5 ms·
This is a little over the top. His car jackknifed into a tree. In order for your theory to make sense, his assassins would have had to ensure his car 1) hit a
by sillysaurus 13y ago
This is a little over the top. His car jackknifed into a tree. In order for your theory to make sense, his assassins would have had to ensure his car 1) hit a solid object, 2) caught fire.
- triplesec 13y agononetheless, these things are not unknown to have happened nefariously
- tptacek 13y agoIf that's true, you should be able to provide an example.
- protomyth 13y agoI don't believe this was nefarious and I do respect you tptacek, but cutting the break line is not an unknown way to attempt to off someone. It was even in the wheelhouse of these gomers http://5newsonline.com/2013/03/06/moms-brake-line-cut-over-custody-fight-police-say/ http://5newsonline.com/2013/03/06/moms-brake-line-cut-over-c...
- tptacek 13y agoAny cases where anyone murdered a reporter by sabotaging their car, or where the US government murdered a reporter by any means at all would be fine.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoWell, define "US government". Does every single US politician have to be in the same room and give the order, or what? http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/07/iraq-j01.html http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/07/iraq-j01.html The killing of journalists seeking to document or expose allegations of state-organised murder has accompanied every dirty war against a civilian population. Since the US occupation of Iraq began, dozens of reporters, cameramen and other media workers have been killed by American-led forces in suspicious circumstances that were never independently investigated.
- contingencies 13y agohttp://collateralmurder.com/ http://collateralmurder.com/
- protomyth 13y agoDavid Holden was believed to have been killed by the CIA (either on order via Egyptians or directly). Multiple car bombs have killed journalists in Iraq, but I seem to remember a case in the US (will look later) of the brake line cut variety.
- GalacticDomin8r 13y agoGoogle much? http://www.ire.org/about/history/ http://www.ire.org/about/history/
- kragen 13y agoWhile, as others pointed out, the well-known Collateral Murder video is in part about the US Government murdering a team of journalists, I don't see anything on that page or on the timeline it links to saying the US Government was involved in murdering Don Bolles.
- sillysaurus 13y agoYou know it's a bad week on HN when tptacek (or anyone) is downvoted for asking for an example of a far-fetched claim.
- tptacek 13y agoIt was a really dumb question for me to have asked; it's like I dared them.
- protomyth 13y agoAn open-ended question like that about people's foolish ways to try to off their fellows in a single profession[1] is going to generate a lot of examples. Car bombs seem to be an easy way with some folks[2]. Heck, fark.com has many on a weekly basis. Reading the Church Committee stuff gives a pretty good idea of how wild west our government got (and likely still is given the drones). For the record, I still think this incident was a simple accident. 1) en.rsf.org keeps track of attacks on the press 2) Nasrullah Afridi died on May 10 when a bomb exploded under his car after he entered it.
- coldtea 13y agoYes, it was really a dumb question. And the condescending tone, of the American that believes everything he is told even more so. Hindsight's a bitch too: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/24/journalist-michael-hastings-last-email-fbis-invest/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/24/journalist-m...
- rdl 13y agoThe US has killed a lot of journalists internationally. Generally more in the form of "collateral damage" (often acknowledged), but I'm pretty willing to believe either US personnel or those acting as its agents did murder people in various Central/South American and African conflicts in the 40s-80s (and mainly pre-Church).
- samstave 13y agohttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16501566 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16501566 I find it really amazing that you are not well versed in some of the tactics employed in international espionage and "source neutralization".... As someone who is purportedly a security expert, I believe it would behoove you to square up on physical/psychological/political warfare -- as cyberwar is simply an additional channel for the stated three. TpTacek, you're brilliant,but sometimes you're also an... I am beginning to think your paycheck is subsidized by those who would want you to use your credibility in their favor but at detriment to your own...
- lazyjones 13y agoWith modern cars, you don't need to cut brake lines. You just connect something to the OBD-2 port and control it as you like: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_Remote_access_and_other_security_issues http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_R...
- triplesec 13y agoI don' necessarily believe this is nefarious. I just believe we should remember that it's possible. Proof is hard when it's the CIA. They're professionals at covering things up. I'm far from an Alex Jones on such things, but I like to be highly sceptical of everything, and keep an open mind. Here is a historical maybe: I don't have time to trawl through for good ones, as there are a lot of more, er.. unusual sites out there who'll believe anything. However, there are some aspersions cast over the deaths of some former white house aides too. http://spartacus-educational.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/did-cia-murder-journalist-working-on.html http://spartacus-educational.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/did-cia-...
- coldtea 13y agoJournalists have been killed by governments (and police) all over the world, including in Western countries. And lots have been murdered by unknown persons while investigating political corruption and similar matters. Those kind of things can vary from a targeted operation to a general "go get those troublemakers by any means necessary" attitude instilled to the police. Stuff like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rub%C3%A9n_Salazar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rub%C3%A9n_Salazar Or several of the cases in here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_t... Of course they don't go advertising those kind of things. What sometimes gets known is only due to gross cases of incompetence or pure chance. To a guy that's into the official versions of things it can sound ludicrous. But then again, worse things happened. He would have said the exact same thing for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment
- GalacticDomin8r 13y ago> If that's true, you should be able to provide an example. Are you saying you're not aware of any retribution killings for journalism? I'm all for skepticism, but I've always understood that to mean it's your own problem to dig into this stuff. Asking for citation on a common knowledge item does no one any favors most especially yourself. http://cpj.org/reports/2005/05/murderous-05.php http://cpj.org/reports/2005/05/murderous-05.php
- adventured 13y agoI'm not listing this as an actual example, it's just for fun in the name of conspiracy theories in regards to powerful political figures murdering people: The Clinton body count (and I'll admit, it's a freaky list, but probably only because so many people have crossed paths with the Clintons) http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp
- logn 13y agoWhether nefarious or not, I do think the editor at Rolling Stone intended this quote, possibly quite literally: says Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana, "the sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there's no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I'm sad that I'll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, I hope if he were working on new stories, that he at least left some notes behind. Also, the global surveillance grid is a double-edged sword. I'd love to see some GPS data and final tracking of this journalist before he died. Anyhow, I don't choose to live my life thinking all these events and accidents are anything other than they seem. But I do hope we still have great journalists in our world who will expose reality to us when events are not as we thought. I'd love to read an alternate take on this journalist's accident, but until that story is published, I'm not turning into a conspiracy theorist. Amazingly, in recent weeks, I have felt very much like one, but it's just because I read the news and many nutcase theories have been proven to be very much true and widely acknowledged by the public (versus 5 years ago when talking about the government reading your email made you a tinfoil hat lunatic amongst non-programmers).
- rl3 13y agoWell, assuming the theoretical assassins had physical access to his car and world-class embedded systems expertise at their disposal, it would just be a matter of locking his doors, disabling steering, disabling braking, and flooring the car's engine output. Unless the car is in the middle of nowhere, it's bound to hit something sufficiently lethal in a very short amount of time. That said, although peculiar given his line of work, I think it is premature for conspiracy theories at this point considering the near complete lack of information on the accident itself currently.
- contingencies 13y agoWithout taking sides, are there not ways to make acceleration just kick in and continue, and brakes to disable? Further conjecture: I am not familiar with the architecture of modern vehicles, but I know (hackable) software has been increasingly at the center of these. Failing that, there's always (easier to detect) hardware tampering. Fortunately, if things burn you destroy the evidence, and with the frequency of automobile accidents there is little motivation for an average investigation to turn micro-forensic... particularly with a young person in a risky age group in a foreign country. Of course, maybe he just did a fat fifty lines of coke, or a hit of meth? Or, just maybe, he was challenged to a one-man street race after a dose of Scopolamine: http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/worlds-scariest-drug-video_c8a858703.html http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/worlds-scariest-drug-video... Non-conjecture: There's loads of ways to off people, and the military industrial complex makes it a business. This guy forced a general from that complex to end his career, later visited his country and wound up dead early in the morning.
- freerobby 13y agoIf a car did that, you could just put it in neutral.
- flyinRyan 13y agoMost people aren't going to think of that in time. I've had my accelerator stick under the carpet before. There was a good few seconds of panic there that would have been deadly had I not been on a straight highway.
- chrischen 13y agoIf you're unwilling to break, eventually you'll hit something solid.
- SiVal 13y agoIn high school, a friend of mine decided to kill himself. He wanted a painless, certain, instant death, so he drove down the freeway at 80mph, aimed his car at a giant (utterly immovable) concrete overpass piling and prepared to die. As soon as his car left the regular roadbed, it went out of control, sideswiped the bridge piling, flipped several times and came to rest upside down. Despite having gone through such violent acrobatics with no seatbelt or airbag, when his car came to a rest, he crawled out the window, dusted himself off, and cursed. A few scratches and small bruises. He didn't try it again because, he later explained, he had discovered that an out-of-control car was just a random number generator, and he was terrified of a "partial" success that would leave him still alive but permanently incapacitated and forever dependent on others without the capacity to really live or really die. I suspect that the powerful conspirators some people seem to suspect are well aware of my friend's lesson and are equally unwilling to tolerate a partial success. I don't believe they would risk so much on an out-of-control car and a simple tree.
- rl3 13y ago>I suspect that the powerful conspirators some people seem to suspect are well aware of my friend's lesson and are equally unwilling to tolerate a partial success. It depends on what constitutes success. Take this hypothetical: the target has a habit of driving lightly to moderately intoxicated. Assuming he or she survives, do you think anyone is going to believe this person's story about what actually happened when the toxicology report comes back saying they were intoxicated? No. The said conspirators would still reap partial success in the form of a clear message and chilling effect, not to mention inflicting potentially debilitating injuries or the resulting damage to the target's reputation. Hypotheticals aside, you're probably right. If an unlikely cabal of evil conspirators are going to go to such lengths, they likely would prefer a more predictable outcome.
- inafield 13y agoWhile I don't have a link to the studies at hand, I've seen it shown that being any amount of intoxicated generally makes people relaxed enough that they are able to handle better some of the forces of some types of automobile collisions.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 13y agoOr you know, that he was dead inside the car to begin with.