Michael Hastings Dead At 33

L A Times ^ | June 19, 2013 | joseph serna

[forgotten man]

The crash happened about 7:00 to 8:00 am. I heard the traffic alert on KNX radio. I cannot imagine anybody going high speed on Highland Avenue during the morning commute. I have drive Highland Avenue at least 1,000 times. I recognize the palm trees on the median. It is an old street designed and built in the 1920’s.

[knarf]

One report (NY Times?) said it was at 4:30 AM

[A.A. Cunningham]

4:30 AM

[forgotten man]

At 4:30 am anything can happen, especially if you are near Hollywood. Wait for the drug test.

[Terry L Smith]

This guy did the hit piece on a general, that was not playing footsie with Obama.

Now, with that done, he was no longer needed.

How quick will anyone say that his place of living has been thoroughly trashed, looking for all of his files?

[Joe 6-pack]

"This guy did the hit piece on a general, that was not playing footsie with Obama. Now, with that done, he was no longer needed."

While by most accounts it sounds like a drunk who couldn't control his car, one has to wonder if the McChrystal article didn't give him the kind of profile and bona fides that led some whistleblower to seek him out. IF (and IMHO, that's a big if), this was something nefarious, I would suspect it had more to do with something he was about to publish, rather than something he already had.

[ChildOfThe60s]

How could he go that fast in a Pinto?

[Nachum]

The list, Ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

Dead Pool update

http://www.nachumlist.com/deadpool.htm

[reegs]

How long until the coroner wakes up dead?

[PghBaldy]

There is palm oil, which is used for frying. Palm trees have this oil. /sarcastic pseudo-NHTSA

[PghBaldy]

(POLITICO 2012) --- There are a few things to know about Hastings. The first and most important thing is that for Hastings, military perfidy is personal. He spent his mid-20s as a Newsweek correspondent in Baghdad when the violence there was at its worst. His girlfriend joined him there and, in 2007, was killed by Sunni extremists. Hastings wrote a book about it, called "I Lost My Love in Baghdad."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/michael-hastings-on-a-mission-149437.html

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

There is a reason why the military does not allow you to bring dependents into war zones.

Guess he thought that he knew better.

[Irenic]

I just wondered because Fort Sumter used the palms to their advantage against cannon balls. They’re springy/spongy. If the car didn’t burn the guy probably would have made it out just fine. I’m wondering what was wrong with the car for it to torch so quickly.

[batterycommander]

Prolly a measure of the poor quality of witnesses in Cali now. Low information voter. He was busy talking on his Obama phone and was high himself at 0430 in the morning.

[sandboxshooter]

I was in Baghdad when that happened at the Islamic Party HQ...they rolled hand grenades under her car when she wouldn’t come out. It was a setup since the interpreter told them to go ahead without him. She supposedly didn’t like the security restrictions.....and worked for Air America...idealism can be deadly over there....

[MattinNJ]

Thank you for your service. This American and his family appreciate men like you.

[BlueMondaySkipper]

It’s unusual for a car crash to burn.

It's also unusual in a non-rollover crash (or any crash for that matter) for the engine to end up 50 yards away from the car. I saw a video of the still burning car on another thread, and toward the end there was video of the engine lying next to the road with the burning car way in the background.

This smells

[MWestMom]

I saw that. How does a Mercedes jack-knife? What does that mean?

[MWestMom]

His last piece hit the NSA thing pretty hard and named some names (known and unknown) of people harrassed by gov’t.