A 2010 email released by Wikileaks from a top-level CIA contractor asserts that CIA Director John Brennan, the subject of a story by now deceased journalist Michael Hastings, was on a “witch hunt” against “investigative journalists” perceived as hostile.
Hastings, a reporter for the Rolling Stone who ruffled many feathers in his career, was killed in an unusual high-speed car accident in which the vehicle exploded on impact with a tree, and perhaps before. Hastings’ wife confirmed to San Diego 6 News Television, soon after the uncharacteristic high-speed automobile crash, that Hastings’ next “big story,” as he called it, was to be on Brennan.
We step hack to 2014, when this report broke.
The email, written by Stratfor President Fred Burton and reported by San Diego 6, reads:
Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.
Note — There is specific tasker from the WH to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked. The Wonder Boys must be in meltdown mode…
The story on Brennan was never published.
Stratfor was once called “The Shadow CIA” by Barron’s. In 2012 WikiLeaks began publishing “The Global Intelligence Files,” over five million e-mails from the Texas-based company.
The email has never been disavowed by Stratfor.
Michael Hasting was killed on June 18, 2013, when the new Mercedes C250 SUV he had just leased hit a tree after running numerous red lights at over 100 mph in Los Angeles. A surveillance video at a pizza shop captured a fiery, violent explosion, which is uncharacteristic of high-speed impacts. Generations of advances in safety design have made accidents exhibiting these characteristics unheard of.
Typically, high speed impacts, even in past generations of automobiles, are characterized by a violent, horrific-sounding crunching of metal and glass, but no gas explosion. Fire can follow, but ignition usually takes place after the initial impact, as fuel vapors heat up and come into contact with hot surfaces. According to the National Fire Protection Association, only 3% of cars catch on fire as the result of crash impacts, and impact explosions are not a statistical category.
The pizza shop video shows a fireball which explodes outward for hundreds of feet in all directions and immediately lights up the night sky. Skeptics of the official LAPD conclusion, that no foul play was involved, cite a witness who said that “It sounded like a bomb going off in the middle of the night.”
Witnesses also reported the car was already on fire before it hit the tree.
Hastings crash video taken from pizza shop surveillance camera
Hours before he died, Hastings sent out a series of frantic emails to friends and colleagues, indicating that be believed he was being investigated by the FBI and sounding “panicked,” according to his friend Sgt. Joe Biggs, whom he had met in Afghanistan.
In an in-depth interview with San Diego 6 reporter Kim Dvorak, and Hastings friend Sgt. Biggs, Biggs tells RT interviewer Abby Martin that he had received an email indicating that police had been present at Hastings’ house that day, and that Hastings had been seen looking underneath his car. The San Diego journalist Kim Dvorak expresses her belief, after extensive investigation, that the Hastings crash was not a simple one-car accident, and may have involved foul play. She notes the police are withholding evidence such as the “black box” onboard the vehicle, which would have recorded all electronic events involving the car’s controls.
San Diego 6 report
After Hastings’ death, his notes on the Brennan story were suppressed, according to WesternJournalism.com, and in any event the Rolling Stone never published the story despite pledges to do so.
After at first saying that “At no time was Michael Hastings, or anything related to his work as a journalist, ever under investigation by the FBI,” the FBI subsequently revised its statement to: “At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI.” Freedom of Information Act requests from reporters revealed that the FBI had indeed cataloged some of Hastings’ articles, and discussed him in heavily redacted documents.
[give_form id=”79809″] [contentcards url=”http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/wikileaks-cia-s-brennan-on-witch-hunt-when-hastings-was-killed/article/421913″ target=”_blank”]