Posted on 07/30/2013 7:57:59 AM PDT by mandaladon
A journalist and a researcher have sued the Justice Department for access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s records on the late journalist Michael Hastings.
The lawsuit follows the FBI’s failure to respond to separate Freedom of Information Act requests for records on Hastings submitted by journalist Jason Leopold of al-Jazeera and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Ryan Shapiro.
Agencies are required by statute to notify applicants about whether it will fulfill their requests within a 20-working-day period of the initial application.
In the hours before his death, which was ruled an accident by the Los Angeles Police Department, Hastings emailed Wikileaks’ lawyer Jennifer Robinson that he was being investigated by the federal government.
Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs — who knew Hastings when he was embedded with Bigg’s unit in Afghanistan — told KTLA Hastings had blind copied him on an email sent 15 hours before his death, notifying colleagues that federal officials were interviewing his “close friends and associates.”
Leopold, a personal friend of Hastings, wrote in a piece published on the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s website that a government investigation into Hastings would not be a surprise.
“Given the nature of Hastings’s investigative work and the revelations that have surfaced about the government’s interest in journalists’ sources it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if some agency was looking into Hastings’s journalistic activities,” said Leopold
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
“First of all, that Cart” is full; Bodies are falling off by the wayside IF one is playing attention.”
Well, that’s pretty much meaningless as to the question at hand. IF you believe all of the other conspiracy theories that say Obama murdered X, Y, and Z, then it’s obvious that he likely murdered W too! Not very sound thinking there.
“Secondly, this isn’t a court of law; It’s a forum where participants do NOT possess the legal avenues or access to “evidence”.”
Well, then the conspiracy theorizers should stop bringing up legal terms and throwing them around improperly. “Evidence”, however, isn’t strictly a legal term. If you want me to believe something, I would like either evidence or a logical supporting argument (hopefully both), even though I’m not sitting on a court bench. If I were to start believing things without those prerequisites, I would be a fool.
“But what we DO possess is enough information from which to process logic, ability to connect dots, and sense and consideration of the tendencies and credibility of the accused.”
Again, you’re putting the cart before the horse. How can you have an “accused”, if you can’t even establish that a crime was committed? First things first.
“Not only that, we must also sift though those whose words and deeds appear to give the impression of performing damage-control while insisting the witness-free “coincidences” are necessarily just that.
“Move along — nothing to see” and all that. Is that your mission here? Seriously?”
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to make that kind of backhand accusation. It happens on every thread where I don’t accept someone’s conspiracy theory without supporting evidence. Sorry, but some of us simply don’t buy into half-baked theories just because we dislike Obama. There’s plenty of very solid ground to attack him on without needing to resort to that and look like a bunch of loons.
“Uh, no. 0bama lies about EVERYTHING. You tripped up there, Comrade.”
Really, he lies about EVERYTHING? I know that sounds good, and you probably feel like you had a real “gotcha” moment, but come on. Even pathological liars do not actually lie with every syllable that comes out of their mouths. If you say Obama has zero credibility, and we have no reason to believe anything he says without verification, then I agree with that. If you say that every word out of his mouth must be a lie, then you are not thinking clearly.
“Kinda hard to to be Germany, 1940 YET. The testimony and potential damage of witnesses of this regime are employees whose info is limited by either threats, coercion, deemed “classified”, OR dismissed by corrupt, co-opted Hearing members.”
So, according to your logic, because you can imagine a reason Obama might have wanted to dispose of Hastings, he must have murdered him. However, all those other people that we know he had similar reasons to want to be rid of, but who haven’t been murdered, are just dismissable. There must have been some other, fill in the blank reason why he didn’t murder them. This is just imagination gone wild.
“In your world, the regime is...all-benevolent.”
I’ve never said anything of the sort. The fact that you have to resort to inventing words to put in my mouth in order to dismiss my points is pretty telling though.
“Next time choose a less conspicuous handle than ‘Boogieman’.”
Sure, next time I sign up to a site years in advance in order to lay the groundwork for schilling for some future regime that hasn’t been elected yet, I’ll keep that in mind. /s
Well, he said he was on to a story and going “off the grid” for a little while, which does not necessarily carry the meaning that you state in your post. Sounds ominous in retrospect, sure, but it could very well simply mean that he wouldn’t be in touch with his editors very often for the next few days.
“Strange all these Freepers so concerned about “reckless speculation” ;)”
All of them? I don’t see many that aren’t fully on board the conspiracy train.
There are plenty of ways to establish a murder occurred without a body, and yes circumstantial evidence can help establish that. However, that’s not the kind of circumstantial evidence that is being presented here. What is being presented here is circumstantial evidence that people think points to the idea that government murdered Hastings, yet they haven’t offered any evidence that Hastings was actually murdered. Why not? If they can finger the perp, it should be simple to establish that a crime occurred. So, show us that evidence!
People keep ragging on me because I’m skeptical, but skepticism doesn’t mean that I am just dismissing the idea out of hand. I just won’t conclude that a murder occurred when, from the facts that we have available, it seems much more likely to be a simple automobile accident.
Thank you. Any hypothesis that can’t stand up to vigorous objection isn’t worth considering.
Same with the ‘T’s.
Lol. It meant enough, to a seasoned journalist who had been embedded in hairy places, and he had actually said he had reason the be afraid. But, he had also made backups.
There would seem to have been two shooters, One with a nine, who knew enough to squeese off a doubletap but nothing special. That’s a civvie with a stupid beretta. But shooter #2, he had a 1911. And he *knew* his stuff. He set one shot precisely in the driver (door, right in front of the seat) and one in the fueltank.
Now, there are a few mil guys who can do stuff like that with a .45. Not *very* many. But some of them actually are in what I’d call the Democratic Party private army, and they are hardcore communists. I *could* give you names and photos of a couple :).
Lol. Just a scenario, Boog. But a quite likely one.
“Just a scenario, Boog. But a quite likely one.”
A scenario where someone shoots at a car doing over 100 mph with a handgun, from a stationary position (since there are no other cars keeping pace with him on the videos), and hits with impeccable aim? That’s a scenario, but I wouldn’t describe it as likely.
Sorry, but you’re not thinking, I think.
It’s much less difficult than you think. *I* could do it, before I busted my shoulder all to smithereens.
There’s branches of shooting - with the 1911 - where the shoot solution is pretty like that car passing at 100mph, and your target is one inch, not more than two.
We don’t need you to tell us it’s been altered!
Like the Edsel in One Second After. Excellent book.
Good for you. Now we can get back on topic, hopefully.
Yes, but we are not talking about shooting a clay pigeon here, we are talking about an automobile with a human driver that can change speed, direction, make turns, etc. If you wanted to kill someone in a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed, finding a shooter skilled enough with a 1911 to hit the car, then positioning them somewhere the car might pass by and hoping he does so you can get the shot, is not really a great plan. If I were at that planning meeting and that was suggested, I would laugh at the idea.
I mean, we have history to judge by here, to some extent. There are plenty of known cases where intelligence agencies, or other government agents, planned to assassinate people inconspicuously. Never in my life have I ever heard of them resorting to a plan like that. It might be possible, in theory, but it wouldn’t be desirable, because too many things could go wrong.
First, the guy might take a different route of travel. Plan is blown because your shooter is sitting on the ground with his pud in his hand.
Next, say the guy does drive by, anyone can witness you shooting at his car. Plan is blown because now you have witnesses to your assassination attempt.
Next, say you hit his car and nobody sees it, the car crashes, and doesn’t burst into flames. Plan is blown because you have left bullet holes in the car, a bullet in the body, etc.
Anybody planning a serious assassination would look at all the contingencies like that, so they would never pick such a plan that is prone to go wrong. In fact, the only conceivable reason to try and kill him while he is in the car is to make it look like an accident, and shooting at the car is completely counter to that goal. If you are going to shoot him, you’d just do it before he gets in the car, or after he gets out of the car. Doing it while he’s driving is self-defeating.
How might you explain Mr. Hasting’s remains were cremated even after the family had registered that they intended to inter him with their own funeral home into a family plot?
I don’t know, ask the coroner’s office? I certainly don’t work there.
So you are in fact saying that if the intelligence services cleans up well, it’s not a crime. Nothing to see here, move on!
No, if I wanted to say that, then I would say that. I’m saying if you can’t find any evidence that a crime occurred, then it’s pointless to accuse people of committing said crime. What could you hope to accomplish, besides making a fool out of yourself?
No. This had all the marks of being an emergency op, with a fleeing victim.
They knew where he was going, and at what speed. Nothing fancy.
The only difficult part was the precise double hit, driver and tank. And there were variables making that even less difficult.
As for shooting humans: the democrats have had professional assassins, picked/volunteers from US Special Forces, at least since Clinton.
Yep. They made damn sure there wouldn't be any evidence.
Bump.
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