JOHN BRENNAN..."THE BAGMAN" FOR OBAMA.... JOHN BRENNAN:
ISLAMIC CONVERT WHO SWORE HIS CIA OATH ON THE "CONSTITUTION" AND NOT NOT ON A BIBLE
In mid-December 2013, Judicial Watch obtained and released the full transcript of a May 7, 2012, teleconference between then-White House top counterterror adviser (now CIA Director) John Brennan and various TV terrorism consultants in which Brennen revealed that the U.S. and its allies had “inside control over any plot” in its efforts to thwart a May 2012 terrorism bomb plot, thus blowing the cover on undercover agents within al Qaeda.
The Brennan revelation of “inside control” – an intelligence community euphemism for spies within an enemy operation – reportedly helped lead to the disclosure of a previously well-kept secret at the heart of a joint U.S.-British-Saudi undercover terrorism operation inside Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). According to a Reuters May 18, 2012, report:
The next day’s headlines were filled with
news of a U.S. spy planted inside Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP), who had acquired the latest, non-metallic model of the
underwear bomb and handed it over to U.S. authorities.
At stake was an operation that could not
have been more sensitive — the successful penetration by Western spies
of AQAP, al Qaeda’s most creative and lethal affiliate. As a result of
leaks, the undercover operation had to be shut down.
In the transcript obtained by Judicial Watch, Brennan led the
teleconference where he addressed the top terror consultants for ABC,
NBC, CNN, and CBS including Caitlin Hayden, Frances Townsend, Richard
Clarke, Roger Cressey, and Juan Zarate. In an apparent attempt to
soft-peddle the thwarted terrorist attack, Brennan twice exposed the
covert operation; first at the outset of the call, then as the
conference drew to a close:
BRENNAN: The device itself, as I think
the FBI statement said quite clearly, never posed a threat to the
American public or the public … Well, as we, well know, Al Qaeda has
tried to carry out simultaneous types of attacks, and so we were
confident that we had inside control over the – any plot that might have
been associated with this device.
CLARKE: If it gets asked. There was no active threat because we had insider control …
BRENNAN: I would not disagree with the way you put that, at all.
It should also be noted that records obtained by Judicial Watch in May 2012,
through a Freedom of Information lawsuit, indicate that Brennan helped
orchestrate the administration’s attempt to influence the storyline of
the movie “Zero Dark Thirty.” A transcript of a July 14, 2011, meeting
between Defense Department officials, including Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers, and filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow
and Mark Boal reveals that Boal met directly with White House officials
on at least two occasions regarding the film: “I took your guidance and
spoke to the WH and had a good meeting with Brennan and McDonough and I
plan to follow up with them; and they were forward leaning and
interested in sharing their point of view; command and control; so that
was great, thank you,” Boal said according to the transcript. During
Brennan’s February 2013 CIA confirmation hearings, he confirmed he had
met with Boal “on how White House officials viewed the opportunities and
risks associated with a film about the raid that killed bin Laden.”
Brennan, of course, was not the only Obama administration official
who attempted to curry favor with “Zero Dark Thirty” filmmakers. In
early December Judicial Watch released more than 200 pages of documents
from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including a previously
unreleased CIA internal report, confirming that former CIA Director Leon
Panetta revealed classified information at a June 24, 2011, bin Laden
assault awards ceremony attended by filmmaker Mark Boal. Significantly,
the entire transcript of the Panetta speech provided to Judicial Watch
by the CIA was classified “Top Secret.” More than 90 lines are redacted
for security reasons, further confirming that significant portions of
the speech should not have been made in front of the filmmaker who
lacked top security clearance.THIS IS JOHN BRENNAN:
Mr John Brennan has a BA and MA in Middle Eastern studies. He went to Cairo, home of the Muslim Brotherhood, to study. He then became a career CIA agent and CEO of The Analysis Corporation (see below). For someone so highly qualified and knowledgable about the muslim world, its amazing he was unable to warn against the muslim encroachment in America and the terror attacks of 9/11. Considering he ran a company dedicated to analysis of security concerns, its pretty amazing he has contributed nothing to the actual security of the USA!
Please watch this current video of John Brennan pandering to muslims, in the White House.John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama’s passport records.
In March 21, 2008, amid Obama’s first presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-Sen. Barack Obama.
Breaking the story, the Washington Times on March 20, 2008, noted that all three had used their authorized computer network access to look up and read Obama’s records within the State Department consular affairs section that “possesses and stores passport information.”
Contacted by the newspaper, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack attributed the violations to non-political motivations, stressing that the three individuals involved “did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.”
“As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity,” McCormack told the Washington Times.
The spokesman did not disclose exactly how the State Department came to that conclusion.
By the next day, the story had changed.
The New York Times reported March 21, 2008, that the security breach had involved unauthorized searches of the passport records not just of Sen. Obama but also of then-presidential contenders Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton.
Again, the New York Times attributed the breaches to “garden-variety snooping by idle employees” that was “not politically motivated.”
Like the Washington Times, the New York Times gave no explanation to back up its assertion that the breaches were attributable to non-political malfeasance.
Still, the New York Times report indicated then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had spent Friday morning calling all three presidential candidates and that she had told Obama that she was sorry for the violation.
“I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file,” Rice said.
The newspaper quoted Obama as saying he appreciated the apology but that he expected the passport situation “to be investigated diligently and openly.”
According to the New York Times report, Obama’s tone of concern was obvious.
“One of the things that the American people count on in their interactions with any level of government is that if they have to disclose personal information, that is going to stay personal and stay private,” Obama told reporters. “And when you have not just one, but a series of attempts to tap into people’s personal records, that’s a problem, not just for me, but for how our government is functioning.”
The New York Times noted that the files examined likely contained sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, addresses and dates of birth, as well as passport applications and other biographical information that would pertain to U.S. citizenship. Only at the end of the article did the New York Times note that State Department spokesman McCormack had emphasized the most egregious violation appeared to have been made against Obama.
Obama was the only one of the three presidential candidates involved who had his passport file breached on three separate occasions. The first occurred Jan. 9, 2008, followed by separate violations Feb. 21 and March 14, 2008. Moreover, all three of the offending employees had breached Obama’s files, while each of the passport files of McCain and Clinton had been breached only once.
The Brennan connection
The New York Times noted the two offending State Department contract employees who were fired had worked for Stanley Inc., a company based in Arlington, Va., while the reprimanded worker continued to be employed by the Analysis Corporation of McLean, Va.
The newspaper gave no background on either corporation, other than to note that Stanley Inc. did “computer work for the government.”
At that time, Stanley Inc. was a 3,500-person technology firm that had just won a $570-million contract to provide computer-related passport services to the State Department.
Analysis Corporation was headed by Brennan, a former CIA agent who was then serving as an adviser on intelligence and foreign policy to Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign.
After Obama’s inauguration, Brennan joined the White House as assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counter-terrorism.
By March 22, 2008, the Washington Times reported that the State Department investigation had focused on the contract worker for the Analysis Corporation, because he was the only one of the three involved in breaching the passport records of both Obama and McCain, the two presidential candidates whose eligibility as “natural born” citizens under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution were in question.
Keeping with the theme that the motive for the passport breach was attributable to mischief, the three State Department contract employees received relatively light penalties for their offenses – two were fired and one was reprimanded.
Although at the time the State Department promised a full-scale investigation, the public was kept in the dark.
In July 2008, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a 104-page investigative report on the passport breach incidents, stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified.” The report was so heavily redacted, it was virtually useless to the public. Scores of passages were blacked out entirely, including one sequence of 29 consecutive pages that were each obliterated by a solid black box that made it impossible even to determine paragraph structures.
Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman said a well-placed but unnamed source told him that the real point of the passport breach incidents was to cauterize the Obama file, removing from it any information that could prove damaging to his eligibility to be president.
According to the theory, the breaches of McCain’s and Clinton’s files were done for misdirection purposes, to create confusion and to suggest the motives of the perpetrators were attributable entirely to innocent curiosity.
Another thief enters the case
Within a few days, a new witness surfaced unexpectedly, providing evidence that breaching passport files was an offense being perpetrated by State Department officials on a massive and everyday basis.
The case centered on Leiutenant Quarles Harris Jr., age 24. Harris, who spelled his named differently than the officer rank, was a petty drug dealer and identity-theft criminal who never served in the military or in any police or fire department.
On March 25, 2008, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Officer William A. Smith Jr. of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s Narcotics Special Investigation Division stopped an oncoming vehicle that had tinted windows he believed were in violation of the D.C. Tinted Window Act of 1994.
After stopping the vehicle, Smith found the driver, Harris, and his female passenger had been smoking marijuana. Harris had stuffed in his jacket pocket a large clear zip-lock bag containing 13 smaller clear zip-lock bags, each filled with marijuana.
The affidavit of criminal complaint filed by Smith with the U.S. District Court specified that in the search of the vehicle, the officers found 19 different credit cards with names different from Harris and his female passenger. Also discovered were eight State Department passport applications, also in names different from Harris and his female passenger.
The officers further discovered four of the names on the passport applications matched the names on the credit cards. A check with American Express while Harris was still on the scene of the traffic stop indicated that some of the American Express cards in his possession, but not in his name, had recently been used and that American Express had placed a “fraud alert” on the cards.
Smith brought Harris to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Sixth District, where agents of the U.S. Secret Service, the State Department and the U.S. Postal Service questioned him. Harris’ involvement in passport application theft clearly made him no ordinary petty criminal.
According to the criminal complaint filed by Smith, Harris admitted under questioning that he obtained the passport information from an unnamed co-conspirator working at the State Department. The complaint said the passport applications were used to obtain credit cards in the names of the passport applicants.
Another unnamed co-conspirator working at the U.S. Postal Service intercepted the issued credit cards before they were delivered to the residences of the persons named on the cards.
What was clear from Harris’ statements was that breaching passport records at the State Department had developed into major criminal activity conducted on a continuing basis by State Department employees with access to the State Department’s Passport Information Electronic Records System, commonly known by the acronym PIERS.
What also was clear was that Harris had information related to the State Department employees who had breached Obama’s passport records and that he was cooperating with government officials.
Despite the objection of the prosecutors, the judge at his arraignment released Harris the next day on personal recognizance. He was ordered to return to court for a hearing in June 2008.
Key witness murdered
However, Harris did not live to attend the court hearing.
On April 18, 2008, he was found murdered in Washington, D.C., by a single bullet to the head in what appeared to be a drive-by shooting.
The Washington Times reported April 19, 2008, that a “key witness in a federal probe into passport information stolen from the State Department was fatally shot in front of a District church” at close range, around 11 p.m., in the 2800 block of 12th Street NE, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
Harris, who the Washington Times described as “cooperating with federal investigators,” was found slumped dead at the steering wheel of his car in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in the northeast section of D.C., according to Commander Michael Anzallo, the head of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division.
A police officer patrolling the neighborhood at the time of Harris’ death heard gunshots and ran to the scene, only to find Harris dead inside his car. The Metropolitan Police admitted a “shot spotter” device had been used to locate Harris in the shooting, although police officials declined to say whether his death was a direct result of his cooperation with federal investigators.
There is no evidence that today links Harris’ crimes or murder with the breach of Obama’s passport records by State Department contract employees.
At first glance, Harris could be dismissed as a foot-soldier selling marijuana and peddling credit cards fraudulently obtained via passport-related identity theft.
Yet there is more to the story than petty criminal activity. Obviously, Harris got himself in way over his head when he decided to work with the State Department officials accessing PIERS to obtain passport records without authorization.
Equally obvious was that by being willing to cooperate with police, Harris risked becoming a threat to his accomplices and co-conspirators within the State Department.
ABC news affiliate WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., reported Cleopatria Harris, the mother of Leiutenant Quarles Harris, believed her son was murdered to keep him from cooperating with the federal investigation into the passport-record breach. She told the TV station her son was in court three days before his murder.
“He felt like he was going to do jail time. He was willing to do jail time,” she said, indicating that she believed news reports that her son had been arrested and was cooperating with the police were the reason he was killed. “Yes I do. think it had a hell of a lot to do with it. [The story] made my son appear to be a snitch.”
Similarly, the Washington Post reported Cleopatria Harris was “absolutely sure” her son was killed because of his involvement in the passport-credit card scam.
Harris’ mother refused to believe her son’s murder was an act of violence unrelated to the passport scheme. Instead, she contended he was killed because he was an important witness regarding a State Department breach of passport records.
To date, the D.C. Metropolitan Police have no suspects in the still unsolved murder of Leiutenant Quarles Harris Jr. Nor has the State Department ever revealed publicly what was discovered in the breach of Obama’s passport records. The three individuals involved in the breach have never come forward in public to tell what they found.
Obama discloses trip to Pakistan
But this is not the end of the story.
Two weeks after the report that Obama’s passport records had been breached, candidate Obama made the surprising disclosure at a private fundraiser April 7, 2008, that he had traveled to Pakistan during his college years.
Jake Tapper, then senior White House correspondent for ABC News, commented that Obama’s disclosure that he had taken a college trip to Pakistan was “news to most of us.” Tapper said “it was odd we hadn’t heard about it before, given all the talk of Pakistan during this campaign.”
Tapper reported that, according to the Obama campaign, Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, the year he transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University, and that he had visited his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia on the same trip.
Why was Obama disclosing now, for the first time, that he had traveled to Pakistan with his roommates from Occidental College?
Did Obama use an Indonesian passport to travel to Indonesia and Pakistan in 1981, and was he concerned the breach of his passport records might end up disclosing such information, if true?
The attempt to preempt such a disclosure might explain the timing of Obama’s decision to suddenly reveal, at least to the friends assembled for the fundraiser, the previously undisclosed trip to Indonesia and Pakistan.
“I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college,” Obama is heard saying on the poor-quality audiotape that survives from the San Francisco fundraiser. “I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/did-cia-pick-sanitize-obamas-passport-records/#jMORMC5JYWKqEsWi.99
More Details Here https://www.newsmax.com/KenTimmerman/brennan-passport-breach/2009/01/12/id/337482/
MORE DETAILED INFO ON THE BENGHAZI CONNECTION!Having received training and certification in Internet Profiling, I began to look into the Internet activity related to the video right after the murder of Stevens and the violence that was attributed to the video. This investigation was as elusive as it was revealing, as I began to note that links to the video began disappearing after I would visit various sites related to the video or its apparent “host.”
It was on or about 22 September 2012 that during my research, I found a video titled Proof Positive - In My Opinion posted by an individual on the YouTube channel under the user name “Montagraph.” I found that many of his findings mirrored mine (or mine his), although there were a few exceptions. Nonetheless, this Internet video contains links to many interesting screen captures.HERE IS THE VIDEO... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7os9D-EsFmM
The individual in the video Proof Positive - In My Opinion on the YouTube channel Montagraph details some very disturbing possibilities, including the identification of a news and politics website (a series of them, interrelated) known as NewsPoliticsNow and its various name variations, might be linked to Stanley Inc., which is now known as CGI. It is interesting that my investigative results seem to be generally consistent with his findings, and also that there appears to be a link to this company that provides products and services to the U.S. military, the U.S. State Department and DHS.
The video, defense contractors & Obama
In the “Montagraph video,” a connection is drawn to Stanley Inc. The importance of this, beyond the status as defense contractors from Arlington, Virginia, lies in the digital fingerprints connecting the videoInnocence of Muslims with a user with access to the NewsPoliticsNow website. The “Montagraph video” explains the connection by the presence of a common avatar, or an image used by Internet posters. It is here that things become as disturbing as they are convoluted.
According to published reports, Stanley Inc. was awarded a $164 million contract to print new U.S. passports in 2006. Two employees of Stanley Inc., along with a third individual employed by another defense contractor identified as The Analysis Corporation, were identified as the perpetrators who breached the records of the U.S. passport office on three occasions in 2008 and “improperly accessed” the passport records of Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. The breaches occurred on January 9, February 21 and March 14, 2008.
It is important to note that the CEO of the Analysis Corporation at the time of the passport office break-in was John O. Brennan, who served as a close advisor to Obama in 2008 on matters of intelligence and foreign policy. Brennan also contributed to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Brennan also had a 25-year career in the CIA.
Read about him here http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/01/all-the-presidents-men-meet-john-brennan-obamas-cia-director-2554694.html
Presently, John Brennan is chief counterterrorism advisor to Barack Hussein Obama under the official title of Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.
Since 2008, the accepted and unchallenged motive for the breach was that the perpetrators were looking at the passport and biological data on all three presidential candidates in some sort of “exploratory” mission. They were summarily fired from their jobs and disappeared into the night before they could be interviewed by investigators working on the case. What took place following this admitted breach, however, has an extremely sinister overtone.
Flashback: 2008 Obama revelation; Key witness to passport office break-in murdered
Recall that at the time of the passport office break-in, Barack Hussein Obama was on the campaign trail as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The news of the breach was made public within a week of the last intrusion, and a week later, on March 21, 2008, Obama was asked for his reaction by ABC News Jake Tapper while campaigning. Obviously, Obama now officially knows that the public has been informed about the level of the breach, and that Obama’s personal and confidential biographical information, in addition to his international travels was apparently “accessed.”
It is important to note that that the files accessed included Obama’s personal passport and were not limited to his diplomatic passport.
On April 8, 2008, Obama continued to comment on the fact that the confidentiality of his passport records were apparently compromised. It was on this occasion when Obama admitted, for the first time in any public venue as a presidential candidate, that he traveled to Pakistan in 1981. One wonders whether Obama would have disclosed his Pakistan trip at this time had it not been for the uncertainty that the information was already “in play.”
Even ABC News appeared surprised at this sudden and unexpected revelation, considering all of the talk about Pakistan and U.S. foreign policy during the previous several months. Research shows that Obama did not disclose this trip at any time during any policy discussions or debates prior to the passport office breach.
It is also important to point out that during the investigation of the breach of the passport office records, the Washington Times reported that “officials do not know whether information was improperly copied, altered or removed from the database during the intrusions” [Emphasis added]. As time progressed, however, so did the leaks. It was reported that at least one employee within the U.S. State Department shared passport information with a man identified as Lieutenant Quarles Harris Jr.
My investigation suggests that Harris was the intended recipient of stolen credit card information from the State Department employee, but received more than what he bargained for. When he realized the scope of the crime and the explosive nature of the information he possessed, he turned to investigators for protection. He also began to talk with investigators and ultimately, made a deal with federal prosecutors.
Before he could make good on his deal, Lieutenant Quarles Harris Jr. was found shot to death in his car on April 17, 2008, just over a month after the last breach. He was found in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in the northeast section of Washington. He had been shot in the head.
The murder of Harris remains unsolved, and the official narrative of that murder is that Harris was either a victim of random violence, or his murder was a result of a “street deal gone bad.”
Prelude to attack
In the days and weeks leading up to the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, the U.S. Department of State received at least three warnings of not only impending violence, but of U.S. embassies being specifically targeted. One warning was specific to the U.S. embassy in Cairo, which was directly related to the current imprisonment of the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Others specified the Libyan embassy.
On September 9, 2012, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reportedly received a warning that stated “[t]he time has come for a strong movement from you, O sons of Egypt, to release the detained sheikh…Let your slogan be: No to the American embassy in Egypt until our detained sheikh is released. Starting now, let the faithful among you form follow-up committees in charge of taking the necessary measures to force America to release the sheikh, even if it requires burning the embassy down with everyone in it.”
The warnings in the week before the attack were received while Ambassador Stevens was traveling in Germany, Austria and Sweden. Accordingly, it is important to determine why Ambassador Stevens was at the consulate office in Benghazi during a time of heightened threat, was he made aware of the increased threat situation by the Clinton State Department, and who was responsible for the safety and security of Ambassador Stevens and what actually happened in Benghazi?
Research, investigation and confirmation from one source within the U.S. government found that in the situation involving Stevens, protection of the U.S. consulate was provided in large part by an organization known as “the Martyrs of the Feb. 17 Revolution Brigade.” This is a local Libyan militia led by Fawzi abu Kataf, who has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is now being reported that the “protection team,” specifically the leaders of the Martyrs of the Feb. 17 Revolution Brigade received orders from a senior Libyan government official to stand down during the coordinated attack against the U.S. Consulate.
It is unclear whether Ambassador Stevens was made aware of the threats, but it would logical to believe that he was not aware of the stand-down order or the impending attack. Regardless, it is important to determine what Ambassador Stevens’ mission was in Benghazi along with Foreign Service officer Sean Smith and Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
UPDATE AUGUST 2013:
REMEMBER THE JOURNALIST MICHAEL HASTINGS???
Journalist Michael Hastings Was Investigating CIA Director John Brennan at Time of Deadly Crash
The widow of Michael Hastings confirmed that the investigative journalist was working on a story on CIA Director John Brennan when he was killed in a fiery car crash in June.
In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan on August 5, Elise Jordan said that the story on Brennan will appear in an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone. The story apparently relates to Brennan’s role in targeting journalists who were working on government secrets.
In its report on Hasting’s investigations, San Diego 6 Newscited an email from obtained by WikiLeaks, which alleges that “Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists” who reveal government secrets. It was an internal communication within Stratfor, a global intelligence company with connections to the US state, with a subject line stating that the message was for internal use only and should not be forwarded.
The email went on: “There is a specific tasker from the [White House] 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.”
Hastings died in the early hours of the morning on June 19, when his Mercedes exploded after apparently crashing into a palm tree in Hollywood, California. The vehicle burst into flames and the engine was launched 100 feet down the street. One witness compared the sound coming from the blast to a bomb explosion that shook nearby houses.
While initial eyewitness testimony indicated that Hastings had been speeding, new evidence is surfacing that questions such statements. According to the same San Diego 6 News report, a surveillance video taken from a nearby restaurant has been studied and shows that Hastings may have only been traveling as slowly as 35 mph when the collision took place.
According to San Diego 6 News: “That revelation is important because Jose, an employee of ALSCO, a nearby business, and a witness to the accident, told KTLA/Loud Labs (Scott Lane) the car was traveling at a high rate of speed and he saw sparks coming from the car and saw it explode BEFORE hitting the tree.”
Hastings, who was 33-years-old when he died, had received threats from government officials in response to his work. In one of his books, he revealed that a staffer of General Stanley McCrystal, whose career was ended in part by an exposé written by Hastings, had told him, “We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write.”
In response to recent attention to Hastings’ death, a CIA spokesperson told reporters that, “any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on Constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.”
However, the connection between the death of Hastings and the leaked CIA email raises serious questions about the death. Los Angeles Police Department officials have declared that there is no evidence of foul play.
Hastings was best known for his Rolling Stone exposé that led to the removal of McCrystal as chief of command in Afghanistan.
Following his death, friends of Hastings explained that the journalist had been in a particularly agitated state following the revelations of NSA spying by Edward Snowden in early June. Hastings was meeting with a WikiLeaks lawyer just hours before the crash.
Another San Diego 6 News report from July included an interview with Staff Sergeant Joe Biggs, a close friend of Hastings, who explained that journalist’s body was returned to family members in an urn, which was not in line with their wishes. The fact that his body was returned in this fashion raises even more suspicion regarding his death.
Biggs also released an email sent out by Hastings prior to his death with the following subject line: “FBI Investigation, re: NSA.” He suggested that his associates at BuzzFeed request legal counsel before speaking to “the Feds,” before adding, “I’m onto a big story and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit.” Reportedly, Hastings, who frequently posted to social media web sites, made no such posts during the final week of his life.
