Doomed to Fail - Ep 143 - Conspiracy series: Michael Hastings

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Today, we take you to the first of hopefully many conspiracy theory episodes! We start small (no, nobody is eating babies) with the death of journalist Michael Hastings. After exposing corruption in the US Military's Middle East operations, Michael was driving in Los Angeles at 4 am when his car hit a tree, and he was incinerated. Was it foul play? Was he being followed?? Let us know what you think!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Hi, Taylor. Hi. We are recording our podcast, which is called, this is a horrible intro. Taylor, one evening. Wow.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Doom to DeVille. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures. Twice a week, every week. I am Taylor, joined by Fars. And it is the morning, which we never record on the morning, but we haven't in a while. Which is why I'm like a little off right now, I think, because I'm such a creature of habit. It's weird.

The older I get, the more desperate in need of habit I become. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, yeah. Am I going first today? I think so. well that's a good segue then because i also wrote down that as one of the other fun unexpected things that happens is i have been getting older is i get more and more into like conspiracy theories nice i don't know what it is it is it just an age thing you think

are you getting more to them uh i don't know i don't know if i would say more or like like there's some that i'm like seeing and i'm like the current ones i think you're dumb you know give me a current one like democrats eating babies okay i'm not there's shades of conspiracy theory that's what i mean that's what i mean like that stuff that stuff is a no but like i would really love if the moon landing was fake that'd be fun of shit yeah yeah okay so i'm gonna cover one of my favorite conspiracy theories and it happened in l.a while we were living in l.a and i actually think this was one that you're going to going to be with me on.

So we'll see. I'm going to talk about a guy. His name is Michael Hastings. Does that ring a bell? Not yet. Okay. Well, he's dead. So I'm going to talk about the man himself,

the events leading up to his death, the incident, and the pro-slash anti-conspiracy theory is associated with it. Okay. Sweet. I think I'll remember as it comes. I'm positive of you well. This one's a really, really popular one.

So Michael Hastings, he was born in 1980, and he kind of grew up with his family, just a really academically inclined kid, class president, played a lacrosse, soccer, acted in school plays, just a very involved and engaged individual as a kid. He would find his professional calling as a writer starting in 2002. Is he getting closer to bringing a bell? No. Okay. We'll keep going. So this was a great time to pick up writing, especially as a war reporter. And Hastings found his niche by moving to Baghdad during the Iraq War and reporting on data, the activities for Newsweek, Gentleman Quarterly and Rolling Stone. I don't even know what Gentleman Quarterly is. It sounds like, it sounds like a gross magazine.

Doesn't it? It just sounds like good. I mean, yeah, no, I don't know. I don't know what I don't know what. I do not subscribe to Gentleman Quarterly, so I'm not sure what I'm shocked. So it was during his time reporting for the Rolling Stone that he spent time with a very, very, very important individual named Stanley McChrystal, who was a general. So McChrystal was a lifelong, highly decorated member of the U.S. Army. He played an active role in Operation Desert Storm, the Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan, and the Iraq. war. So there was like no Middle Eastern war that this guy was not like just

all about. In 2009 President Obama was inaugurated and Stanley McChrystal then a general was elevated to commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, all of them. I actually didn't even know that was like I mean, now that I think about it, it's like of course there has to be one person whose role

that is. So you get to tell the planes and the ships and the people all of them what to do. It's like, It's like kind of, it's pretty cool. Yeah. I guess someone has to do it. So Obama obviously took over as president from George W. Bush, who had started two wars and obviously was considered a very hawkish president.

Obama was not. Obama was kind of considered weak and more of an intellectual than someone who's just like highly aggressive and committed to the military. Do you remember this? Well, I mean, I think that's fair. Yeah. I would say it's fair. I still hold that belief. The criticism is that he is a measure decision maker.

That is that was the criticism. Great, great, great, great. But you know, but you, you know what, but I know what you mean. It's like, it's all these tough guy military guys. Like, what am I to listen to this nerd? It's like one of those. It's very smart. But yes, yes, yes.

So in 2010, again, this is like a year after Obama was like president. So he's trying to like reshape this kind of like perspective of himself. So in 2010, Michael Hastings was entrenched with McChrystal and his aides for a reporting assignment for Rolling Stones. And he spent a month with him and his inner circle kind of documenting their thoughts on the war and engagement with the war apparatus and policies and all that stuff. In June of that year, Rolling Stone would publish Hastings article, which was entitled, Runaway General. Not good. No. In it, Hastings report on how Stanley McChrystal's, um, he said,

He would report on Stanley McChrystal's disdain for what he called civilian leadership, meeting Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He and his underlings reinforced the notion that everyone already had that Obama was a weak military leader, that he didn't understand the military or the realities of war. Again, that he did intellectual and not just saying blow everything up. Right. I think he's like the criticism here. I think so, too.

That's what it sounds good. He would also report about taking matter. into his own hand, basically bucking the chain of a man. So he would just be like, I'm just going to do my own thing. This guy doesn't know what he's doing anyways. Like, that was kind of the general vibe and attitude of this article that he wrote. He was also, like, very disparaging of Biden. And they, him and his age would refer to him as bite me.

Like, who he's talking about? Bite me. And like, it's just, it sounds stupid, like childish. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess it was a big deal. That's really funny. So once McChrystal knew of the content, of the article. He called Biden and offered his apology as well as a written statement saying how sorry he was. Biden would then call Obama to tell him about the apology, which is when Obama

actually became aware of the article and requested it, after which he asked McChrystal to come in person to the White House for the next security team meeting, which was usually conducted over a video conference as opposed to being in person since he was in Afghanistan at the time. So it was during this meeting that McChrystal tendered his resignation in the way that was like he was fired. Right? Like that's just how this works. So you don't actually. So he tendered his resignation. And that would basically be the end of a military

career that was that span 34 years. Which is crazy. Yeah. A while later, the defense department conducted an investigation into the article and basically found no credible corroborating evidence. The the things said were actually true. And in some way, shape, reform, the parties would make amends. I mean, not Hastings, but the other parties would make amends. So Michelle Obama, she would later go on to, like right after this report came out,

would go on to give McChrystal an assignment as head of an advisory board to support military families. Later on in 2020, McChrystal will go on to endorse Biden for president, kind of, you know, tamping down some of the tensions between them but also like it sounds like he was someone that was like legitimately in like he sounds like a patriot like a true sense like he was like

the comments he made about Trump were pretty disparaging so he was he was all in on the Biden front he kind of put this all to all to rest so Hastings would go on to remain critical of all things Middle Eastern war related he would go on to profile

a U.S. military defector who was disillusioned by the war. He would write pieces critical of Obama and other high-level military personnel. It generally sounds like he was a thorn in the side of like the most important people in government and the military. So let's get to the culmination of all this, the incident that we're going to be discussing. So the incident itself occurred on June 18th to, 2013, which was almost to the date three years after his article that got McChrystal fired was published. On that day at 4.25 a.m. he was riding his car super fast. Some speculate it was between about 60 miles per hour. Some speculate at 100 miles per hour. Regardless, he was speeding through the

Hancock Park area of Los Angeles when he slammed his car into a tree. His cause of death was ruled an accident. And it was due to blunt force trauma. that he died you can find images of the car online it went up totally in flames it's like barely recognizable as a car and his body itself was unrecognizable after they they got to it um you'll also find pictures if you google i think it's just like michael hasting's car you'll also find pictures of the engine of his car which was ejected about 30 yards away which is a little strange so I think

I do you remember this now no we had just moved to LA this was June of 2013 I don't know

if I remember it as much but I do feel like isn't your engine oh my God I have no idea isn't your engine is supposed to fall out

in some cases on purpose yeah the point of it is if you get into a head-on collision that obviously the front end is going to compact like an accordion

and you don't want the engine to land in the driver's lap and so it's supposed to drop below you. So it's supposed to go underneath the car. Got it, but not like fly. It's not supposed to go the other direction. Right. So it's incredibly hard to get a modern day car engine to eject itself. Yeah, yeah, fair.

like they're really really not designed to do that and i mean what had to happen for this to occur is that the engine would have to break from its mounts and struts which are part of the vehicle frame like they're they're one piece it has to shear from the transmission like you look at the picture like the back end the housing of it it ripped all of that's it had to shear all that off it had shear off the front axle and every other component that's kind of holding it in place. Yeah, I know it's wild. So it's estimated that less than 1% of accidents of our engine is ejected this way or like it's possible for it to happen.

So it's not impossible. It's just highly, highly, highly, highly improbable. I mean, he was going super fast. It's true. too fast and then like he if it was the middle of the four in the morning then there wasn't any like slowing down you know yeah if you think about it it's like the you're going this fast a hundred miles per hour which means your engine's going 100 miles per hour and then you stop and the engine's still going 100 miles per hour so like again it's not impossible it's just

improbable is all yeah so what pro conspiracy reasons could there be for this accident so an obvious one is someone other than Hastings was driving. So Richard Clark, who had worked on the intelligence side of the federal government, having served in the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State, and even after retirement, was recruited by Obama in 2013 to form an advisory group to reform the prison program after the Stonen League, he said, quote, there's reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers, including the United States know how to remotely seize

control of a car. So if there was a cyber attack on the car, and I'm not saying there was, I think whoever did it would probably get away with it. See, this is one of those conspiracy theories that, like, isn't insane, right? Was it like any car? Or

cars that, I guess if your car has, like, the, because we talked about this and, like, I think other times, like, if there is a nuclear attack that takes down the electric grid then the car stop working like that kind of or

is that true how would that work because a lot of cars rely on electricity and it rely on the internet and they're like not just engines anymore you know I think that'll be true for like electric cars yeah but also for like a lot of the computers inside your car

my Jeep is barely a modern car and it's a 2021 I think that thing would still work mine wouldn't because mine's very computer heavy oh yeah but but um but no i um so how so they can control every car or like they have to pick a car i think i think you in this in this theory in this theory i think well you have to pick a car but i mean think about it like you have like one article i read about this was like you have drones now where the guy could be in like new Mexico and is killing people on the other side of the planet.

Like, how improbable is it that somebody could install something on somebody's car and then take it over and do something nefarious with it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're definitely going to just kill each other as drones and that's going to be the end of it. So there is also the reporting from Hastings book after the article published. It's called The Operator, the Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan, where he reports being approached by one of the Crystal's, aides who said, quote, we'll hunt

you down and kill you if we don't like what you write. And then Hastings to his credit would later say that this comment actually didn't bother him because he said, quote, whenever I'd been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people, one of them would usually mention they were going to kill me. It's like, it was just

used to this, I guess. But didn't you say that the stuff that in the Rolling Stone article was not true? I mean, does it matter if it got McChrystal fired? Well, I think so Like if did is he

Is he is the stuff that Michael Hastings is reporting true So They didn't come out and say that it was false They said they couldn't corroborate it Okay Which is different But it doesn't matter because this guy who worked his entire life To become leader of all military forces

Got fired because of it No totally but I mean like should we believe other things That this guy writes He did a lot of investigative journalism And it seems like for the most part, he's fairly well regarded. Like, you know, I mean, I don't know how much I think of, uh, chank, chank, uh, younger, whatever, how do you say his name? The young term, but like, he spoke very highly of Michael Haste. They're apparently very close to each other.

So, um, other journalists also who seem credible, uh, also spoke very highly of him. So I'll go off that, I guess. Okay. so also the prevailing theory isn't that this was just like related to the McChrystal situation it was reported that at the time Hastings was also working on another piece that was focused on the CIA director and his agenda against reporters exposing Obama's drone strategy in Afghanistan so that was like also like a side quest apparently he had reached out to the lawyers at WikiLeaks like hours before he died

because he was going through he was going through some shit I'm going to get to that in a minute LA Weekly also reported that hours before he died he had asked to borrow a neighbor's car because he thought his own car's computer had been hacked

it sounds like a real rough day for him his last day yeah like he was like people are following me so that is a huge part of this story so I'm gonna get to that too because there's this other strange thing that happened which was the FBI who said Hastings

was not under investigation after he died would flip and say that Al Jazeera did a FOIA request about Michael Hastings after he died and the FBI showed that he was under active investigation at the time so his paranoia was real like it was justified he thought something was going on

something was a miss there's so much more to this but there's the anti-conspiracy side of this too so Hastings at the time was super agitated like we were just saying for really good reason so by this point the federal government had made a point about going after

journalists who exposed secrets so this is exactly the same time that Edward Stodin had leaked to the press the prison program and had to go into exile a couple of months earlier from his death is when Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy and basically stayed

there. And that was said to be because he was trying to evade sexual assault charges in Sweden. But the prevailing theory is like that was just like a pretext. They were trying to find any way to get him to be able to shutter down WikiLeaks. And the

wisdom, prevailing wisdom at the time is this was actually done because they were trying to get stopped the whistle blowing via WikiLeaks. Yeah, it totally makes sense. Michael Hastings viewed himself in the same vein as like these folks, basically exposing high power government programs and officials and thought he was being investigated or surveilled around this time is when reports came out that the Department of Defense or the Department of Justice had seized AP phone records, which his communications would have certainly been a part of. So they were like honing, he just saw the noose tightening around his neck essentially. So Michael Aisig's own brother, Jonathan, flew to be with Michael before the accident because he was going more and more manic and more paranoid. And he recounted after his death that he thought Michael was having a manic episode.

And apparently he'd had one of those like 15 years prior. And so there was some precedent for this. His brother personally thinks that there was nothing suspicious about his death, which is like crazy to me. he would say well he knows his brother better than I do obviously he would say quote I really I really rule foul play out entirely I might have been suspicious if I hadn't been with him the day before he died after all he definitely was investigating and writing about a lot of sensitive subjects but based on being with him and talking to people who were worried about him in the weeks leading up to his death and being around him when he had similar issues in the past I was pretty much convinced that he wasn't in danger from an outside agency so the families take on this is that he lost his shit and he just lost his shit and like maybe it was a suicide we don't know like that's that's the theory and i think there's probably stuff that's like you make things more dangerous if you think you're being followed you know yeah like if you if you're driving high speed on the street at four in the morning and you think you're being followed you were going to make

really weird decisions. Yeah. And I mean, followed in like a, I can't see them. They're following me from like, that's crazy, you know? Like, I can see getting so worked up that you make mistakes.

So what do you think? Because the thing I forgot about this story was that everything was happening at the same time. I forgot that like, you know, we look at it now as like Trump turning Americans against journalists. But like, the government was arresting

journalist like for a very very long time i don't really understand what he said that was he is just because he got the one guy fired uh several things so so he also so the one of the reason the fbi opened the investigation into him was specifically about an article that he wrote after that which was about this guy who was a military private some fucking like just a random dude um who was in afghanistan and who voluntarily surrendered to the Taliban because he was like this war stupid. America's policies are dumb. I don't want to be doing this anymore.

And then he was in prison for a long time. I totally forgot about this. But this guy was a huge part of Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump was like going out saying what a coward he is, how we should never trade anyone for this guy and like all this stuff. And eventually he was brought back to the U.S. He was court-martial. But the details he would expose brought him into conflict with the federal government.

And you never know really what it is. Is it like how he collected the information? Is it what he said about that information? Was it secrets about processes or about, you know, that whole universe? He was just like generally considered like a huge pain in the ass. And like apparently like I said, he was working on an article like against like calling out the CIA director at the time. That makes sense. So, so I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know what to think about this one. It's tough. because there was no indication that he was actually suicidal. Right. He was just freaked out and saw helicopters where there were no helicopters. Yeah.

I mean, and what is his brother saying? Like he had episodes in the past. Yeah, he apparently 15 years earlier. He also had a manic episode. But he's also like very traumatized. So his first wife, maybe Fiat, I can't remember, was also a war correspondent and she's actually a speech writer for Conno Lisa Rice was really cool, but she was also a war correspondent and she was killed in I think Baghdad. Oh, that's terrible.

Yeah. So, like, he, he saw a lot of death and like, I mean, obviously that's stuff imprints on her brain in some way. So, yeah, there was probably a lot going on inside of his mind. Yeah. But I kind of think he was killed. I mean, I kind of think, like, he would be, and this is just from my experience watching, being a person who watches movies, I don't know, I think you could scare him enough to do something crazy, you know?

Maybe that was it. You don't have to necessarily, like, track his, like, Carl, like a spy movie. You can just be like, you know, have a guy in a trench coat, follow him around for an hour, and he's going to be like, oh, my God. You know, what was he doing? awake that late? Was he drinking? Was he going somewhere? No. Why are you doing that? That night he was on a panel somewhere. I couldn't figure out where he was trying to go to or what he was trying to do. Yeah. Because that's like a weird time to be awake. Yeah. You know,

like what is he doing? So I feel like if I feel like he was scared. He was definitely right. Rightfully. So in many ways and like I don't know if like he just thought that they could do stuff that they couldn't do and then got like overwhelmed or they did do the thing or whatever but I think it'd be easy to scare him into thinking that they were doing more than they were doing you know and Richard Clark did say if they did this nobody will ever find out yeah it's like dude it's so creepy like if someone wants to get you like if a federal government wants to get you

like they can get you yeah they can get you yeah it's kind of not but um that's my fun little story has nothing to do with conspiracies about pizza restaurants or adrenachromes or um but but but taylor then again like a lot of like pedophile stuff try not to be fucking true like totally but not like the way that they not the way that yeah okay yeah not that it was but the whole like island of like sex offender like oh yeah no that exists I'm starting to think that, like, conspiracy theories, they have, they start with, like, a kernel of truth, and then the internet goes, like, insane with it. But, like, it's kind of, it could be true. Like, yeah.

I don't think about another good one. I mean, even the moon landing one you mentioned. Like, really, they're like, no, we went to the moon. It's just like we lost the footage and we refilmed the footage. that seems plausible that doesn't seem that crazy saying we didn't go to the moon or saying the earth is flat that's kind of crazy but like saying the earth is flat is crazy like saying we lost footage that's not crazy and it was like the 60s like it all had to be on physical stuff yeah you know um that's funny see i'm i'm baiting you i'm bringing you over to the conspiracy

no i mean no that one that the moon landing is one of my favorites i love that that they might do that that's all i got it's kind of fun yeah let us know what your favorite conspiracy theories are there's so many good ones i mean um the golf of tonkin like that was i forgot that one exactly it was it was definitely lbj it had to do with the escalation of war in vietnam about like an attack that occurred on one of our ships in in that area and it was like no it was all stage it was all fake like this it literally happens like totally totally but like saying 9-11 was like the government doing it that's crazy that's crazy yeah and all the like the towers can't seal can't melt or whatever like nobody knows what happens when too like there's some crazy I'm not over the

edge yet maybe like in 10 years I'll be over the edge but like right now more like in the fun non-harmful conspiracy theories totally I mean like so okay so now I'm like wait I'm waking up some of them that I'm thinking of like like I even though you talked about the white star line and the ships and I know things every time I see a picture that tells me that the Titanic might be the the Olympic

the Olympic and like I think it's the Olympic yeah it doesn't even matter but I get like I get excited about like oh my God maybe it was the Olympic the whole time like who cares but like you know yeah I'll always look at those pictures and be like hmm the windows are this far apart to their square and they're just the mess I guess that's the fun ones are the ones where the consequences aren't that terrible I mean golf photography was pretty bad or like the JFK thing like the fact that the most credible evidence is that the secret service shot him in the back of the head by accident and they had to hide it like where's his brain why did nobody keep his brain it's because a bullet fragment would have matched up with uh the secret services rifle and not Oswald's like that's I'm totally that one that one I believe but also that happened in addition to Oswald you know what I mean that's what I'm saying crazy yeah that's why it's kind of harmless because to them to like listen like he put into play the actions that results in the president

getting shot if Oswald hadn't fired the first shot that missed the secret service wouldn't have rifle their gun and flubbed it and shot in the head so like they're like hey like technically like by you know order of operations he started all this so yeah just buried the burn the brain it's crazy can you imagine that you imagine the guy that tells someone like hey here's the president's brain go fucking burn it nuts nuts oh what you're gonna do with that remember in wait have you seen young frankestine yeah remember he gets the brain he's like it's abby normal i i saw the last time i saw that was a synest via oh nice yeah that was really fun that sounds really nice um but yeah write to us with your favorite conspiracy theories like i don't want to

hear the crazy ones like let's be nice people like let's not do what's not like what are the fun ones you know like i don't know okay hollywood i think is full of sex offenders i think that part is true like i think that part is true as well which is um gross and terrible but yeah no i think that that's true like all the p ditty stuff keep seeing things that are like when everything comes to light, it's going to be wild. So I was just talking about this because I remembered when Danny Masterson, remember the 70s show guy, when he got, I think he got like a life sentence for all the sexual assaults that he did.

He did. And then Ashton Kutcher, Milakunis, like, ended up writing to the judge saying like, yes, he did all this horrible stuff. But he's a good day. But he's kind of a cool guy. Yeah. And then they had to like do like a revision of that. They had to be recorded like saying, we take it this back.

We're so sorry. and all that and now they're like talking about how ashton kutcher probably was at these like parties and it's like man it's gonna be like it's gonna be bad for a lot of people i think the best thing that came out of that danny masters in case is not having to hear from ashton kutcher anymore i'm glad he just like went away for a little bit i don't know punk was pretty good i mean sure of its time did we start the whole obsession with trucker hats because of ashton kutcher i don't know no no there's actually a documentary that i've not seen about Von Dutch and how they

like couldn't believe how popular they got. Well, wasn't that because of Ashton? Ashen, I know my first name only. You. If you do, then I'm worried. Then it's a problem. That's the end of the podcast. Anyways.

Do you have any, do you have any listener mail or? Oh, yes, I do. Nadine wrote in to tell us that 99% Invisible has a series on the power broker Where they Yeah, yeah So if anyone wants to listen along

As you try to read the power broker this year Please do. That is a very efficient way to do it And the way they What's the same Roman Mars? Is that it? Yeah, he's really good. He's a good narrator.

That reminds me Okay, I'm so sorry, everyone. When the internet first started, so it was like 20 years ago at my job, I remember I was so bored and I would watch X-Files all day long and I would people were like Taylor's trying to get fired and I'm like nothing

but anyway I would also watch YouTube videos and there was one video YouTube video that was this a guy and he would read Twilight but he wouldn't read it out loud he would read it he would like laugh and then he'd summarize it for you and it was so funny because he would just like be reading it and they would just be laughing and then just kind of tell you

what happened and it was just delightful the books the vampire books yeah he like didn't if you wasn't reading it to you he was reading it laughing at it and then telling you what happened and laughing it was so funny there's a lot of fun content ideas out there yeah that's a good one um sweet that's all i got taylor if you're good we can go ahead and wrap and rejoin you all later on this week sounds good find us everywhere else in a podcast doomed to fail sweet thanks all