On The Elusive Details of Michael Hastings' Death

ZeroHedge ^ | 7/10/2013 | Mike Krieger

[mojito]

The Michael Hastings Car Crash: No Skids Marks, A Flying Engine And “Boston Brakes”

In cases such as the highly suspicious and tragic car crash/explosion that killed celebrated investigative journalist Michael Hastings, I try to reserve commentary for a little bit to let facts emerge following the initial speculative flurry. Particularly when it involves a journalist with whom I am only slightly familiar. I think we can all agree at this point that based on what has come forward in the past several weeks it is more than likely Mr. Hastings was murdered.

[PieterCasparzen]

Unless it hit something, like a sturdy tree, in which case it would not have.

I did not see any markings on the palm tree that would have been left by an engine/transmission bouncing off it and flying 180 feet. Would have to go through that video again frame by frame.

[wideawake]

The simple laws of mechanics, motion and kinetic energy. For the car to have impacted a stationary object and then have an assembly as massive as the drivetrain to reverse direction and end up 150-200ft behind the car is impossible.

It's entirely possible.

Are you familiar with the concept of a vector?

The entire drivetrain would have had to reverse direction through the firewall and passenger compartment

That's a statement which, again, makes a ton of assumptions about the angle of impact and the trajectory of these components - assumptions which are not provable from the data available.

Still photos do indicate the type of front end collision necessary to even approach that type of event and generate that level of kinetic energy simply did not occur.

They indicate no such thing.

A 3000cc engine weighs a couple of hundred pounds. What happens if you bounce a couple of hundred pounds against a fairly rigid object at 80mph? How far could it go?

[WayneS]

Based on the photos available so far, we do not know the exact angle and point of impact. The arrow drawn on the picture I just looked at is just that - an arrow drawn on a picture.

Based on the many (and there have been many) automobile crashes and post-crash scenes I have witnessed, cleaned-up, and/or been a party to, nothing in that picture - not the engine, not the debris field, not even the front driver’s side wheel/tire assembly - is situated in a manner as to lead me to suspect anything other than a high speed impact with a tree, in the median, at some angle between approximately 30 and 60 degrees to the original direction of travel.

I have to agree with ‘wideawake’ on this one. It appears to me that the conspiracy-theorists are jumping the gun on this one (at least based on the information available so far - and with the caveat that I, of course, was not there and did not witness the event).

Claims of bombs and pre-crash explosions aside, I once had a crash quite similar to the one in question (at least as it has been described in the media). I drove a small European sport sedan more-or-less head-on in to the end of a highway guardrail (after crossing from the right to the left side of the road) at about 110 mph. While in my case the engine did not detach from the chassis, other parts of the car ended up as far away as 350 feet from the point of impact, and they were not situated in a straight line along the direction of travel at impact. They were spread out in a sort of ‘fan’ pattern.

When a car is turning (rotating about its vertical axis)during a crash, the path of any parts/debris which fly off will describe an arc in three dimensions, the length and radius of the arc, and its angle(s) in the horizontal and vertical planes, will be dependent upon the force of impact and the rotational forces acting on the car at the time of impact, and on the part in question at its time of departure from the vehicle (as well as the size, weight, shape and drag coefficient of the part, of course).

The bottom line is, the disintegration of an automobile after a high speed impact is a complicated ‘dance’ with the laws of physics, and its results can seem very strange and can be difficult to explain.

As far as the location of the driver’s side wheel/tire assembly goes, when a wheel/tire detaches from a vehicle during a crash, it is absolutely impossible to predict its subsequent behavior, especially if it continues rolling and or has other parts still hanging off of it (such as hubs, brake rotors, tie-rods, etc).

I once found a wheel/tire/brake assembly from a Mazda RX-7 12-15 feet up in a tree, almost directly perpendicular to the vehicle’s path at impact, about 250 feet away from and on the opposite side of the car (this was following a high-speed crash on a road racing course where I was working as a Corner-Marshall). I witnessed the crash, and I still have no idea how the wheel & tire ended up in that tree.

[doberville]

Excellent repartee!

[wideawake]

Are you stupid?

Yes.

I will never be as intelligent as bmwcycle believes that bmwcycle is.

[WayneS]

The engine did not land behind the car.

[wideawake]

The bottom line is, the disintegration of an automobile after a high speed impact is a complicated ‘dance’ with the laws of physics, and its results can seem very strange and can be difficult to explain.

Said much better than I could hope to say it.

Fascinating post.

[Orangedog]

Don't forget the original one......"Breitbart'd"

That one wasn't quite as onvious. Middle aged fat guys expiring from heart attacks every now and again, but exploding Mercedes with engines that go walkies...not so much. This could only have been more obvious if he was driving a Volvo.

[wideawake]

Thanks, jjotto.

I've learned more about this incident on this thread - both pro-conspiracy and skeptical - than I have any any other thread on this subject.

[wideawake]

This could only have been more obvious if he was driving a Volvo.

You should read posts 36 and 43.

[jjotto]

Still plenty of unanswered questions. Who was he with and where was he until 4:00am? I’ve never seen confirmation of the on-way-to-the-airport story. He generally drove like a grandma. Was he high or passed out?

And plenty of misinformation. Sources still reporting he sent e-mails “hours” before the crash. Best time source I’ve seen places the e-mails the previous day. Conspiracy pushers just clog up efforts to get at facts.

The C-class is the Corolla of Mercedes. The C250 is 110 cubic inches and 200 horsepower, around $40K, not remotely a hot rod.

Chatting with anyone with first-hand knowledge of more than one or two high speed crashes will nix most physics postulates.

[wideawake]

He generally drove like a grandma.

I have no idea how he drove.

The C250 is 110 cubic inches and 200 horsepower, around $40K, not remotely a hot rod.

Good to know. I had assumed about 135 cubic inches.

[bereanway]

Thanks for the link. If that photo showing the direction of travel and the location of the engine is correct then I would think it is possible the engine ended up in that location as it’s consistent with the car’s direction at point of impact.

[bmwcyle]

Maybe you are. Why don't you change your screen name to eyeswideshut or watch.

[PieterCasparzen]

That’s a great video. LOL. Wow. LOL.

[bmwcyle]

They are telling us right out in the open what they are doing.

[bmwcyle]

Have you tasted your crow yet?

[LyinLibs]

Hastings was speeding Southbound along Highland (toward LAX) at 4:30am when he crashed.

I lived in LA. The whole town dies at 2am sharp because even the bars are legally required to shut down at that point.

At 4:30am, the only thing moving in Los Angeles is the hospital and the airport.

If you are trying to catch an early flight at 6 or 7am, you would hurry to the airport at 4:30am like Hastings was doing.

Especially if your flight is international and you MUST leave enough time to guarantee you won’t miss it. That’s how to “go off the radar for awhile” when you think FBI is investigating you — fly to a foreign country with your laptop and work from there.

Also, a few nights after the 4:30am Hastings crash, 2 police officers return to the (nearby) police station garage approx 4am, and as they reach out their car window to swipe their access card in the driveway, somebody runs up behind their unmarked police car and starts firing a gun into their car, grazing both officers.

Did that story die yet, or are we waiting for George Stephanopoulos to announce “Nothing to see here?”

Think about it. Those 2 cops were probably on shift when the crash occurred, since they apparently work at 4am, and their police station is near the crash scene.

Maybe they saw or heard something, so somebody wants them dead too.

But killing them SEPARATELY at their separate houses the same week would raise all sorts of flags bc what are the odds of that happening by chance? So they were attacked at a place and time they were #1 guaranteed to show up (end of their shift back at police HQ), and #2 guaranteed to be together (so they wouldnt need to be killed separately, raising even more suspicion).

Reminds me of LA Coroner tech, Michael Cormier, who dropped dead of arsenic poisoning the day his office released the Breitbart autopsy report.

Before it’s all over, they’ll run the TWA 800 playbook, and tell us "The Mercedes crashed after bad wiring caused the center fuel tank to explode, after which the Mercedes gained another 2,000 feet of altitude before changing its mind and plummeting to earth.... and here's the CIA animated video to prove it.”

[wideawake]

Everything we've seen so far justifies my skepticism rather than your credulousness.

To wit, your lack of any coherent analysis of Hastings' death.

[LyinLibs]

Has the MSM mentioned the word “airbag?”

If the car was hacked, the airbags could have been disabled.

Purposely crashing that car wouldn’t necessarily kill the driver unless (i) Speed was high enough, (ii) Brakes were disabled, (iii) Airbags were disabled.

Any crash scene photos showing Hastings’ airbags deployed?

At this point in Communist takeovers, the journalists are “sent to the gulag.”

Since that’s impractical for Obamatollah (due to the Constitution and public opinion), journalists will be (i) Intimidated (AP wiretapping), (ii) Threatened (Bob Woodward), or (iii) Killed (Michael Hastings; Andrew Breitbart).