WikiLeaks: Hastings contacted us just before his death

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.”

Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle.

Hastings has certainly been in contact with WikiLeaks before. In 2012 he wrote a profile of Julian Assange for Rolling Stone in which he asked tough questions – but the overall tone is sympathetic. Hastings appeared willing to accept that the US government might have targeted Assange in an effort to discredit him; the interview also highlights the failure of mainstream media outlets to expose mistakes made by the US military and generally permits Assange to push his side of the story. Hastings’ empathy for WikiLeaks ties together the deceased journalist, Julian Assange and (through Assange) the leaker Bradley Manning. You can throw Edward Snowden into that mix because he, too, is an admirer of WikiLeaks. And Hastings’ last article was about the evils of the NSA – which ended with the tantalising line, “Perhaps more information will soon be forthcoming.” Glenn Greenwald Tweeted a link to the piece after Hastings' death. Of such connections are conspiracy theories made. In the minds of the highly imaginative, that is. . .

I think you are thinking of this:

Dateline NBC aired an investigative report on Tuesday, November 17, 1992, titled “Waiting to Explode”. The 60 minute program was about General Motors' Rounded-Line Chevrolet C/K-Series pickup trucks allegedly exploding upon impact during accidents due to the poor design of fuel tanks. Dateline's film showed a sample of a low speed accident with the fuel tank exploding. In reality, Dateline NBC producers had rigged the truck’s fuel tank with remotely controlled model rocket engines to initiate the explosion. The program did not disclose the fact that the accident was staged. GM hired Failure Analysis Associates (FaAA, now Exponent) whose investigators studied the film, and discovered that smoke actually came out of the fuel tank six frames before impact. Acting on a tip from someone involved in the Dateline crash test, FaAA investigators searched through 22 junkyards in Indiana before finding the charred wreckage of the GM pickups. It was also later revealed that the Dateline report had been dishonest about the fuel tanks rupturing and the alleged 30 mph speed at which the collision was conducted. The actual speed was found to be higher, around 40 mph, and after x-ray examination of the fuel tanks from the C/K pickups used in the televised collision, it was found that they had not ruptured and were intact. GM subsequently filed an anti-defamation/libel lawsuit against NBC after conducting an extensive investigation. On Monday, February 8, 1993, GM conducted a highly publicized point-by-point rebuttal in the Product Exhibit Hall of the General Motors Building in Detroit that lasted nearly two hours after announcing the lawsuit.[11] The lawsuit was settled the same week by NBC, and Jane Pauley read a 3 minute 30 second on-air apology to viewers.

I think the Jeep incident was this:

In December 1980, 60 Minutes reported that the small army-style "CJ" Jeep was dangerously apt to roll over--not only in emergencies but "even in routine road circumstances at relatively low speeds." A Jeep is shown crashing. "We'll get to precisely what the conditions were that made that single-car accident happen in a moment," promises Morley Safer. Read more on this here

Just proves the press has been liars on many subjexts for many years.

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