Thread: Meet the Journalist Spreading Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories

Meet the Journalist Spreading Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories

"Whether it turns out to be true or not, that's a whole other issue," says Kim Dvorak.

—By Gavin Aronsen
| Fri Aug. 16, 2013 3:00 AM PDT


Screenshot: San Diego 6

The Los Angeles Police Department has ruled out foul play in journalist Michael Hastings' fatal car crash two months ago in Hollywood, but several media outlets are continuing to promote conspiracy theories about the circumstances surrounding his death. The theories, which suggest Hastings was assassinated shortly after sending friends a frantic email, have received attention beyond the usual fringe suspects partly because of ongoing reporting by freelance blogger Kimberly Dvorak for the CW Television Network affiliate San Diego 6.

Dvorak, whom the station touts as an "investigative journalist," is a "National Homeland Security Correspondent" for Examiner.com, a blog network owned by Republican billionaire Philip Anschutz that has minimal editorial oversight.

Since Hastings' death, San Diego 6 has repeatedly given Dvorak airtime to float conspiracy theories—that the crash was not consistent with a car accident, that Hastings was cremated to cover up foul play, that federal officials may have ordered him killed. None of these theories, which often come from unnamed sources, are backed up by convincing evidence, but reputable media outlets keep falling for Dvorak's reporting anyway.

Last month, for example, the Independent, a major British newspaper, picked up Dvorak's report claiming that Hastings' body "was cremated and it wasn't the request of the family…in fact, the family wanted Michael's body to go home." But on Tuesday, veteran journalist Russ Baker dispelled the myth on his news site WhoWhatWhy by talking to a family member who confirmed that the cremation was done at the family's request. Dvorak later removed the passage saying Hastings' family wanted his body to "go home," but her story still hints at a cover-up, calling the cremation a "macabre twist."

Dvorak's other theories are just as questionable. She claimed on air that the engine of Hastings' Mercedes C250 coupe had been found behind the crash site, which would have been impossible with the forward velocity of an ordinary accident. The engine was found in front of the crash site. Her suggestion that a grainy video of the crash showed evidence of a "pre-explosion" sabotage has been dismissed by car experts. She has also reported that the intensity of the resulting fire might suggest the use of thermite accelerants—a popular theory among 9/11 truthers who believe thermite was used to melt the World Trade Center towers' steel columns. She's written credulously about the theory that President Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States. And Dvorak has repeated speculation by Richard Clarke, the former Bush- and Clinton-era counterterrorism czar, that Hastings' car's computer system may have been remotely hacked—something that's technically possible but highly unlikely.

Dvorak also thinks the LAPD's refusal to turn over information about its investigation is evidence of a conspiracy. "Despite the LAPD's categorization of the Hasting[s] fatal accident as [not involving foul play]," she wrote, the police continue to ignore "requests made by San Diego 6 News for the police report, 9/11 call, autopsy, bomb squad and toxicology reports, or make the Mercedes available for inspection." The police department's reluctance to comply with Dvorak's requests "only fuels conjecture," she added. Dvorak recently received the 911 calls, which she suspects the LAPD may have given her to defy federal officials who are covering up the investigation, and says she's enlisted the help of Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group funded by billionaire media mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, as she continues to file public records requests with local and federal agencies.

"I'm going out on a limb reporting this," Dvorak tells Mother Jones when asked about her theories. "Journalists are becoming so irrelevant right now." As Dvorak sees it, the story of Hastings' crash must be told, even though she says she's received death threats over her reporting, and no other journalists are interested in telling it. She hasn't ruled out the possibility that the "stars could have aligned" and resulted in a tragic accident. But she says she remains suspicious that Hastings may have "faked his death" or been assassinated. "Whether it turns out to be true or not, that's a whole other issue," she adds. (San Diego 6's news director, Irv Kass, who also writes for Examiner.com, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Dvorak's reporting—and mainstream media outlets' embrace of it—is ongoing. On Monday, Dvorak reported that she had "confirmed" a claim made last week by Hastings' widow, Elise Jordan, that Hastings was working on a profile of CIA Director John Brennan at the time of his death. (The news that Hastings had been investigating Brennan first appeared in the Los Angeles Times the day after Hastings' death in June.) "It's curious how his wife came out and talked about [Hastings' death] and kind of had a smile on her face and didn't seem like a grieving widow," Dvorak says.

Riffing off the Brennan detail, Dvorak referenced an old WikiLeaks email about the Obama administration's investigation of classified leaks to suggest that Brennan may have targeted Hastings. The next day, Reason linked to Dvorak's report, citing its supposedly "[n]ew details." Fox News, the International Business Times, and the Epoch Times also cited her reporting.

If Brennan or the CIA didn't play a role in Hastings' death, perhaps Army General Stanley McChrystal, who resigned after Hastings quoted him and advisers in Rolling Stone mocking government officials, had something to do with it, Dvorak has suggested. After quoting a friend of Hastings who said the crash "wasn't an accident," Dvorak cited a passage from The Operators, Hastings' book about the Afghanistan war. Hastings wrote that Jake McFerren, a top civilian adviser to McChrystal, threatened that he and other McChrystal staffers would "hunt…down and kill" Hastings if they didn't like how the Rolling Stone profile turned out.

(Hastings wrote that McFerren later apologized.)

Dvorak is a "****ing disgrace," Matt Farwell, a writer and friend of Hastings who is finishing his Brennan profile for an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone, told WhoWhatWhy. Farwell wants Hastings' death to be investigated, but "unless it's good solid shoe leather journalism…it's not helping anyone," he said. "It makes the LAPD and the feds go into closed-off mode and makes people not want to say anything." (Asked to comment on the Hastings investigation and Dvorak's theories, the LAPD replied with an email saying, "We have no further comment on this matter.")

Farwell is unlikely to sway Dvorak, who says she doesn't know who he is and that his criticism "doesn't bother me one way or another." She says she probably won't keep making regular appearances on TV until she hears back about her latest records requests but plans to keep reporting until details of Hastings' death become clear. "There's a huge dialogue that's been created out of this," she says.

"I think Michael would have really liked that. I'm fairly certain he would welcome that discussion."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/michael-hastings-conspiracy-theories-kim-dvorak

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Max Read 6/20/13 10:33am 6/20/13 10:33am

Here Come the Michael Hastings Death Conspiracy Theories



Every year, some 18,000 people between the ages of 5 and 34 die in car accidents, the leading cause of death for that age bracket. Which makes a fiery wreck either a sadly unsurprising way for a 33-year-old to die... or the perfect cover for a CIA assassination.

It's probably inevitable that the YouTube analysts of the internet's paranoid corners would seize on the unexpected death of Michael Hastings, a BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone reporter with a reputation for nerve and fearlessness.

I am pretty sure Michael Hastings met up with the Vince Foster treatment.
— Ron Joseph (@TrotlineDesigns) June 19, 2013

But it's not helped by winking, vague reports like the L.A. Weekly's that Hastings "had reported extensively on the CIA and was rumored to be continuing work on that beat at the time of his demise" (everyone who works national security is reporting on the CIA right now!), or WikiLeaks' ominous, information-light claim that Hastings had contacted it about being investigated by the FBI:

Michael Hastings death has a very serious non-public complication. We will have more details later.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2013

Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2013

A very serious non-public complication! WikiLeaks, at this point just one of those "Anonymous News" Twitter accounts with a verified check mark, has never met a national-security meta-story it couldn't somehow insert itself into. But like the L.A. Weekly story, it gives the conspiracy web just enough encouragement to make Hastings the latest prop in its festival of self-involvement and paranoia.

Just asking questions!
The blog The Rancid Honeytrap kicked off soon after Hastings' death with some innocent, idle speculation in a post called "Admit it, Michael Hastings’ Death is Weird and Scary":

Not much is known yet about the accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings, other than that an eyewitness saw Hastings’ car going at an extremely high speed before the crash. [...] Perhaps it’s only because I know next to nothing about car crashes that this looks fishy to me.

Perhaps! Yes, perhaps. Arguably knowing something about a subject is a prerequisite for finding an example of it "fishy." But Tarzie is just asking questions here and don't you dare act dismissive toward questions:

It's fun watching people I know were suspicious earlier suddenly getting sensible under the careful tutelage of the Gawker assholes.
— The Rancid Honeytrap (@RancidTarzie) June 19, 2013

@firetomfriedman observed a convo between chen and someone else. He and Cook are belittling anyone raising questions.
— The Rancid Honeytrap (@RancidTarzie) June 19, 2013

"OBVIOUSLY murdered by bomb on gas tank"
My favorite conspiracy message board Godlike Productions has seized on a Facebook post by "former Green Beret" Michael Yon: "Strange. Almost looks like a small bomb got him." (Yon on Hastings: "Hastings was best known for NOT telling the truth.")

But for those with the sand to actually come out and say they think Hastings was murdered by "state actors," the most comprehensive case comes from "Jim Stone, Freelance Journalist" ("Truth is reality, which lies and inventions fall to in the end"), who writes in a post called "Michael Hastings OBVIOUSLY murdered by bomb on gas tank":

It seems to me that Hastings may have been dead, his car parked there, and then blown up with him in it. [...] This appears to be a classic mafia hit, where you are killed and then burned in a car to hide the evidence. In this case, they obviously used a bomb to blow the gas tank as evidenced by the fact that the rear portion of the car is blown open and shredded with the rest of the car nicely intact, read the initial analysis below. And obviously, there was no high speed crash as reported by the lie factory.

The Associated Press found itself in an interesting predicament today when it was forced to report that the Justice Department surreptitiously… Read…

Stone, who works in the classic "close analysis of low-quality YouTube frames" field of online conspiracy-mongering, has already had his case picked up by InfoWars, which links Hastings' death to the Obama administration's drone assassination policy and its "targeting of journalists."

Related
AP, Tea Party, Bloomberg Clients All Being Monitored Just Like You

It's quaint how people still manage to get outraged about surveillance. You are being monitored, right now, just like everybody else with a… Read…

Look. There's a nonzero chance that Hastings was being investigated by the FBI in some capacity, or at least believed and claimed to others that he was. (An FBI spokesperson, reached by phone this morning, said "We have no comment. That's in line with our policy on investigations." Ben Smith, Hasting's editor, told Daily Intel that "Michael told a number of his friends and colleagues that he was concerned that he was under investigation.") All journalists have reason to believe they are being, at the very least, monitored. And it's well documented that the president has no problem killing people—even American citizens—by remote control, if his administration judges them threats to national security. Hastings told Reddit last year that he gets death threats "every once and awhile."

But Michael Hastings wasn't an Afghan wedding guest, and in that same Reddit post he takes care to make it clear that vengeful intelligence agencies have a different m.o. when it comes to American journalists (just ask Gary Webb):

But there's a more insidious response most of the time when you piss off the powerful. They come after your career, they try to come after your credibility. They do cocktail party whisper campaigns. They try to make you "controversial." Sadly, The Powers That Be are often aided by other journalists.

http://gawker.com/here-come-the-michael-hastings-death-conspiracy-theorie-514384339

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Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings' autopsy reveals traces of drugs
The Guardian ‎- 46 minutes ago
Marijuana and amphetamine detected in his system at the time of crash though drugs 'likely did not contribute' to accident. . .