The twisted saga of John Mcafee continues, much to our great entertainment. The newest installment of this bizarre tale? Mr. McAfee now believes that highers up at Vice orchestrated the release of his location via iPhone metadata so that they could film his inevitable capture and arrest.
According to a post on his blog:
Mr. McAfee is terminating his relationship with Vice Magazine. Due to information just received, It is no longer clear to Mr. McAfee that the “accidental” release of his co-ordinates due to Vice Magazine’s editorial department’s failure to remove location data from their now notorious photo, was indeed an accident. This incident led directly to Mr. McAfee’s arrest. The reason, possibly, was that Vice wanted exclusive access to Mr. McAfee’s arrest, which they in fact obtained and broadcast. This, and subsequent developments, including a breach of verbal contract, has led Mr. McAfee to terminate all contact with Vice.
We suppose it could be true, but Mr. McAfee isn’t exactly a trusted source at this point. He also claims in the post that the “two reporters” embedded with him didn’t know of the plan to out him; this seems unlikely, given that Vice‘s own editor in chief Rocco Castoro was with him the whole time. That kind of nefarious scheme seems a little too complex to keep from the person in charge of the magazine’s editorial mission. Of course, Mr. McAfee could’ve used the term “reporters” specifically to hint that the editor Mr. Castoro did know (at this point we’re starting to feel like we’re on bath salts ourselves).
Mr. McAfee has an extensive history of burning reporters, using them as pawns in a tightly-controlled game of mass media manipulation. He originally showered his attentions on reporter Jeff Wise, but that relationship also soured. In the comments of his most recent post, “Harold M.”–who is supposedly a close friend of Mr. McAfee’s but could be the man himself–jokes Mr. Wise is “acting like a jilted lover :).” Ouch.