The last time reporter Michael Hastingspublished a major piece on Afghanistan, the commander on the ground resigned.
Maybe that's why the military's skittish about letting Hastings return.
The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon has denied permission for Hastings to embed with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Hastings offered a clarification on the AP's reporting via Twitter, writing that "the embed had already been approved for September," but "now it has been disapproved."
So, according to Hastings, it's not as if he just asked for permission to embed yesterday and was denied.
Defense Department spokesman Col. David Lapan defended the decision yesterday, telling reporters that "there is no right to embed."
"It is a choice made between units and individual reporters, and a key element of an embed is having trust that the individuals are going to abide by the ground rules," Lapan said. "So in that instance the command in Afghanistan decided there wasn't the trust requisite and denied this request."
Hastings, who wrote the Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as a freelance reporter, has long defended his methods. And McChrystal never pushed back on the story, which included some derogatory statements made by him and other aides.
But some military officials anonymously told news organizations that Hastings reported details from conversations that were supposed to be off-the-record.
An ongoing probe may shed more light on what happened during the reporting of the story. McClatchy reported yesterday that the Army is investigating whether McChrystal's aides "were insubordinate" when they made caustic remarks about the civilian leadership to Hastings.
The Army is reportedly speaking to some Rolling Stone staffers, too. But Hastings, now a contributing editor at the magazine, said he declined to be interviewed for, or otherwise participate in, the Army's investigation.
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