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WikiLeaks says Michael Hastings contacted it just before his death. Are they implying he was murdered? WikiLeaks just threw some gasoline onto the conspiracy fire. On Wednesday night, they Tweeted: “Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.” What exactly are they trying to say?

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...

Los Angeles police said they have yet to determine the cause of a fiery solo-car crash in Hollywood that apparently killed award-winning journalist Michael Hastings. The death of the 33-year-old Hastings was announced by his employer, BuzzFeed, which said he died in a Los Angeles car accident. But the Los Angeles County coroner's office had yet to determine Wednesday whether a body recovered from a fiery car crash was that of Hastings. The body was “unrecognizable” and badly charred, police told the Los Angeles Times. The body is identified only as "John Doe 117.”

Award-winning journalist Michael Hastings dies in a single-car accident in Los Angeles Tuesday morning (June 18). Hasting's was best-known for a profile he penned in 2010 that led to the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal, the man in charge of the US-led war effort in Afghanistan. Hasting's death was first reported by Buzzfeed and Rolling Stone, two of the many outlets he contributed to. He was also an accomplished author, with three books to his credit. The first, "I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story," tells the story of his fiancee's death in Iraq, while he was...

Journalist Michael Hastings, whose blunt Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal led to the resignation of the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, died Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles, according to the magazine and a website for which he worked. Officials with the Los Angeles County coroner's office could not immediately confirm if the 33-year-old Hastings was the person who died around 4:25 a.m. when a car smashed into a tree and caught fire on Highland Avenue near Melrose Avenue in the Hancock Park area

Journalist Michael Hastings died in car accident in Los Angeles today. Details of the accident have not been released. He was 33. Best known for his 2010 profile of General Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone—it effectively ended the military career of the man who had led the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan—Hastings won the 2010 Polk award for magazine reporting and wrote a book about his experience reporting on the war, The Operators: The wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan. A second book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad, details Hastings’ time as a war correspondent...

General Stanley McChrystal is still making the rounds plugging his new book, as well as talking about any old issue of the day the media cares to toss his way. He sat down on Face the Nation this morning and hit a few of the standard questions on Afghanistan, gun control and Chuck Hagel, before Bob Schieffer decided to ask him whether or not it was time to bring back the draft. (H/T NRO) When asked about his thoughts on implementing a draft on CBS’s Face the Nation, General Stanley A. McChrystal said national service would have a positive impact...

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal backed banning assault weapons on Tuesday, saying guns like the M4 and M16 belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets. ”I spent a career carrying typically either a M16 and later, a M4 carbine,” McChrystal said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And a M4 carbine fires a .223 caliber round, which is 5.56 millimeters, at about 3,000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed to do that. That’s what our soldiers ought to carry.” He added, “I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind...

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former top commander of international forces in Afghanistan, said this week that the United States should bring back the draft if it ever goes to war again. "I think we ought to have a draft. I think if a nation goes to war, it shouldn't be solely be represented by a professional force, because it gets to be unrepresentative of the population," McChrystal said at a late-night event June 29 at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. "I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk. You make that...

German industrial giant Siemens has hired the American general fired for criticizing US President Barack Obama in public—to head up its attempt to get more US government contracts. General Stanley McChrystal was in charge of US troops in Afghanistan when comments he made saying the army was unprepared for the war there, were published in Rolling Stone magazine, after which he was sacked. Now he has been appointed as chairman of the board for the newly-created Siemens Government Technologies in Washington, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. The move is part of Siemens’ strategy to try to double its $1 billion a...

A U.S. military investigation says command failures left American soldiers in an indefensible position without adequate support when hundreds of insurgents attacked their remote outpost in northeastern Afghanistan with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and guns. Eight troops died. Twenty-two others were wounded during the October 2009 attack on Combat Outpost Keating, one the deadliest battles during the nearly decade-long war. The investigation released Friday by U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., recommended giving four officers letters of admonition or reprimand for putting the 53 American troops in a vulnerable position at the outpost in mountainous Nuristan province near the Pakistan border.

When Rolling Stone ran its story, "The Runaway General, last year on Afghanistan top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama said that the story showed conduct that "undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan." Remember the calls for McChrystal's head in the wake of the story? After years of encouraging the military to deride George W. Bush, Democrats saw any military criticism of the White House as lese majeste. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., summed...

WASHINGTON — An inquiry by the Defense Department inspector general into a magazine profile that resulted in the abrupt, forced retirement of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has cleared the general, his military aides and civilian advisers of all wrongdoing. Pentagon investigators said they were unable to confirm the events as reported in the June 2010 article in Rolling Stone, and the inquiry’s final review challenged the accuracy of the profile of General McChrystal, who was the top commander in Afghanistan. The article, headlined “The Runaway General,” quoted people identified as senior aides to the general making disparaging statements about members...

The mother of former professional football player Pat Tillman is calling for the removal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal from his recent appointment by the White House as co-chair of a commission on military families, ABC News reports. Mary Tillman, whose son left his NFL career to become an Army Ranger and was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire in April 2004, said McChrystal — the commander of special operations in Afghanistan at the time — was involved in the coverup of the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman’s death and said President Obama’s appointment of the now-retired general “makes him look foolish.”...

(NewsCore) - There's no silencing Stanley McChrystal. The controversial retired general, who was infamously axed as head commander of the US mission in Afghanistan, will lay out his vision of leadership in a no-holds-barred memoir set for release next year, publisher Portfolio/Penguin announced Wednesday.

WASHINGTON -- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was delighted by the humiliating downfall of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, according to a new book by Bob Woodward. "Like a pig in s- - -" is how Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell described it to others. "Obama's Wars" chronicles widespread infighting during the Obama administration's first 19 months, especially regarding the decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. One of the people adamantly opposed to the decision was Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who was concerned that it would imperil President Obama's aggressive domestic agenda. "Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I...

WASHINGTON — An Army inquiry into a Rolling Stone magazine article about Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has found that it was not the general or senior officers on his staff who made the most egregious comments that led to his abrupt dismissal as the top Afghan commander in June, according to Army and Pentagon officials. But the review, commissioned after an embarrassing and disruptive episode, does not wholly resolve who was responsible for the inflammatory quotations, most of which were anonymous. The Army review has been turned over to a higher-level inquiry by the Pentagon’s inspector general, because the matter...

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been hired by Yale University to teach a graduate course on leadership. McChrystal was ousted as commander in Afghanistan in July after derisive comments he and his staff made about their political bosses surfaced in an issue of Rolling Stone. In a statement released Monday, Yale announced that McChrystal's seminar would "examine how dramatic changes in globalization have increased the complexity of modern leadership.'' The course will be offered in fall 2010 by Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where McChrystal has been appointed a senior fellow. The former general said in an accompanying statement...

Mary Tillman speaks on Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his role in covering up the truth about her son's death.Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was forced to retire because of remarks he made to a Rolling Stone reporter. Having read the article that led to his departure, I feel strangely validated. "The Runaway General" described by journalist Michael Hastings is exactly the arrogant individual I believed him to be.

The servicemen say that the strict rules put them in greater danger, even as they aim to avoid civilian casualties.