, “We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write.”

“Whenever I’d been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people, one of them would usually mention that they were going to kill me,” said Hastings.

Hastings was renowned for being “only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects,” according to Buzzflash editor Ben Smith, adding, “He knew that there are certain truths that nobody has an interest in speaking, ones that will make you both your subjects and their enemies uncomfortable. They’re stories that don’t get told because nobody in power has much of an interest in telling them.”

The fact that Hastings had made a plethora of enemies as a result of his hard-hitting investigative journalism has prompted a deluge of online comment speculating that the writer’s “car crash” was no accident.

“Hastings’ wreck might make sense on the freeway, but I doubt he’d be dumb enough to go 100 mph on Highland. He’s not some dumb college kid,” said one commenter on a local news site.

“A warning to other journalists to not dig too deep,” another Reddit user wrote. “Stick with the party line if you want a long, happy life.”

If this was an isolated incident then there wouldn’t be so many questions swirling about Hastings’ death. However, he’s certainly not the first individual to go up against the military-industrial complex and wind up in a coffin.

Other journalists who have proven to be a thorn in the side of the establishment have met the same fate, from Andrew Breitbart who was about to release damaging pre-election information about Barack Obama before he collapsed and died in strange circumstances, to Gary Webb, the Pullitzer prize-winning author who exposed the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade and subsequently committed “suicide” after apparently shooting himself in the head – twice.

More recently, Ibragim Todashev, friend of accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnev, was shot in the head six times by the FBI, who initially claimed Todashev was armed but later had to admit this was a lie. Speculation has raged that Todashev was assassinated because he had knowledge about the Boston bombings which the feds didn’t want to see the light of public scrutiny.

Despite his actions, the murder of Christopher Dorner, who was burned to death by LAPD officers while hiding inside a cabin, shows that authorities will not hesitate to resort to such methods.

It’s virtually inevitable that the true cause of Michael Hastings death will never be known and that the mainstream media will demonize anyone who questions the official narrative as a conspiracy theorist. Meanwhile, journalists and others who pose a threat to the military-industrial complex will continue to die in bizarre “accidents” that stink of foul play.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

http://www.infowars.com/evidence-ind...-assassinated/

Michael Hastings Assassinated for Work Uncovering Surveillance State

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 20, 2013

The journalist Michael Hastings, who died in what authorities have described as a high-speed car crash, was an active member of Project PM, a crowd-sourced research effort to expose government intelligence contractors.

The login screen for Trapwire, software used for intelligence-gathering on U.S. and global citizens and made public in a Wikileaks data dump.

“If you care that the surveillance state is expanding in capabilities and intent without being effectively opposed by the population of the West, you can assist in making this an actionable resource for journalists, activists, and other interested parties,” the Project PM wiki states. “Consider doing a bit of research on the companies and government agencies listed on this wiki, or even adding new topic for investigation by our participants.”
Barrett Brown, the founder of the initiative, was arrested by the FBI and faces up to 105 years in prison. Brown is described as the “brain trust” for the hacktivist group Anonymous.
Two indictments against Brown are for allegedly “threatening of an FBI officer in a YouTube videoand the concealing of evidence,” writes Patrick McGuire for Vice.com, and “do not seem worthy of such a harsh sentence, considering a man in Houston recieved only 42 months for threatening to blow up an FBI building, and a former dentist got 18 months for threatening to kill an FBI agent. The third, however, pertains to Barrett Brown’s pasting of a link in an Anonymous IRC chat room to a document full of credit card numbers and their authentication codes that was stolen from the security company Stratfor, in the midst of a hack that released over five million internal emails. Those emails were published to Wikileaks.”
Brown’s Stratfor hack revealed the inner workings of Trapwire software. It purportedly acquires video from far-flung surveillance cameras located in stores, casinos and other businesses around the country and uses sophisticated facial recognition software to identify people of interest captured by ubiquitous cameras numbering in the millions.
Trapwire software is a significant breakthrough for the surveillance state. It was uncovered by security researcher Justin Ferguson. He delved into the massive pile of emails hacked by Brown from Stratfor – the Austin-based firm regarded as a shadow CIA – on Christmas of 2011. In response to Ferguson’s discovery and the Trapwire revelation, Wikileaks was hit with a large scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Brown discovered the software produced by Trapwire is owned by Cubic, a San Diego company acquired by Abraxas Corporation. Barrett also uncovered tax returns calling into question Cubic’s denial that it is not affiliated with Trapwire and the software.

Abraxas is run by a former CIA spook, Richard Helms (not to be confused with the CIA director under Nixon). He was also one of the original assignees to its Counter Terrorism Center in the mid-1980s.

Moreover, according to Florida State’s records of corporations, Helms is the director of Ntrepid, a company that won a $2.76 million dollar contract from Centcom, the U.S. Central Command. Ntrepid innovated a product called Tartan, a program that can “analyze illicit organizations and less structured social networks by identifying: Ranks of influence within human networks… [and can] end the use of [online] aliases.”

“Clearly they are looking to dismantle the smoke and mirrors that groups like Anonymous maintain, by hanging out in chatrooms where they do not need to identify themselves officially, with many private communications happening at once,” writes McGuire. “This creates a difficult-to-penetrate den, where people can easily hide online. Evidently, Ntrepid is seeking to pull all of that apart with Tartan.”

Michael Hastings’ association with Barrett Brown and his work on Project PM, in addition to his outing a top U.S. general responsible for conducting the war in Afghanistan – a key mantlepiece in the manufactured war on terror – undoubtedly put him at risk and resulted in his assassination.

It can no longer be claimed that Hastings was merely the victim of a car accident. He was specifically targeted for his investigative journalism, most recently stories he was developing on the FBI and the CIA, as we noted earlier today.

Obviously, the intelligence and surveillance state is intimately involved in an effort to eliminate whistleblowers and journalists who get too close to the truth. The murder of Michael Hastings should send a chill down the spine of journalists everywhere, especially those in the alternative media.

Related Articles

• Evidence Indicates Michael Hastings Was Assassinated
• Free Barrett Brown Offers Condolences for Hastings, Urges Immediate Investigation
• Wikileaks Global Intelligence Files: Israel
• Is Journalist Michael Hastings a Victim of Obama’s Assassination Policy?
• Feds Expand Trapwire Surveillance Tech to Local Cops

This article was posted: Thursday, June 20, 2013 at 12:45 pm

Tags: activism, domestic news, domestic spying, technology, terrorism


http://www.infowars.com/michael-hast...illance-state/

No foul play suspected in Michael Hastings' death, LAPD says

An LAPD officer investigates the scene of a single-vehicle accident in which journalist Michael Hastings was killed when his vehicle crashed into a tree and caught fire in Hancock Park. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / June 18, 2013)

By Andrew BlanksteinJune 20, 2013, 11:12 a.m.


The Los Angeles Police Department said there appears to be no foul play in the one-vehicle accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings.
The Los Angeles County coroner on Thursday positively identified Hastings as the driver of a Mercedes that crashed on Highland Avenue near Melrose Avenue on Tuesday morning.
Hastings' involvement with hot-button stories has led to a variety of conspiracy theories arising on the Internet over his death. But LAPD officials said the incident appears to have been an accident and that no other vehicles were involved. Officials are trying to determine whether there was a mechanical problem with the car. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.
Video of the accident scene showed the car engulfed in flames. Law enforcement sources said the car appeared to be going at a high rate of speed but emphasized that the investigation was ongoing.
The death of the 33-year-old Hastings was announced by his employer, BuzzFeed.
In a statement released Tuesday, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith said he and his team were "shocked and devastated by the news" of Hastings' death.
Hastings was best known for a 2010 Rolling Stone profile that led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Hastings was a contributing editor to the magazine. At the time the article was published, McChrystal commanded all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. In the piece, he voiced open contempt for President Obama and administration policies.
After it was published, McChrystal was summoned to the White House to meet with the president. McChrystal resigned afterward.
The article won the 2010 George Polk award for magazine reporting.
Hastings started writing for BuzzFeed and joined the organization's Los Angeles bureau after it opened in October.
"Michael Hastings will bring his hard-hitting reporting on national security and politics to the BuzzFeed Los Angeles Bureau while contributing to entertainment coverage as a Correspondent-at-Large," Buzz Feed said at the time.
Hastings covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also worked for GQ and Newsweek. He was the author of a book about his former fiancee, who was killed in Iraq in 2007.
"Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered, from wars to politicians," Smith said in his statement Tuesday.
"He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-no-foul-play-suspected-in-michael-hastings-death-lapd-saysd-20130620,0,7630869.story

RDR: Hastings likely murdered for what he knew and wrote about

By Andrew W. Griffin
Red Dirt Report, editor
Posted: June 20, 2013
reddirtreporter@gmail.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – In an violent explosion more conducive to a fire-prone ’75 Ford Pinto, rather than a newer model Mercedes, investigative reporter Michael Hastings, 33, is being mourned following his mysterious death in a fiery crash in Los Angeles, California, which we noted here yesterday.

But people are beginning to ask a lot of questions about the circumstances leading up to Hastings’ untimely death. After all, he brought down Gen. Stanley McChrystal via his crack reporting skills. Hastings was warned by McChrystal staffers that any bad information reported about the general would be met with his death. All in jest, right?

Hastings, just a couple of weeks ago, was reporting on the Democrats’ love of spying on Americans. And then we learn, via The Telegraph, out of Britain, that Hastings contacted WikiLeaks right before his death.

Yeah, about that death. We learn that there were no skid marks leading up to the tree Hastings allegedly ran into. The engine is down the road. And the blazing fire that followed the impact of the tree was so hot and intense that the body of the driver was utterly incinerated, according to the Los Angeles Coroner’s office.

And that tree? If he hit it as hard and as fast as they claim, that tree would likely not be still standing. We suspect that it was a car bomb, not unlike the spook-orchestrated, 1976 car bombing of Chilean diplomat and economist Orlando Letelier on a Washington D.C. street.

The message here is that reporters need to keep their heads down and do as they are told. Hastings’ mistake, they would say, was that he didn’t go along with the program. You don’t just take down a US general – a key figure in the battle against the “War on Terror” – and not face some consequences. Hastings knew government spooks were following him. He got death threats fairly regularly. Yet he soldiered on, refusing to give in to the thugs. He had some serious dirt, we are told, and was looking to expose it.

Will Hastings’ notes make their way to Buzzfeed or Rolling Stone? Or will they disappear as they tend to in the wake of assassinations such as this? We know Hastings fearlessly wrote blistering articles against the powerful, including President Obama and his drone policy.

Was Michael Hastings murdered for what he reported and what he knew? The signs, as the old Magic 8-Ball might say, point to yes.

Copyright 2013 Red Dirt Report

RDR: Hastings likely murdered for what he knew and wrote about.

http://www.theprogressivemind.info/?p=99603

What Destroyed Michael Hastings Car?

Prison Planet.com
June 21, 2013

The evidence indicates Michael Hastings was assassinated.



Related posts:

1. Evidence Indicates Michael Hastings Was Assassinated
2. Michael Hastings Assassinated for Work Uncovering Surveillance State
3. Bilderberg 2013: Michael Meacher MP Speech
4. Michael Savage on danger of Bilderberg 2013 and New World Order
5. Michael Bloomberg’s Gun Control Group Is Going After A Democratic Senator, And It’s Already Getting Really Personal

This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 5:03 am


http://www.prisonplanet.com/what-des...tings-car.html

Witness to Michael Hastings Car Crash Shares His Story

by Matt Staggs on June 22, 2013 in News

The Young Turks has an interview with the sole witness to journalist Michael Hastings’ fatal car crash. Hastings had told associates that he was working on a huge story before he died and in a mass email said that the feds were questioning his friends. Should we start a pool on how long it’ll be before Mr. Rubalcava suffers a motor-vehicular “accident” of his own?



http://disinfo.com/2013/06/witness-t...ntent=FaceBook

From Karen Silkwood to Michael Hastings, something is wrong

The Hagmann & Hagmann Report
Northeast Intelligence Network
June 23rd, 2013
Reader Views: 14

by Douglas J. Hagmann

Just a few short years ago, I would have likely considered the death of Rolling Stone Reporter Michael Hastings an “open and shut” tragedy after a cursory review of the open source evidence associated with this event. Based on a number of things I’ve recently seen and certain information which I’ve been given over the last few years, I have my doubts. Serious doubts. Legitimate doubts.

I am not writing out of lack of experience and exposure to such events, as I’ve spent the last 28 years of my life as a career investigator. In the mid-to-late 1970′s, I spent several years as a “first responder,” long before that descriptive phrase was ever used. In many ways, my transition from responding to tragedies of all kinds to the investigation of such events was a natural evolution, and set the stage for my current overlapping roles as an investigative journalist and a talk show host with the only goal of identifying truth and exposing lies, wherever the journey might lead.

Offering my background is to simply provide you with a frame of reference regarding how and why I am going on record to say that I suspect that there is something very wrong taking place in America, and it is not new. It is, however, becoming more refined and deadly, and perhaps even more common than any of us can comprehend or might be willing to accept. After all, it’s extremely uncomfortable for us to believe that there is an unseen darkness or a hidden hand that exists in our world as we personally know it.

We all have enough drama in our own lives to keep us busy, so why should we seek out more? We are busy today putting food on our tables, working multiple jobs to keep a roof over our heads, and are dog-tired from dealing with the stress in our own lives just to survive. Or perhaps those stresses are behind you, and you are merely trying to enjoy your life in retirement. So why would any reasonably sane person, at whatever station they find themselves in their lives, go looking for conspiracies where none might exist? Why would we subject ourselves to the mocking and marginalization that comes with questioning the official accounts of various incidents?

The answer, I submit, is that many of us are inherently moral and just who resent lie after lie served to us by those we have elected to represent us. We expect and deserve the truth as citizens. We are not the subjects of royalty, despite the acceptance by some to be treated as such. We care about the condition of our country and the world we are leaving to our offspring, and would not sleep well knowing that we’ve done nothing to protect our children and grandchildren.

The very institution that had once forced transparency in our government, the media formerly populated by persistently inquisitive journalists has been infiltrated, compromised and is now acting as an agent of out-of-control leaders who have given themselves the power to terminate, at will and without due process, anyone they deem a threat to the safety and security of our nation. To many, that sounded reassuring while the embers of what once were the World Trade Center towers were still glowing white hot. Unspeakable carnage, we were told, caused by a nebulous foreign enemy with designs to keep attacking us into oblivion. Our rational thought was overcome by our emotional outrage, and those we placed in power exploited our grief and our concern to the point we find ourselves today.

So much has happened since then that it is difficult to recognize what we have done and allowed to be done to ourselves and our nation. Yet, there have been a number of hard-core, no nonsense, truth-seeking journalists who have seen through the fog of deception and dared to take on the people and institutions who are actively pursuing an agenda that is antithetical to everything we hold dear. The tyranny that has been forming for decades regard such truth-seeker as troublesome and uncultivated wildflowers that have taken root in an otherwise pristine lawn. The more aggressive the and uncultivated the wildflower, the more troublesome they become to the illusion of a well-planned landscape that serves as nothing more than eye candy to an ever-growing controlled populace. It is only reasonable that they should be cut down, uprooted and destroyed.

Could this be what we might be witnessing to the truth-seekers who dare take on the powers of the royalty who are in power? From the strange car “accident” that took the life of whistleblower Karen Silkwood in 1974 to the Michael Hastings wreck of 2013 and countless other conveniently coincidental deaths in between, could we be witnessing the deliberate purging of those who are desperately seeking the truth?

The fate of our nation, the world, and our offspring depends upon us to be asking questions and demanding answers. I ask that you look in the mirror and decide whether you can accept every official narrative you are being spoon fed by the powerbrokers and the elitists. The next time you see an errant wildflower pop up in an expanse of a finely trimmed lawn, think about those who have tried to warn us of the tyranny that is taking us over from within.

If we don’t unite and demand accountability despite the deliberate disparagement, marginalization and vilification as conspiracy theorists or tilting at windmills, then who will?
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

Contributed by The Hagmann & Hagmann Report of Northeast Intelligence Network.

Copyright Douglas Hagmann

Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.
Douglas Hagmann, founder & director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website.

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DARPA Talks About Hacking Cars - Was This Used In Killing Of Michael Hastings?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OfcgJ-pl7Q

Published on Jun 23, 2013

http://xrepublic.tv DARPA Talks About Hacking Cars - Was This Used In Killing Of Michael Hastings? Michael Hastings car was speeding 60 miles and hour running a red light seconds before blowing up in flames. Conspiracy theorists have noted that Hastings covered the CIA and otherhigh-powered officials and even received death threats over his journalism.

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WHY THE SILENCE FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ABOUT MICHAEL HASTINGS DEATH?

Michael Hastings Sent Email About FBI Probe Hours Before Death

Hours before dying in a fiery car crash, award-winning journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to his colleagues, warning that federal authorities were interviewing his friends and that he needed to go "off the rada[r]" for a bit.

The email was sent around 1 p.m. on Monday, June 17. At 4:20 a.m. the following morning, Hastings died when his Mercedes, traveling at high speeds, smashed into a tree and caught on fire. He was 33.

Hastings sent the email to staff at BuzzFeed, where he was employed, but also blind-copied a friend, Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, on the message. Biggs, who Hastings met in 2008 when he was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan, forwarded the email to KTLA, who posted it online on Saturday.

Here's the email, with the recipients' names redacted.

Subject: FBI Investigation, re: NSA

Hey (redacted names) -- the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.

Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit.

All the best, and hope to see you all soon.

Michael

Rumors that the FBI was investigating Hastings began the day after his death, with a couple of mysterious WikiLeaks tweets.

In a rare move, the FBI issued a statement denying that Hastings was under investigation. The Los Angeles Police Department also said it had found no evidence of any foul play in his death.

Hastings, an accomplished war correspondent and sharp political reporter, was best known for writing a critical Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal that led to his resignation.

It's unclear what "big story" Hastings was working on prior to his death, but it might have to do with yet another military bigwig, this time retired general David Petraeus.

The LA Times reported that Hastings was researching a story about a privacy lawsuit brought by Jill Kelley, the Florida socialite who took center stage in the Petraeus cheating scandal, against the Department of Defense and the FBI. According to a person close to Kelley, the paper said, Hastings had plans to meet a representative of hers to discuss the case next week.

DON'T WORRY....POLICE SAY THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF "FOUL PLAY"....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular

Former US Terror Advisor: Michael Hastings May Have Been Killed By ‘Car Cyber Attack’

Posted on 25 June, 2013 by Amy







By Jake Hammer
Excerpted from HUFFINGTON POST

The peculiar circumstances of journalist Michael Hastings’ death in Los Angeles last week have unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories.
Now there’s another theory to contribute to the paranoia: According to a prominent security analyst, technology exists that could’ve allowed someone to hack his car. Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that what is known about the single-vehicle crash is “consistent with a car cyber attack.”
Clarke said, “There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers” — including the United States — know how to remotely seize control of a car.
“What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it’s relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn’t want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn’t want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,” Clarke told The Huffington Post. “You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard.”
“So if there were a cyber attack on the car — and I’m not saying there was,” Clarke added, “I think whoever did it would probably get away with it.”
Authorities have said that it may take weeks to determine a cause of death for Hastings, but that no foul play is suspected.
Hastings was driving a 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe when he crashed into a tree on Highland Ave. in Los Angeles at approximately 4:30 am on June 18. Video posted online showed the car in flames, and one neighbor told a local news crew she heard a sound like an explosion. Another eyewitness said the car’s engine had been thrown 50 to 60 yards from the car. There were no other vehicles involved in the accident.The fire was so all-consuming that it took the Los Angeles County coroner’s office two days to identify Hastings’ body, but Clarke said a cyber attack on the vehicle would have been nearly impossible to trace “even if the dozen or so computers on board hadn’t melted.”
Hastings practiced a brand of no-holds-barred journalism that tended to anger powerful people. His 2010 profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, published in Rolling Stone, was so damaging that it ostensibly prompted President Barack Obama to fire the general (the president denied that the article had a role in his decision).
In the days before his death, Hastings was reportedly working on a story about a lawsuit filed by Jill Kelley, who was involved in the scandal that brought down Gen. David Petraeus, according to the LA Times. KTLA reported that Hastings told colleagues at the news site BuzzFeed that he feared the FBI was investigating him. On June 20, the FBI denied that any investigation was under way.
“I believe the FBI when they say they weren’t investigating him,” said Clarke. “That was very unusual, and I’m sure they checked very carefully before they said that.”
Clarke worked for the State Department under President Ronald Reagan and headed up counterterrorism efforts under Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He also served as a special adviser on cyberterrorism to the younger Bush and published a book on the topic, Cyber War, in 2010.
“I’m not a conspiracy guy. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life knocking down conspiracy theories,” said Clarke, who ran afoul of the second Bush administration when he criticized the decision to invade Iraq after 9/11. “But my rule has always been you don’t knock down a conspiracy theory until you can prove it [wrong]. And in the case of Michael Hastings, what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car cyber attack. And the problem with that is you can’t prove it.”
Clarke said the Los Angeles Police Department likely wouldn’t have the expertise to trace such an attack. “I think you’d probably need the very best of the U.S. government intelligence or law enforcement officials to discover it.”

http://gopthedailydose.com/2013/06/2...-cyber-attack/