rollingstone.com
June 19, 2013
Editor’s note: Journalists who mess with government and military power often die under mysterious circumstances.
Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought
down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car
accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33.
Hastings’ unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of
Rolling Stone, “The Runaway General,” captured the then-supreme
commander of the
U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian
commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication
concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and
the general resigning his post. “The conduct represented in the recently
published article does not meet the standard that should be met by –
set by a commanding general,” Obama said, announcing McChrystal’s
departure. “It undermines the civilian control of the military that is
at the core of our democratic system.”
michael hastingsHastings’ hallmark as reporter was his refusal to
cozy up to power. While other embedded reporters were charmed by
McChrystal’s bad-boy bravado and might have excused his insubordination
as a joke, Hastings was determined to expose the recklessness of a man
leading what Hastings believed to be a reckless war. “Runaway General”
was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, won the 2010 Polk award
for magazine reporting, and was the basis for Hastings’ book, The
Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in
Afghanistan.
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From the description on the Youtube.com video below: “One woman in
the area described it sounding ‘like a bomb went off in the middle of
the night’ & a man said ‘I couldn’t have written a scene like this
in a move’ with the engine flying 50-60 yards from the car.”
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