Michael Mahon Hastings (January 28, 1980 -- June 18, 2013) was an American journalist, author, contributing editor to Rolling Stone, and reporter for BuzzFeed. He was raised in New York, Canada, and Vermont, and attended New York University. Hastings rose to prominence with his coverage of the Iraq War for Newsweek in the 2000s. After his fiancee, Andrea Parhamovich, was killed when her car was ambushed in Iraq, Hastings wrote his first book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story (2008), a memoir about his relationship with Parhamovich and the violent insurgency that took her life. He received the George Polk Award for "The Runaway General" (2010), a Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the Afghanistan war. The article documented the widespread contempt for civilian officials in the US government by the general and his staff and resulted in McChrystal's resignation. Hastings followed up with The Operators (2012), a detailed book account of his month-long stay with McChrystal in Europe and Afghanistan. Hastings became a vocal critic of the surveillance state during the investigation of reporters by the US Department of Justice in 2013, referring to the restrictions on the freedom of the press by the Obama administration as a "war" on journalism. His last story, "Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans", was published by BuzzFeed on June 7. Hastings died in a fiery high-speed automobile crash on June 18, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. In January 2012, Hastings published The Operators, a book which gives the most detailed public account of his travels with General Stanley McChrystal and his team. It included extensive quotes, taken from over 20 hours of audio recordings of McChrystal and his inner circle. A close read of the book suggests that McChrystal himself told Hastings that Obama was "intimidated and uncomfortable" the first time the president met him. The Daily Beast called it a "book of great consequence...The Operators seems destined to join the pantheon of great GWOT literature."[34] The Wall Street Journal slammed the book, though the author of the review was a military consultant who had worked for both McChrystal and General David Petraeus, a fact the paper failed to disclose. The book became a New York Times bestseller. Michael Hastings died in a single-vehicle automobile crash in his Mercedes C250 Coupé at approximately 4:25 a.m. in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 18, 2013. A witness to the crash said the car seemed to be traveling at maximum speed and was creating sparks and flames before it fishtailed and crashed into a palm tree. Video from a nearby security camera purportedly shows Hastings' vehicle speeding and bursting into flames after crashing. Witnesses described the car's engine being ejected 50 to 60 yards from the scene. Hastings' body was burned beyond recognition. The coroner identified the body by matching fingerprints with those the FBI had on file. An investigation by the LA county coroners office continues. Hastings was eulogized in the media by figures such as Christopher Hayes, Rachel Maddow, his co-workers at BuzzFeed, and others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%29

• published: 01 Nov 2013
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