Grok says:
Michael Hastings, the journalist behind the explosive Rolling Stone piece “The Runaway General” that toppled General Stanley McChrystal in 2010, was a live wire in the years before his death on June 18, 2013. His final months were a whirlwind of intense work, personal turbulence, and a creeping paranoia that friends and family later flagged as uncharacteristic. Here’s what was swirling around him before that fiery crash in Los Angeles.
Hastings was deep into his craft, chasing stories that poked the powerful. At the time of his death, he was a BuzzFeed staff writer, digging into a profile of CIA Director John Brennan for Rolling Stone. Brennan was a big fish—the architect of Obama’s drone program and a key player in tracking journalists and their sources. Hastings’ last BuzzFeed post, dated June 7, 2013, “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” ripped into the NSA’s surveillance machine, sparked by Edward Snowden’s leaks. He was rattled by the government’s pursuit of whistleblowers—his friend Jeremy Scahill’s film Dirty Wars screenings, which he attended, only fueled that fire. On June 17, he emailed colleagues at BuzzFeed, blind-copying a military pal, Staff Sgt. Joe Biggs, saying he was “onto a big story” and needed to “go off the radar.” He added that the feds might be sniffing around his circle—pure Hastings, always suspecting the worst.
His personal life was a mess too. Hastings had a history of substance struggles—sober from alcohol for 14 years by 2013, per the coroner’s report, but he’d started dabbling again. Family told investigators he’d picked up drugs about a month before, possibly meth (traces of amphetamine showed up in his system, though not enough to cause the crash) and maybe DMT, a hallucinogen. His brother Jonathan flew to LA on June 17 to stage an intervention, fearing a “manic episode” tied to drugs or trauma. Hastings had been institutionalized for rehab in 1999, and his fiancée’s death in a 2007 Baghdad bombing left scars—PTSD, some said. His widow, Elise Jordan, later called it “emotional volatility,” not suicidal intent, though he’d once bragged about feeling “invincible,” like he could leap off a balcony and walk away.
The paranoia spiked in those final days. Friends like Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks said he was “incredibly tense,” convinced his Mercedes was being tampered with. USA Today reported he told people he was scared and wanted out of LA. Hours before the crash, he hit up WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson, hinting at trouble. Then, around 4:25 AM on June 18, his car smashed into a palm tree on Highland Avenue at over 100 mph, erupting in flames. The coroner said he died instantly from blunt force trauma—skull fractures, a torn aorta—not the fire or drugs. No note, no clear why.
What was going on? Hastings was a man on edge—pushing a big story, wrestling old demons, and seeing shadows. Some scream conspiracy (the FBI denied investigating him, despite a FOIA’d file showing they’d tracked his work since 2012). Others, like Jordan, call it a tragic fluke—a crash, not a hit. Either way, he was a pressure cooker: brilliant, battered, and burning out fast.
