Access Denied!

Freelance writer Michael Hastings was told politely by The Pentagon to go and swivel on it, when he asked if he could be embedded as a reporter with front line troops fighting in Afghanistan.

DOD spokesman Col. David Lapan acknowledged that it's "fairly rare" for the military to turn away a reporter who wants to embed with front-line troops. "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. So in that instance the command in Afghanistan decided there wasn't the trust requisite and denied this request."

The lack of trust mentioned here probably stems from the fact that Hastings was the reporter who recently torpedoed the three-decade Army career of Stan McChrystal when his article for Rolling Stone magazine was published. The Pentagon is currently ramping up an internal investigation into the circumstances behind some of the most salacious material Hastings used in his article in Rolling Stone. The Army inspector general is interviewing current and former McChrystal aides.

Hastings has claimed he did nothing wrong in chronicling the banter, profanity and jocular insults among McChrystal's inner circle. In a Twitter tweet late Tuesday, Hastings whined that he refused to participate in the army's IG investigation. Later, he tweeted: "the embed had already been approved for september. now it has been disapproved."

All you have now is your book-deal, asshole.