Whenever you’re reporting, there’s always something you can’t say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions. – Michael Hastings
Usually when reporting on powerful public figures, the press advisor and I would have had a conversation that established what journalists call ‘ground rules,’ placing restrictions on what can and cannot be reported. – Michael Hastings
Despite the absurdity and the silliness and the triviality of the entire campaign experience, there is also something, as non-cynical as this sounds, kind of uplifting and strange about watching democracy unfold. – Michael Hastings
There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for ‘continuous situational awareness’ and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance. – Michael Hastings
The genius of David Petraeus has always been his masterful manipulation of the media. – Michael Hastings
The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire. – Michael Hastings
Despite failing to get bin Laden, the U.S. government and media portrayed the early Afghanistan war as a great victory. – Michael Hastings
In late 2009, I returned to Baghdad after a lengthy absence. I was living alone, in the Hamra Hotel, the twice bombed-out de facto international news bureau. – Michael Hastings
I’ve been in this business now for almost ten years. I’ve done a lot of stories. I have a pretty good track record. – Michael Hastings
The use of drones is rapidly transforming the way we go to war. On the battlefield, a squad leader can receive real-time data from a drone that enables him to view the landscape for miles in every direction, dramatically expanding the capabilities of what would normally have been a small and isolated unit. – Michael Hastings
I have to admit that the empty prestige and the stupid glory – yes, the horrible rush, the deadly sense of importance that war brings to life – are hard illusions to shake off. Look at me, a war correspondent. – Michael Hastings
My younger brother is a decorated combat veteran and was a platoon leader in Iraq. – Michael Hastings
For me, when I go in to write a profile, and no ground rules are laid down, and I’m there to write an on-the-record profile and cover readings while in the room, then that means it’s on the record. – Michael Hastings
I welcome all interviews with ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, and I’m sure people will talk to me in the future. – Michael Hastings
The fact is, psychiatric help is not widely available to CIA agents – and as in the military, there is a stigma attached to admitting post-traumatic stress. – Michael Hastings
Obama’s people will all often complain about how trivial and silly the media is, but there’s no president who’s probably benefited from this sort of trivialness or superficial nature as President Obama. – Michael Hastings
The first time I met President Obama was 2006 in Baghdad. He was the senator from Illinois; it was a month before he actually ended up declaring. He had to come to Baghdad to kind of check that box, and I was the correspondent for ‘Newsweek’ at the time. – Michael Hastings
To General McChrystal, those men on his team are his family. You know, these guys, they would do anything. They would die for each other. – Michael Hastings
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military conducted only a handful of drone missions. – Michael Hastings
Andrew Warren was a rarity in the CIA’s Clandestine Service – African-American, fluent in Arabic, and relatively young for an agent who’d already spent nearly a decade chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, so deep undercover that few of his friends or family knew the nature of his work. – Michael Hastings
Obama’s drone program, in fact, amounts to the largest unmanned aerial offensive ever conducted in military history: never have so few killed so many by remote control. – Michael Hastings
It’s never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to ‘control protestors’ – especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent. – Michael Hastings
As the CIA tried to find itself, the threat of international terrorism emanating from the Middle East, Africa, North Africa and Central and Southeast Asia grew with each strike: the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole. – Michael Hastings
