Michael Hastings
September 3, 2013 12:00 AM   Subscribe

 
"Repeated exposure to combat has the weird side effect of taking any fissure in your mind already and widening it," Robertson says, speaking via Skype from the Syrian border. "You subject yourself to things that are not right. There is no mechanism to support people who do the work we do. ... War draws fucked-up people to it, and it doesn't make them get better."

This is a good read, thanks for posting it. And, as usual, if you value your sanity in the least do not go near the comments.
posted by nevercalm at 1:30 AM on September 3, 2013


Michael Hastings may have been a damaged soul, but I still find it nearly impossible to believe that he wasn't being spied on in many ways, given all that's come out about the NSA.

It also doesn't seem that far-fetched to believe that the car crash was not an accident.
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:07 AM on September 3, 2013 [6 favorites]


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posted by homunculus at 12:55 PM on September 3, 2013


maggiemaggie: It also doesn't seem that far-fetched to believe that the car crash was not an accident.

I sort of agree with this, but has there ever been proof of this happening at any other point in time? In the past 20 years there have definitely been other government officials who've been taken down by journalists, and nothing happened to them.
posted by gucci mane at 2:58 PM on September 3, 2013


I found this: Wikipedia List of Journalists Killed in the United States, which goes back to 1837.

The most recent one listed is the 2007 murder of Chauncey Bailey of the Oakland Post, killed by the target of his investigation. There are a few such but nothing on a national level.

I don't want to go too far down the conspiracy rabbit hole, it's just that this is one case that doesn't seem like it takes a crazy person to believe that it may not have been an accident.
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:18 PM on September 3, 2013 [1 favorite]


It also doesn't seem that far-fetched to believe that the car crash was not an accident.

Hastings' Mercedes had a 3G connection allowing for engine firmware updates, among other things. There was no air-gap: you don't need access to the car's ODB port. The car is also drive-by-wire: this means that gas and brakes are controlled not by a mechanical linkage, but by the computer.

We have learned that the NSA is much more robust at breaking crypto than we ever thought.

Would it have been possible for someone with the NSA's capability to push a malicious ECU firmware over 3G, causing the car to speed out of control? Quite likely.

Not to shut him up, primarily. But to send a message. As we've seen, they love sending messages.
posted by anemone of the state at 12:27 PM on September 7, 2013


Twelve U.S. Intelligence have sent a memo to Obama saying "[the chemical] incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons" and "CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud", which makes Michael Hastings' death more interesting.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:53 AM on September 10, 2013




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