We get a lot of requests to cover this story or that story.  Some of these requests jump right off into conspiracy theory territory.  It isn’t that I don’t believe that conspiracies exist, it’s just that I don’t have the time of day for people who espouse conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence. For these types of people, the most obscure blog is all the proof they need to demonstrate that there is a conspiracy afoot.  When confronted, I find that they often cite the scientific method and rhetoric devices without knowing what they are.  Science is not a ‘choose your own adventure’ type of deal, so when that fails they usually revert back to some past historical event which is somehow supposed to prove that their contemporary conspiracy is now true.

What?  You didn’t know that Hitler burned his own Reichstag?  Don’t you get it?  Operation Northwoods proves that the late Chris Kyle’s company staged the Boston bombing as a “false flag” attack.  It also proves that Michael Hastings was assassinated, apparently.

Hastings, of course, was the Rolling Stone journalist who took down General McChrystal.  I was never that impressed with Hastings as a journalist, as it seemed to me that what he exposed about McChrystal was sophomoric at best.  The General and his staff said some disparaging things about American politicians. Big deal. 99% of Americans would agree with those statements. However, what Hastings’ work did expose was that American journalists are a bunch of pussies.

I’ve been told that as many as 70 other journalists had heard the same or similar statements from McChrystal and his staff but never reported them because they didn’t want to lose access.  Hastings did report those statements and he did lose access because of it.

I looked into Hastings death immediately after hearing about his car careening off the road and crashing.  The story had all the trappings of a good conspiracy but, as it turns out, that does not mean that it actually is a conspiracy.  Certain things were discovered but not reported on SOFREP because I don’t always think it is appropriate to report on personal details of people’s lives, especially if they have no relation to the larger story at hand.

Now these things are starting to go public.  The Smoking Gun published a story about how the coroner report found traces of drugs in his system, and others have written about Hastings’ history of mental illness.

None of this will deter the determined conspiracy theorist though.  Information floats freely through the Internet, often inaccurate, often unaccredited, which is taken at face value by certain people who are already inclined to believe such information.

Websites like A Conservative Edge give readers the impression that they are getting a story that the Mainstream Media won’t cover.  Well, sometimes they don’t cover a “story,” with good reason.  Take this gem from A Conservative Edge:

“An SDSU professor Morteza M. Mehrabadi, Professor and Interim Chair Areas of Specialization: Mechanics of Materials told San Diego 6 News that calculating the speed of Hastings car follows a simple mathematic equation. By using the video and the distance traveled (195 feet) as well as the seconds that lapsed prior to the explosion – in his opinion, the car was traveling roughly 35 mph.”

A good conspiracy always needs a dash of pseudo-science to make it seem believable.  I contacted Professor Mehrabadi myself to see if the above truly represents his professional opinion as a mechanical engineer about the Hastings crash.  The message was forwarded to a spokesperson for San Diego State University where Mehrabadi teaches.

The spokesperson for the school, Beth Downing Chee, wrote, “Unfortunately, Mehrahabi was completely misquoted in the original story – he has no knowledge of the Hasting’s case, never watched video about the case and never commented on Hasting’s accident.”

But the conspiracy will continue.  Someone must have “gotten” to Professor Mehrahabi, right?  Operation Northwoods proves it!  Don’t you know that Hitler burned his own Reichstag?  I mean, c’mon folks…