Top 30 Michael Hastings Quotes

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.

I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising.

General McChrystal wanted to be on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone.’

My younger brother is a decorated combat veteran and was a platoon leader in Iraq.

If someone tells you something is off the record, I don’t print it. If they don’t tell me something is off the record, then it’s fair game.

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.

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.

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military conducted only a handful of drone missions.

As for the like of Hillary Clinton, I – you know, I’ve covered Secretary of State Clinton before. I covered her during her campaign. And she’s a very likable and charismatic person once you get the chance to spend any time close to her.

General David Petraeus was so successful at getting on covers of magazines, having journalists fall in love with him, that in fact he was able to use that power to go around the normal chain of command.

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.

I think when war becomes your life, I think it’s very difficult to have the proper perspective to be able to create a fully balanced policy.

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.

It was either write or die for me.

I think it’s very difficult to make people care about natives in another country.

When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.

If Bill O’Reilly is calling you a far-left critic, in my book, no matter what your political persuasion is, that’s probably – that probably means you’re doing a good job.

I want to be the greatest investigative reporter of my generation.

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.

By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When my editors and I at ‘Rolling Stone’ came up with the idea to do a profile of General McChrystal, I simply just e-mailed General McChrystal’s press staff, said we wanted to do a profile, and said if you could give us any time to hang out with the general, that would be great.

I welcome all interviews with ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, and I’m sure people will talk to me in the future.

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.

I thought Gen. McChrystal was unfireable, that his position was secure.

Despite failing to get bin Laden, the U.S. government and media portrayed the early Afghanistan war as a great victory.

The night before I began my career as a presidential campaign reporter, in September 2007, I finished Theodore White’s ‘The Making of the President,’ the classic account of the 1960 race, which opened up a new era of campaign reporting.