By Andrew W.
Griffin
Red
Dirt Report, editor
Posted: June 19, 2013
OKLAHOMA CITY – Talk to any journalist, particularly
after they’ve had a few drinks at the bar, and ask them if they are ever
nervous or concerned when going up against great power. At first they will
probably say “nah, I’m a reporter. I’m just doing my job and they know that.”
But if you really press them on the topic – particularly after that third or
fourth drink – and they will begin to admit that, yeah, taking on the powerful
is a bit stressful and, perhaps, dangerous.
But most of news people know that, inevitably and
given the appropriate beat, that we will end up writing stories that call for
us to expose the powerful. That’s particularly true, of course, for
investigative reporters.
And then think of the investigative reporters that
you know who did cross the rich and powerful and ended up dead. Disappeared. Suicided.
Murdered. Medical examiners get paid off or told to keep quiet. It happens all
the time.
And of course the story is that they were depressed
because their work wasn’t being taken seriously or they had some medical issue
that was preventing them from doing their best work. Cover stories like that
are thrown out there repeatedly.
Best known for dying under suspicious circumstances is
former San Jose Mercury News reporter
Gary Webb, he of the explosive “Dark Alliance” series (and book) and a guy of
such superhuman strength that he was able to shoot himself TWICE in the head in
December 2004. Now that’s something.
Webb showed how CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras
smuggled cocaine into the U.S., funneling it into the inner city of Los Angeles
as crack cocaine. Webb said the Reagan administration allowed this to happen so
as to fund the Contras in their battle against the leftist Sandinistas.
Webb, we now know, will be the subject of an upcoming
Focus Features film titled Killing the
Messenger starring Jeremy Renner as Webb. We just hope they get it right.
And back in ’91 – again in a motel room – this time
in Martinsburg, West Virginia, investigative reporter Danny Casolaro
was found dead – of self-inflicted wounds, of course. Suicided. Casolaro was looking into a vast,
criminal conspiracy he called “The Octopus.” Seems as though Casolaro may have
gone too far.
We hear there will be a film made next year based on
the play Danny Casolaro Died For You.
Again, we hope they get it right.
Remember J.H. Hatfield dying alone in that motel
room in Springdale, Arkansas in 2001? Hatfield, as troubled as he was, exposed
George W. Bush’s drug-addled past in Fortunate
Son. As Hatfield says in the Horns
and Halos documentary, “If anything happens to me, get it out to the press.”
And what of Hunter S. Thompson? The iconic Rolling Stone gonzo journalist who hated
Nixon? He reportedly committed suicide back in 2005. But two years earlier, on
the verge of the Iraq War, Thompson – a virulent critic of George W. Bush - made
cryptic statements about his head getting cut off for refusing to shut up about
various topics, particularly those related to his criticism of Bush.
Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart also was murdered, we are
convinced. As we wrote in March 2012, as soon as we learned of his passing, Breitbart
was on the verge of releasing “explosive tapes featuring Obama.”
And while Breitbart’s current team at Breitbart.com doesn’t
talk about it, at a recent blog convention in Dallas RDR attended, there was
mention of Breitbart’s murder several times during the weekend. People know.
And now we have Michael Hastings, dead at 33. A “fiery
car crash” we are told. The car “jackknifed.” Not sure how that happens. (Oh
and it just so happens that Hastings’ car crash occurred the same day a story
is released saying that “cyber-terrorists and hackers” can break into your
vehicles’ electronics and take over, even while you are driving).
Yeah, it was Hastings’ terrific article on the real
Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone in 2010 called “The Runaway General” that got a lot of people’s attention. The Operators
went even further, giving
readers an intimate look into how the military’s upper echelon really
think. Ultimately,
a disgraced McChrystal opted for “early retirement” due to Hastings’
work reporting on McChrystal's activities in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Now, while we are awaiting the official “accident report,”
I should note that in my March 2012 review of The Operators last year, I noted a particularly sinister exchange
between Hastings and staffers of Gen. McChrystal.
From The
Operators, Hastings writes that as they drank and sang, several McChrystal
staff members make subtle threats, saying:
“You’re not going to f*ck us, are you?”
asks one staff member.
Hastings
responds: “I’m going to write a story;
some of the stuff you’ll like, some of the stuff you probably won’t like.”
Another
staffer then says: “We’ll hunt you down
and kill you if we don’t like what you write.”More at reddirtreport.com
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