Connections Between Michael Hastings, Edward Snowden and Barrett Brown—The War With the Security State
At the time of his death in a mysterious one-car crash and explosion,
journalist Michael Hastings was researching a story that threatened to
expose powerful entities and government-connected figures. That story
intersected with the work of two controversial government critics—the
hacker Barrett Brown and the on-the-run surveillance whistleblower
Edward Snowden.
Any probe into Hastings’s untimely death needs to take into account this complex but essential background.
But First, the Raw Facts
A little over 12 hours before his car was incinerated on an LA
straightaway on June 18, 2013, Hastings sent out a short email headed,
“FBI Investigation, re: NSA.” In it, he said that the FBI had been
interviewing his “close friends and associates,” and advised the
recipients — including colleagues at the website
Buzzfeed — “[It]
may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any
conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or
related journalism issues.” He added, “I’m onto a big story, and need to
go off the radat [sic] for a bit.”
From: Michael Hastings
Date: Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Subject: FBI Investigation, re: NSA
To: [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]
Hey [5 REDACTED WORDS] the Feds are interviewing my “close friends
and associates.” Perhaps if the authorities arrive “Buzzfeed GQ”, er HQ,
may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any
conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or
related journalism issues.
Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the radat for a bit.
All the best, and hope to see you all soon.
Michael
The next day, Hastings went “off the radar” permanently.
Here is a video that shows a lateral view of Hastings’s
speeding [1] car just before it crashed. (It shows at about 0.07.)
Following
publication [2] of the email by KTLA, the FBI
quickly denied [3] that the Bureau was ever investigating Hastings.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation and ProjectPM — the research wiki
that Brown was involved with — are in the process of filing Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) requests to learn if indeed Hastings was the
subject of an FBI probe.
The FBI denial notwithstanding, a number of clues indicate that the
proximity of Hastings to Brown and the work of ProjectPM may have been
what spawned the purported investigation in the first place.
Deep Background
When the FBI raided the Dallas home of journalist Barrett Brown in March 2012, the travails of the
Vanity Fair and
Guardian contributor didn’t get much ink — that is, until Michael Hastings published
an exclusive [4] on the Brown raid on
Buzzfeed.
The story included a copy of the search warrant that revealed why the
government was so interested in Brown: Along with colleagues at the
research wiki he started, ProjectPM (PPM), Brown was looking into a
legion of shadowy cybersecurity firms whose work for the government
raised all sorts of questions about privacy and the rule of law.
Since Hastings was familiar with the government contractors listed in
the search warrant, he was also potentially culpable in whatever
“crimes” the feds believed Brown and PPM were guilty of. Is this why he
was being investigated in the days before his fatal crash on June 18,
2013? By then, Hastings had established a reputation as a fearless
muckraker, whose stories often stripped the haloes from the powerful and
well-connected:
- The besmirched “runaway” Special Forces general Stanley McChrystal, whose career Hastings had dispatched in a
2010 article [5] for
Rolling Stone
- The saintly
General “King” David Petraeus [6]—former
commander of Central Command (CENTCOM), International Security
Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and head of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)
-
Daniel Saunders [7]—a former assistant US attorney for the Central District of California
- Former Secretary of State and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, with whose staff Michael had many
pointed exchanges [8] regarding State’s Benghazi spin.
In
his profile [9] on the blogging consortium
True/Slant,
Hastings confided that his “secret ambition” was “to maintain and
cultivate an enemies list.” Such ironic distancing was Hastings’s way of
making palatable an inherently cynical view of the world. He knew that
power corrupted, and to effect change it was necessary to point out the
Emperor’s glaringly naked flesh.
In this manner, he was much like his blogging colleague at
True/Slant,
Barrett Brown. So much so, in fact, that the latter approached Hastings
to work on a project that would change the way the public viewed the
murky world of intelligence contracting in the post-9/11 era.
[10]
Michael Hastings interviews General Odierno in Baghdad, Iraq, October 2009
For those unfamiliar with Brown’s tale,
WhoWhatWhy has been
chronicling [11] his
trials [12] since February 2013. He is currently in federal custody in Ft. Worth, Texas, facing
over a hundred years behind bars
for researching 70,000 hacked emails obtained from the cybersecurity
firm HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary. At no point is the
government alleging he was involved in the hack itself. His putative
“crime” is doing what investigative reporters are supposed to do:
digging for the truth about breaches of the public trust.
To do this, Brown pioneered a collaborative wiki where researchers
and journalists could sift through these emails and create an
encyclopedia from the information contained within. This was known as
ProjectPM (PPM).
In 2009, Brown invited Hastings to join forces on PPM, but Hastings’s
interest was tempered by other commitments. When the two spoke next,
Hastings told Brown he was working on something big.
“Not One of Us”
Hastings was referring to his impending 2010 article, “The Runaway General,” for
Rolling Stone,
in which he quoted several high-ranking military officials from within
Gen. McChrystal’s inner circle disparaging their civilian command. The
article caused a stir in official Washington, and eventually led to
McChrystal being relieved of duty by President Obama.
Amid the fallout from this journalistic coup, an interesting
narrative began forming in certain sectors of the press: “Michael
Hastings is not one of us.” Hastings had broken one of the rules
governing Washington’s hermetic circle of “access journalism” by quoting
his subjects without their express permission. Elsewhere, most working
reporters would call this, well, journalism.
Brown was quick to defend Hastings, penning
an article [13] for
Vanity Fair
titled, “Why The Hacks Hate Michael Hastings.” Later, the two blurbed
each other’s books, further cementing their professional relationship.
One thing they shared was a deep discontent with the mainstream
media. Indeed, Brown says, they were “obsessed with coming up with ways
to change the dynamic.”
The busy Hastings never fully immersed himself in the work of PPM.
“[Hastings] was an outlet for us to pass things to,” says Alan Ross,
better known on PPM’s Internet relay chat (IRC) as Morpeth. “His
relationship was one of talking to Barrett in my experience, rather than
direct involvement in PPM.” He was “more of an associate than a
member.”
“Get ready for your mind to be blown.”
For Hastings, Brown was clearly a confidential source—the type that
flourishes best when kept in the dark and away from other reporters. Yet
on January 24, 2013, Hastings
tweeted [14] that he was finally beginning to work on the Brown story, telling his interlocutors to “get ready for your mind to be blown.”
Kevin Gallagher, the administrator of Brown’s legal defense fund at
FreeBarrettBrown.org [15],
said Brown and Hastings hadn’t been able to talk securely in eight or
nine months, but that after a few months of back and forth with Brown’s
lawyers Hastings finally planned on interviewing him in custody in June.
After whistleblower Snowden’s bombshell revelations of dragnet surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA), Hastings
wrote an article [16]
on June 7 that referenced Brown for the first time since April 2012.
Titled “Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans,” it lambasted supposedly
liberal Democrats for their Bush-like surveillance fixation and their
unrelenting war on those who seek to expose the operations of the
surveillance state:
“Transparency supporters, whistleblowers,
and investigative reporters, especially those writers who have
aggressively pursued the connections between the corporate defense
industry and federal and local authorities involved in domestic
surveillance, have been viciously attacked by the Obama administration
and its allies in the FBI and DOJ.
[snip]
Barrett Brown, another investigative
journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, among others [sic]
publications, exposed the connections between the private contracting
firm HB Gary (a government contracting firm that, incidentally, proposed
a plan to spy on and ruin the reputation of the Guardian’s [Glenn]
Greenwald) and who is currently sitting in a Texas prison on trumped up
FBI charges regarding his legitimate reportorial inquiry into the
political collective known sometimes as Anonymous.”
The article ended with “Perhaps more information will soon be forthcoming.”
The fact that he planned to interview Brown was corroborated by documentarian Vivien Weisman, who told
WhoWhatWhy that she spoke to Hastings about it at a Los Angeles book signing for “Dirty Wars” in May 2013. And the editor of
Buzzfeed reportedly [17] confirmed that Hastings was in the midst of working on the Brown expose at the time of his death.
Knowing this prompts the question: what angle of the PPM research was Hastings about to tackle?
The evidence seems to point to another shadowy project revealed in
the cache of hacked emails that PPM was sifting through: Romas/COIN.
Your Data Is Mine
Gallagher, who was briefed on the last discussion Hastings had with
Brown before the planned interview, says, “Hastings had specifically
asked about Romas/COIN.”
Romas/COIN was the name given to a program through which the U.S had
been conducting “a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of
mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world,” according to
emails [18]hacked
from the cybersecurity firm HBGary Federal. Evidently, this program
allows the intelligence community to “monitor the habits, conversations,
and activity of millions of individuals at once.”
[19]
ProjectPM logo
Over the course of a year, Aaron Barr, CEO of HBGary Federal, sought
out various companies to form a consortium that could wrest control of
Romas/COIN from the current contract holder, Northrop Grumman.
Eventually the consortium included no less than 12 different firms —
ranging from niche software companies to behemoths like Google, Apple,
and even Disney.
From the emails, it’s clear that “mobile phone software and
applications constitute a major component of the program,” concludes the
entry in ProjectPM. Periodic references to “semantic analysis,” “Latent
Semantic Indexing,” and “specialized linguistics” indicate that the
government agency overseeing the contract was clearly interested in
automated dissection of spoken or written communication. This is the hallmark of NSA surveillance.
Is it possible that this consortium planned on developing mobile
phone software and applications with bugs that would allow the US
government to hack into targets’ phones and give it access to all of the
communications within?
As
detailed [20] by
New York Times national
security reporter Mark Mazzetti, mobile phone intrusion has been par
for the course in the military’s signals intelligence work abroad.
Checkmate
Claims of government surveillance capabilities embedded in private-company software are bolstered by
recent reporting [21] on the sale of “zero-day exploits” to government agencies.
“Zero-day exploits” refer to security vulnerabilities that are taken
advantage of on the same day that the vulnerability becomes known to the
victim. As the jargon implies, there are zero days between the time the
hole is discovered and the initial attack.
Endgame Systems, one such company cashing in on this new market, was
of particular interest [22] to Brown and ProjectPM. Deep in the cache of Aaron Barr’s emails are indications of just how secret the work of Endgame is.
In an email to employee John Farrell, then-Endgame CEO Chris Rouland
states: “Please let HBgary know we don’t ever want to see our name in a
press release.”
Farrell forwarded that note to Barr with the following explanation:
“Chris wanted me to pass this along.
We’ve been very careful NOT to have public face on our company. Please
ensure Palantir and your other partners understand we’re purposefully
trying to maintain a very low profile. Chris [Rouland] is very cautious
based on feedback we’ve received from our government clients. If you
want to reconsider working with us based on this, we fully understand.”
One look at Endgame’s product line explains a lot about their
wariness. Their premier software, “Bonesaw,” shows what a powerful asset
the corporation has become to America’s intelligence agencies.
Bonesaw is a targeting application that tracks servers and routers
around the world. It maps out all the hardware attached to the Internet.
Through these access points, NSA and Cyber Command can hack into or
launch attacks against adversaries. The Bonesaw program
functions [23] essentially as a user-friendly map.
That map has at its disposal the geolocation and Internet address of
every device connected to the Internet around the globe. By designating a
country and city — like Beijing, China for example — and the name or
address of a target — say, a People’s Liberation Army research facility —
a user can find out what software is running on all of the computers
inside the facility, what entry points to those computers exist, and a
menu of custom exploits that can be used to sneak in.
Sock Puppets and Other Tricks
Other clues as to what ProjectPM-related material may have led the
FBI to investigate Michael Hastings can be found in his published work.
[24]
Endgame
Systems CEO Nathaniel Fick. Formerly of the Center for a New American
Security, Fick took over for Endgame in November 2012.
In a May 18, 2012,
article [25]
on propaganda efforts by the State Department, Hastings referred to a
“program being developed by the Pentagon [that] would design software to
create “sock puppets” on social media outlets.” The HBGary emails are
littered with references to this type of “persona management”
technology.
Principal among these was a June 2010 United States Air Force (USAF)
contract [26] from the 6
th
Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. It sought
providers of “persona management software” that would allow 50 users to
control up to 500 fictional personae.
These sock puppets were required to be “replete with background,
history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically,
culturally, and geographically consistent.” In other words, avatars so
convincing they could fool the people with whom they were interacting
into believing they were real.
MacDill Air Force Base is home to the United States Special
Operations Command (USSOCOM), the section of the military that oversees
and coordinates all special-forces activity globally. USSOCOM
lists [27]
under its “core activities” the employment of psychological operations
(PSYOPS) and information operations (IO)—exactly the type of activity
this “sockpuppeting” technology would be employed in.
To put it another way: a clone army for future psywars.
Gone With The Mercedes
Given the information currently available it is impossible to know
with certainty what angle in the Brown case Michael Hastings was
pursuing at the time of his death.
But Hastings’s credibility and national security contacts would have
served him well in digging deeper into ProjectPM’s cache of hacked
emails, perhaps exposing to the light of public scrutiny other secretive
government contractors in the manner that Brown had begun. (See the
“Team Themis” affair [28].)
With that potential suddenly snuffed out, it’s not surprising the
Internet is abuzz with speculation over Hastings’s death. We’ve
contributed to the investigation [29]
surrounding it but, with so few hard facts at hand, now is not the time
to speculate about whether foul play was involved. What’s clear is that
an important voice in the grand tradition of investigative journalism
has been silenced.
Hopefully, more information will come to light, and we will know with
a fair degree of certainty what Michael Hastings was working on
that attracted the government’s watchful eye. That is, unless all of his
information was incinerated with him in the early hours of that June
morning.
WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this
kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can
we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.
Please
click here [30] to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.
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http://cmsimg.defensenews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=M5&Date=20130115&Category=C4ISR01&ArtNo=301150007&Ref=AR&MaxW=300&Border=0&Nathaniel-Fick-Former-CNAS-Chief-Heads-Cyber-Targeting-Firm
[31] RadioWHY: Lew Rockwell with Russ Baker on the Boston Bombing and the Security State: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/06/13/radiowhy-lew-rockwell-with-russ-baker-on-the-boston-bombing-and-the-security-state/
Posts
My
guess is small nuke, and any stories about it not being a nuke because
the EMP would have destroyed the camera are B.S., I have done all the
calculations for nuclear EMP against electronic devices, and when it
comes to things the size of the camera, FORGET IT, EMP will not do
anything at all. The camera has too small of a cross section to couple
even partially with frequencies below 500 mhz.
