Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings (January 28, 1980 – June 18, 2013) was an American journalist, writer and reporter for BuzzFeed. The son of doctors Molly and Brent Hastings, he graduated from Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington, Vermont in 1998, and New York University in 2002.

He was a regular contributor to Gentlemen's Quarterly and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. From 2002 - 2008, he was a journalist for Newsweek magazine, famous for his Iraq War coverage and book about the death of his fiancée Andrea Parhamovich I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story.

Stanley McChrystal interview

In June 2010, Rolling Stone published "The Runaway General", Hastings's profile of US Army general Stanley McChrystal, then commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the war in Afghanistan. The article reported remarks by McChrystal's staff that were overtly critical and contemptuous of White House staff and other civilian officials. On June 22, the news of the forthcoming article reached the attention of the American print media and the White House. McChrystal immediately issued an extensive apology, and Duncan Boothby, the civilian contractor responsible for coordinating the article with Hastings, resigned. U.S. President Barack Obama summoned McChrystal to the White House on June 23, and relieved him of command. Hastings offered his views on relations between McChrystal and the Obama administration.

Hastings was originally meant to have controlled contact, which expanded when he had to catch a bus to Berlin with the general and his entourage after international flights were grounded, because of the air travel disruption after the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, which gave him sufficient time to pick up less discreet remarks. How Hastings got access to McChrystal's inner circles is detailed in a Newsweek article. Huffington Post named Hastings a 2010 Game Changer for his reporting, along with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. Hastings was also awarded a Polk Award for his reporting.

Michael Hastings and Eric Bates, executive editor of Rolling Stone, repeatedly defended the accuracy of Hastings' article about General McChrystal. In July 2010, the U.S. Army launched its own investigation into whether McChrystal and his team were insubordinate, and concluded that the most inflammatory comments were made by an officer in the Navy Special Warfare Group, according to the New York Times. This was later confirmed in Hastings book about the war in Afghanistan that was published in January 2012, The Operators, which attributed a number of damning quotes to Lt. Commander Dave Silverman, now CEO of McChrystal Group. A subsequent Pentagon investigation attempted to challenge the accuracy of Hastings' article "The Runaway General" which quoted anonymously people around McChrystal making disparaging remarks about members of President Barack Obama's national security team, including Vice President Joe Biden. The report from the inquiry states “In some instances, we found no witness who acknowledged making or hearing the comments as reported. In other instances, we confirmed that the general substance of an incident at issue occurred, but not in the exact context described in the article.” In response, Rolling Stone stated, “The report by the Pentagon’s inspector general offers no credible source — or indeed, any named source — contradicting the facts as reported in our story, 'The Runaway General.'"

In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC's TODAY show on June 23, 2011, Hastings said “I did not think Gen. McChrystal would be fired. In fact, I thought his position was basically untouchable, I thought it would give them a headache for maybe 72 hours.”

In February 2011, Hastings wrote another lengthy article profiling McChrystal's successor, General David Petraeus, and detailing Petraeus' strategy for the war.

The Operators book

In January 2012, Hastings published the book, The Operators, 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." 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.

Publications

• Hastings, Michael (2008). I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story. New York, NY: Scribner.
• Hastings, Michael (2012). The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan. New York, NY: Blue Rider Press.
• Hastings, Michael (October 2008). "Hack: Confessions of a Presidential Campaign Reporter". Gentlemen's Quarterly.
• Hastings, Michael (April 2009). "Obama's War". Gentlemen's Quarterly.
• Hastings, Michael (June 22, 2010). "The Runaway General". Rolling Stone.
• Hastings, Michael (2 February 2011). "King David's War". Rolling Stone.
• Hastings, Michael (23 February 2011). "Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators". Rolling Stone.
• Hastings, Michael (October 2011). "Inside Obama's War Room". Rolling Stone.
• Hastings, Michael (April 2012). "The Rise of the Killer Drones". Rolling Stone.
• Hastings, Michael (June 2012). "America's Last Prisoner of War". Rolling Stone.
• Articles in, inter alia, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek International, Salon, and Slate.
• Hastings, Michael (January 2013). Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign. BuzzFeed/Blue Rider Press.

Personal Life

Michael Hastings married journalist Elise Jordan in May, 2011 in Hernando, Mississippi. Elise was a speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2008- 2009.

Hastings died in a single-vehicle automobile crash in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 18, 2013.