Famed Non-Automotive Journalist Michael Hastings Turns A C250 Into A “Bomb”

The writing-about-writing crowd is abuzz with discussion about the rather unusual death of Buzzfeed/RollingStone/Gawker writer Michael Hastings. Mr. Hastings, whose name is never mentioned in the press without the immediate mention that he was “the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal”, died in a single-car accident in Los Angeles yesterday morning. This in and of itself is not unusual, but the circumstances of the crash and its aftermath won’t do anything to quiet the conspiracy theorists who are already claiming that the military-industrial complex found a way to cap the guy.

The definitive video of the incident can be found here. It features everything you’d want in a crash story, including:

- The ejected motor and transmission (seen above)
- Video of the car burning with the fury of a thousand suns
- A man holding a goat in his arms and stroking it to keep calm as someone else discusses the incident
- The mention of Mercedes-Benz

That last bit is the critical part. Mercedes-Benz USA is no doubt sweating bullets over this one. An eyewitness report says that Mr. Hastings was driving at an excessive rate of speed down a suburban street when his car “suddenly jackknifed” and hit a tree “with the force of a bomb”. The Benzo, which by the wheels and quarter-panel appears to be the relatively prosaic but cheerfully stylish C250 four-cylinder turbo coupe, proceeded to throw its powertrain out of the engine bay, immediately catch fire in a manner typically reserved for episodes of “Miami Vice”, and burn its driver until said driver was charred beyond recognition.

Hastings is one of the few reporters in the world to have conducted and published a major interview with Assange. He interviewed him back in December 2011 when Pfc. Bradley Manning first appeared in a military court at Fort Meade. Assange was still in a home in the British countryside under house arrest.
As someone who has aggressively covered the Manning court martial, along with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, I found myself going back over the interview that Hastings did. I read it when it was released, but, a year and a half later, there are bits and pieces I am noticing that make it an enduring piece of work.

Hastings, unlike many other journalists, took seriously the fact that the United States government had decided to target Assange. He did not suggest that Assange was conjuring up conspiracy theories about how he was being persecuted because he was an egomaniac. He listened to what Assange had to say about how the Justice Department was likely pursuing him in a widespread investigation.

[HASTINGS] “Collateral Murder” – the video you released in April 2010 showing a U.S. helicopter gunship firing on a group of Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists and two children – was the first scoop that got you major media attention. You learned that The Washington Post actually had the video and had been sitting on it.

[ASSANGE] A Post reporter named David Finkel had the video. We had sources who explained that he had even shown them the video in his home. Yet he concealed it.

It leads me to immediately think of what Manning said of Finkel in his statement in military court on February 28 about his decision to disclose the “Collateral Murder” video:

…As I continued my research, I found an article discussing the book, The Good Soldiers, written by Washington Post writer David Finkel.

In Mr. Finkel book, he writes about the aerial weapons team attack. As, I read an online excerpt in Google Books, I followed Mr. Finkel’s account of the event belonging to the video. I quickly realize that Mr. Finkel was quoting, I feel in verbatim, the audio communications of the aerial weapons team crew…

Did Manning inform WikiLeaks, when he submitted the video, that Finkel had seen a copy of the video? Or, did WikiLeaks somehow know?

In an email sent hours before his death in a single-car L.A. crash, journalist Michael Hastings wrote that his “close friends and associates” were being interviewed by the FBI and he was going to “go off the radar for a bit.”

According to the email, sent to KTLA, Hastings wrote he was working on a “big story” and was going to disappear. He told his colleagues that if the FBI came to interview them, they should have legal counsel present.

The subject of the email was “FBI Investigation re: NSA.” Hastings sent the email to his colleagues just before 1 p.m. Monday and blind-copied his friend, Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs.

Biggs supplied the email to KTLA and said he and Hastings met when the journalist was embedded with Biggs’ unit in Afghanistan in 2008, KTLA reported.

Hastings, 33, died about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday when his 2013 silver Mercedes slammed into a tree in Hancock Park and burst into flames. The car was going so fast, the engine was found more than 100 feet away from the crash, authorities said.

Probably?

Was Michael Hastings' Car Hacked? Richard Clarke Says It's Possible

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."

How often do these car cyber attacks happen?!

Space Bandit wrote: I don't know, I'm not really the person to ask! If this is possible, and this would seem to be a reasonable source, then it would put an interesting potential spin on a certain car crash in Paris, though.

just curious as the article mentions 'consistent with' as if there are many known incidents to compare. I don t doubt the tech exists... Even as far back as lady die.

high rate of speed?? jackknife car?? hit tree with force of bomb??
they just made up a madlibs and filled it in

Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist. Webb was best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. Their smuggled cocaine was distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb charged that the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding.

On December 10, 2004, Gary Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head.[25] Sacramento County coroner Robert Lyons ruled that it was suicide, noting that a suicide note was found at the scene.

Murder & collusion. His wife & family would have opted for a burial for Michael - had the state not already cremated him, and delivered him home in an urn!!!