IT'S THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT GOT SMALL

Michael Hastings was reportedly working on a story about CIA director John Brennan at the time of his death in a car crash. Now, if you're conspiracy-minded, that would be enough to make you wonder what world-shaking secrets Hastings might have been pursuing. If you think powerful, sinister forces arranged Hastings's fatal accident, you'd assume it was because he was seeking information that could literally change history once it was revealed.

On the other hand, if you're Jerome Corsi of World Net Daily, you'd conclude that Hastings died because he was going to ... confirm some of the main tenets of birtherism.

Yes, that's what Corsi suggests that the death was all about: the contents of Barack Obama's passport file:

Before his death in a fiery car crash, Michael Hastings was preparing to publish a major investigative piece tied to the undercover agent who is suspected of sanitizing President Obama’s passport records prior to the 2008 presidential election....

On Aug. 12, Kimberly Dvorak reported for San Diego 6 News that Hastings at the time of his death was working on an exposé on CIA director John Brennan....

WND has previously reported that Brennan played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama's passport records prior to the 2008 presidential election.

Now, hang on -- this gets convoluted:

On March 21, 2008, during the 2008 presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third unnamed State Department contract employee was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-senator Barack Obama....

The New York Times reported March 21, 2008, that the security breach had involved unauthorized searches of the passport records not just of Obama, but also of then-presidential contenders Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

... the New York Times attributed the breaches to "garden-variety snooping by idle employees" that was "not politically motivated." ...

However -- and I hope you're sitting down for this:

The New York Times noted that the files examined were likely to contain sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, addresses and dates of birth as well as passport applications and other biographical information that would pertain to U.S. citizenship.

OMIGOD! Social Security numbers! Birth addresses! Other biographical information that would pertain to U.S. citizenship!

And now for "The Brennan connection":

The New York Times noted the two offending State Department contract employees who were fired had worked for Stanley Inc., a company based in Arlington, Va., while the reprimanded worker continued to be employed by the Analysis Corporation of McLean, Va....

At that time, Stanley Inc. was a 3,500-person technology firm that had just won a $570 million contract to provide computer-related passport services to the State Department, headed by Brennan, who then serving as an adviser on intelligence and foreign policy to Obama's presidential campaign.

So the people involved worked for Brennan! Excuse, um, not all of them!

And the real story here, Jerome?

One investigative reporter, Kenneth Timmerman, said a well-placed but unnamed source told him that the real point of the passport breaches was to cauterize the Obama file, removing from it any information that could prove damaging to his presidential eligibility.

According to this theory, the breaches of McCain's and Clinton's files were done for misdirection purposes, to create confusion and to suggest the motives of the perpetrators were attributable entirely to innocent curiosity.

And, we're led to assume, Michael Hastings was on the brink of discovering all this about Obama's birth and travels and, presumably, multiple fraudulent Social Security numbers -- and for that HASTINGS HAD TO DIE.

Good grief.

Look, I'm not a Hastings conspiratorialist -- but if you're one, think big, fer crissakes. Don't tell me John Brennan would have Hastings killed for ... this.

Corsi does wrap this up with a ridiculous coda titled "Brennan tilts toward Islam." (Sample of evidence: "In his speech to the New York University law school students posted on YouTube by the White House, Brennan included a lengthy statement in Arabic that he did not translate for his English-speaking audience.") So I guess the plot to "cauterize" Obama's passport file was all part of a massive conspiracy to make the U.S. part of the global caliphate, spearheaded by that noted crypto-Islamist John Brennan.

I really wish I believed in a God and an afterlife, because I'd love to believe that Jerome Corsi would someday stand in judgment before the Pearly Gates, and, when asked to give an account of what he did with his life, he could only say, "I spent all my waking hours making people stupider."