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Spionage, The Team House with Your Hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park.
Hey, folks, welcome to episode two hundred and seventy one of the Team
House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Tonight on the show,
we have Ben McKelvey. He is the author of Find Fixed Finish. He's
also the author of Missoul and the Commando. We're going to be mostly talking
about this book tonight, which is about the Australian Special Air Service Regiment,
some heroic actions that they took, and also some allegations of war crimes that
we're going to go deep into. Right before we get into that, I
just want to give a shout out to our Patreon and i'd ask you know,
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Ben, Thanks for coming on the show. Man. I guess how I
am doing? Real good early morning there in Australia. Yeah, it's a
beautiful autumnal day Bunda Beach. It's sunny and gorgeous. So Ben, before
we get into the book, I want to ask you a little bit about
your background, how you came into journalism, how you came in specifically into
you know, Australian military national security journalism. Yeah. I actually just wrote
a book about how I got into journalism and how I got into that national
security stuff. I had a phasic stroke when I was when I was twenty
seven, so I was working in a magazine and I was boxing at the
time, and then all of a sudden, I couldn't speak. I couldn't
you know, comprehend language, couldn't read, couldn't write, went to hospital,
had a sort of you know recovery of a number of months, you
know, going back into you know, comic books and young adult novels and
you know, like really sort of language skills. And then I had done
all that, and I was sort of conceiving a life outside of the journalism
life that I already had. I was working at a men's magazine. I
was having a lot of fun with my friends. I had actually done a
little bit of work with the Commandos. I'd gone and done their barrier test
for a story, and then I'd also done a sort of exercise with them
and the Incident Response Regiment which was later so the Special Operations Engineering Regiment,
and I'd gone to East or in an MBED and I've done a few little
bits and pieces, but that's what I really wanted to do. And eventually
I petitioned to the Australian Defense Force to go to Iraq with them as an
embed. And then while I was waite on that on that that request,
which I thought was a hail Mary given where I was working, what I
was doing, I had a heart attack and it was a stemy heart attack.
So that was kind of like a pretty serious incident. And I had
to have some open heart surgeries afterwards. And and then I recovered from the
last surgery and I was, you know, I'm I'm ninety six kilos or
something. I was, I was in the sixties. After the surgery,
you know, I was, I was thin and ill and couldn't even walk
up my street. And then I got an emar from the Defense Force saying
okay, come to a rock, you know, in a few weeks time,
and I went to my cardiology. I went to my surgeon and said,
you know, I thought he was going to tell me you can't do
this, and he's like, live your life, you know, which is
a very sort of surgeon attitude. They're like that pic shit, like my
work is good. You got to a rack, and then that sort of
started it for me. I went to a rock, and then independently I
worked as a freelancer and went through around in Syria and Afghanistan for other bits
and pieces, and then I worked. The thing that really accelerated me in
that space was working on a biography of Cameron Baird, who you're aware of,
Jack, Yeah, yeah, how did you know? How did you
know of Cam or did you know Caim? Did you have any interactions with
him? No? I never met him. I knew of him through some
of his teammates and people and the commandos who knew him, and they told
me stories about how he'd camo up like the incredible hawk, and like he
was big about charging out there and wanted the enemy to see him and shoot
at him so he could shoot back, like just like a larger than life
kind of figure. He really was. I remember one of the first interviews
that I did with one of his CEOs was he always knew when they got
out of the helicopters, which one was Betty, because no soldiers were sort
of moving forward in a relatively uniform fashion. And then Betty was just like
yoah off being a bullet magnet, you know. But yeah, there was
this, you know, the Special Operations Task Group, which was Australia's a
special forces commitment to the war in Afghanistan was large and very kinetic, but
not known about much in Australia at all. No one had been embedded with
the Special Forces. We had this protected identity status law, meaning that they
couldn't legally speak to journalists about what they were doing. And that was the
commandos and the SASR meaning and SOA and you know everybody else associated. So
there was really a dearth of information as to what the Australians had been doing
in her as Again. And then when I got the contract to do the
book about Cameron Baird, the posthumous book about Cameron bird Did being killed in
combat. I went to Holsworthy and started interviewing the guys and I was completely
shocked, you know, I just had I had no idea. I kind
of felt that I had sort of been paying attention to what had been happening
in the war in Afghanistan, and it was it was a completely different story.
And you know, that was a thread that I sort of pulled and
pulled and pulled and had been doing that all the way to find fixed finish.
So you feel that the Australian people were fairly naive about the intensity of
the combat that their soldiers were getting into. Yeah, I mean not just
that, you know, there was there was there was a failure not only
within the public, but you know, on a political level to understand just
the basic tenor of the conflict. I mean, even now, you know,
my pet Peeve is there'll be a news report about the commandos on the
drug job that they had done. You know, a historical news report might
be related to war crimes or something else. And then uniformly, when they're
talking about a gunfight, they they referred to the Afghanis as Taliban, and
you know, sometimes they were finding the Taliban and sometimes they weren't. You
know, it was it just I knew so little. I realized when I
started that book that I knew so little, and that meant that most people
in Australia knew so little about about the conflict that you know, we'd we'd
sort of been heavily involved in and we only sort of understood after the fact.
I'm just curious for you because we've talked to American journalists too, were
in Badge with US sports is. How were you received when you first showed
up. What was your relationship like with not only the command structures but the
individual soldiers themselves. I think I was received better than most because on my
body armor I just slapped a Ralph sticker which had a you know, so
a half naked woman on the sticker, and soldiers almost uniformly had Ralph posters,
you know, in tanks and you know, on their lines and you
know, so, yeah, journalists from you know, ABC or two GB
or something that they don't really give a ship but it's like, oh,
it's the Ralph guy. It's like, I know what that outlet is,
you know. So, so I the story that I ended up doing.
I did a piece for Ralph and then I did a piece for the West
Australian newspaper and a piece for The Bulletin, which was Australia's version of Newsweek
at the time. You know, I did a piece that was really a
soldier's view of things, which up to find fixed finish was was sort of
the way that I operated was from the perspective of a soldier who's on the
ground, you know, because I want to know what they know and then
maybe I'll bring in some information about, you know, contextually where they are.
But that's where I really started from a from a biography background, and
that that was my perspective up until Fine Fixed Finish. So to jump into
find Fixed Finish, if you can take us a little bit back in time
to a little history lesson that you write about in your book about there's this
large span of time for the Special Air Service regiment between the Vietnam conflict where
they served, and the Global War on Tarer or could you tell us about
the sort of like pre Global War on Terror Special Air Service, what their
mission was, what their culture was, and then weading us into the Tampa.
Yeah, well, in Vietnam they had sort of earned this monika,
the ghosts of the Jungle. You know, they were sort of you know,
there were special Forces as you would understand them to be. They'd sort
of they disappear and reappear and you know, and kill and no one and
know where they've been, and you know, they really kind of had this
this sort of dangerous kinetic mission. And then after Vietnam there was a defense
white paper, an Australian Defense White Paper, which is kind of a big
deal. It only happens every you know, sort of ten to fifteen years
or something, and I think the guy's numbers. Paul did wrote this white
paper about the defense of Australia, and there was a structure of the Australian
Defense Force that was dedicated on the defense of Australia, which it seems sort
of you know, obvious and and it sort of makes sense, but that
meant that we didn't have much capacity for force projection and within a Defense of
Australia structure, the SAS would sort of primarily be engaged with during guerrilla warfare
and Northern Australia, which is not particularly populated, and there was even a
program where they were working with Indigenous Australians to do demolitions and things like that.
Yeah, there's still a group up there called nor Force that they get
guys who're sort of traditional owners of land and then engage them to you knows,
to work in commns or in demolitions. Yeah, that's right for guys
who really understand the really uninhabited areas of Australia. So the sa SR that
that ended up becoming their job. But you know, there was outside of
a few little missions, you know, they ease team or there was a
time where they were like seriously engaged. But but they you know, one
of the quotes in the book is that they just spend a lot of time
wondering and the desert, counting train cars. You know, they'd sort of
secrete themselves in a position and watch a train go by, and then you
come back and that'd be there, you know, because there are mean mission
at the time was strategic reconnaissance. Yeah, basically that's right in Australia as
well, which is a large empty place. So you know, it just
meant it just meant being really good at being out for a long time and
then coming back and coming back with information or you know, or whatever one
of the job was at the time. But the guys who were within the
regiment, there was a lot of people who who you know, it just
wasn't it wasn't an engaging role for them, you know, it was it
was sort of preparing for something that they thought probably was never going to happen,
and it wasn't a it wasn't a particularly explosive job. But then Tampa
happened. So Tampa was Tampa was a ship that came into nearly came into
Australian waters with a lot of refugees. So refugees and they were mostly Afghan
had come on an Indonesian fishing vessel to try and come to Australia illegally,
and then their ship started to sink and they put out an SOS call and
then the Tampa came and rescued them, and then a lot of them were
sick. So you know, the law of the sea is that they need
to be they need to be brought to Australia. So they've been given to
be given medical treatment. But there was a lot of political doing and throwing
at the moment then and actually at the moment about illegal migrants coming into Australia,
and they had set up a policy where they weren't going to let anyone
come into Australia. So when Tampa, when the Tampa decided that they were
going to come to Christmas Island, which is a territory in Australia, the
government told them they couldn't, and then there ended up being this stand up
and then the Sas were actually sent to storm the ship because erroneously there were
reports that, you know, some of the refugees I don't think of the
report that they were armed, but that they might have been dangerous, and
you know, they all had gastro and they were all lying on the deck
and they're all exhausted and sick, and they've been at sea for weeks and
weeks. So the Essas end up storming Tampa, and there was some leaked
photos and video of it, and it all looked very very dramatic. But
in the book I sort of mark that as the moment where the SAS to
a certain extent became a political tool, because only a few weeks later nine
to eleven happened, And as soon as nine to eleven happened, the guys
at Campbell Barracks where the SAS started preparing for a mission to go into Afghanistan,
and they were one of the one of the first forces after the Marines
secured I can't remember which basically is. I'm sure you guys remember was it
Bagroom or Kanda horror? No, it was in Kandaha. Yeah, okay,
Well, talk to us a little bit about the early g y years
in Afghanistan where the Special Air Service really did some quality work in my opinion
based on what I read in your book. Yeah, I mean basically they
would they would, like you said, they were doing reconnaissance, and you
know, they they would. There were a few instances where they would.
They were working with the Marines, primarily with the Mathis, and he really
loved their work because they would go out for such a long time. You
know, they would have reconnaissance teams that go out for you know, I
come ten twenty days and I think some of the SASL teams went out for
fifty or sixty days in these sort of open top vehicles in the freezing cold,
you know. But they were so happy to get the work that they
were just meant, they were happy to you know, to just keep going
and going. And then they they had done a lot of instances where they
had identified targets, sat there, waited, looked at the pattern of life,
send all the information back and then there were either strikes or there weren't
strikes, or you know, a larger force would come in and prosecute the
targets. And they had done all that and then they were they were given
a role that ended up being ended up being relatively integral in Operation Anaconda and
you know where Robert's Ridge and all of that activity happened. But the primary
Australian force was working was working as a as a blocking force with other international
special forces. But there was one team that was in this position that was
just sort of perfect for bringing in air and ordinance and they did that day
after day after day after day after day, you know, without without having
any direct confrontation with the enemy, but bringing in this ordinance. But that
was at the time a sort of perfect essay as mission. You know,
that's that's what they were really good at and they they had executed that really
well. But that sort of mission moves on because technology moves on, you
know, with with with drones and the sort of satellite technology that we have
now it's you don't need as much of that. So then their their capabilities
and their missions changed. And so with with that, if we we fast
forward a few years, well is it ers Gan Province? Uh yeah,
talk to us about you know, Sasser landing in that province their first stops
in April two thousand and six, and and then and then their their relationship
with the Dutch who were also in charge of that sector. Yeah, I
mean the Dutch. The Dutch came in a little later. So Australia had
put their hand up to say that they would be part of ISA, of
the International Security Assistant's Force, but we didn't know or the Australian government didn't
know exactly where that force was gonna was going to end up, on what
the composition of it was going to be. But there was there was a
suggestion that they would go to Uruzgan, and there's a couple of quotes in
the book about they just weren't prepared for a province Oruzgan perhaps, or that
they didn't know necessarily what they were going into the Australian government because you know,
Uruzgan is along with Candor Hearts, it's sort of one of the it's
sort of one of the heartlands of the Taliban. You know, it's where
Mulaoma was from, that's where his village is. So they sent the SASR
into some ground truth thing and there's a story in the book about an element
going up to the northwest corner of Uruzgan and you know, they see some
locals and they're sort of like, hey, how are you going? And
then all of a sudden, there's just RPGs and bullets and you know,
these were just locals who are aggrieved with with the Australians coming into to Uruzgan.
They ended up being this massive gun fight. You know, they ended
up bringing in apaches, the whole thing. I mean, this is just
meant to be a hey, hey, you gun with the locals ground truthing
mission. And then they come back to they come back to tarran Cott and
when they do, the Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill is there and he sees
all the shot up vehicles and blooded soldiers. None of the Australian SASR guys
are killed, but but there's there's a lot of injuries. Uh. And
he has never spoken about this, but he retired from his position a few
weeks later, and the speculation was that he he had always had an issue
with Australia's involvement in Iraq and that he didn't think that it was within australia
strategic interest to be involved in Iraq is my understanding, but there is speculation
that he saw what the what the Afghan mission was going to be for the
Australians in the in these sort of years to come, and he was perhaps
and this is not something I did actually speak to the Prime Minister and the
Foreign Minister at that time. It's not something that he that they would speak
to me about. But there may have been issues within the National Security Cabinet
as to as to whether Australia should have had that role in Afghanistan. And
then the essays are sorry gone. I was just going to ask. I
mean, as as things develop, you know, the says ends up in
this capture kill mission. But the Dutch have a different approach, that's more
hearts and minds oriented. Yeah, the Dutch, the Dutch mission was was
very much there. There had to be a political mandate for the things that
they were going to do, and with the way that the Dutch government was
constructed at the time, there were a lot of left leaning government or left
leaning parties that had influence into what was what ended up being the Dutch operations.
So that was part of the reason why they weren't comfortable doing kill capture.
But the other issue is that they wasn't an issue. It was a
boon to them. They had these sort of anthropologists, They had a lot
of people at this place called the liaison organization that were given them really great
intel into the way that the tribal structure worked in Euroscam. And so they
were sort of suggesting to the Dutch forces that endlessly attacking the enemies of the
warlord that we have associated ourselves with, which was a guy called called John
Muhammed Khan, and then a guy called back to Yola Khan afterwards he said,
you're just going to create more conflict. And so they didn't necessarily believe
in the American mission that was sort of maximalist and more kinetic than the Dutch
thought it should be. And then the Australians put their hand up and they're
like, yeah, yeah, we'll do that good. And talk to us
a little bit about how those ops get stood up. You know, June,
in your book June second, two thousand and six, there's an operation
where a Special Air Service operator Ben Roberts Smith is said to kill the teenager
during an engagement, maybe legitimately maybe not. Yeah, yeah, I mean
that was that's the sort of integral and important moment in the history of Australia's
engagement in Afghanistan, because this was this was the sort of combined op this
is when they were working with with the Dutch. And the idea of that
off was there's a valley coming into Tarankott, which is where the multinational base
is and where the provincial capital is. But there were a lot of there
was a lot of opposing forces. Some of them were associated with the centralized
insurgency, but a lot of them were the enemies of this war or Jamahamad
Khan at the time, and Shura and Baluchi came through to a place called
Durafshan, which was sort of on the plane very close to taran Cott,
and so you basically had this this non permissive area that was leading into the
capitol. So the idea was that they would clear Chor out, they'd have
this this large operation and they'd have this force pushed through all the way through
to taran Cott and be a series of battles and they take control of this
area, and that you know, the Afghanisa the Dutch would sort of seeze
these areas, put up control bases and then you know, we'd have a
permissive environment close to close to where the multinational basis and where the provincial capital
is. Uh Incidentally, they they ended up fighting in that area consistently,
you know, all the way through basically, you know, there were there
were there were periods of peace and periods of war, but but it never
ended up becoming a sort of a wholly permissive area. But Ben Robert Smith
was sent up to be part of a patrol that was going to be doing
an overwatch not just similar to you know, the overwatch mission that Matthew Bully
who was the guy who was who was the patrol leader for the mission.
Operation at a condo, not dissimilar to that, you know, center,
hang out a little spot, see what's happening down there, send intel back,
perhaps bring ordnance in if you have to, and then secrete your way
back. But you know, this is the subject of a defamation case at
the moment, so you know, we can't specifically know what happened. But
un armed or unarmed actually I think they've agreed that it's unarmed, but may
or may not have been a spot or a teenage kid walks across, perhaps
preteen walks across the observation post and they decide to go and find him and
kill him, and they do that, and then that starts an engagement and
they have to sort of fight their way back, which they do, and
they end up bringing in air support and you know, so the fight ends
up, the sense of gravity of the fight ends up being at the top
of the mountain, not down in the valley where it's meant to be.
But depending on who you speak to, that that was sort of, you
know, an integral and valorous moment within the sa SR, and people have
given medals afterwards, and some people have suggested that that sort of set a
pre cindent within the SAS be the s s R in Afghanistan, because you
know, that was that perhaps could be seen as a strategic net negative moment,
and yet people were people were awarded medals for it afterwards. And then
you also, as you know, going forward a little bit in time,
you have the creation of the Special Operations Task Force SOTG, which brings in
the commandos. Could you talk to us a little bit about the role of
the commandos, you know, their history, their mission, and the rift
that developed between them and the SAS Yeah, I mean, you know,
most of my friends are within the Commander Regiment in their space. They are
a force, that is, they were designed to work hand in glove with
the SASR. Probably in the way I mean you definitely not better than Eye
in the way that the Rangers were were they meant to be a cooperative force
with Jason. They were not initially stood up for that reason, but I
mean they kind of became that, right, They became When you need a
lot of manpower to do things that a small specialized unit can't do, Yeah,
you call the Rangers. Yeah, And did they work sometimes as a
cordon force and or or direct action and direct actually to strike strike targets that
a small surgical, hostage rescue focused unit isn't necessarily set up for. Yeah,
I mean it sounds like you're describing the commandos, you know, the
commandos. There was a suggestion just before nine eleven actually that the Special Operations,
the Australia Special Operations Command, should be expanded because of the type of
technological innovations that had come with the type of heavy weapons that can be carried
by by an individual, and by the type of the type of communications that
can be used. So they thought that the force structure would benefit from having
this sort of direct action you know, sort of hyper infantry style force that
could work with the SASR. So they were they were starting to stood up
be stood up around ninety nine two thousand and then two thousand and one there
was an acceleration so they could bring the companies on board. Because they assumed
that the commandos might be used in the future. They were sent into Iraq.
The SASR we're doing a series of different things in the western desert of
Iraq, including scud hunting, and the commandos were meant to be their quick
reaction force. So they were just across the border at H two in Jordan,
and then they were actually never used, even though there were instances where
they could have been used. And that I think is the moment where the
rift developed between the ss ARO and the commandos, because the SASR saw them
as this force that couldn't be trusted to go out and to be used,
whereas the commandos they thought they were ready, and they probably were ready.
You know, they've been training up on this close quarter battle. They've been
they've been stood up for a couple of years at that point, and so
a lot of the guys within the commandos actually went off and worked as pmc's,
you know, especially a lot of the a lot of the sort of
junior NCOs. But then Afghanistan happened, so the Special Operations Task Groups,
the Special Forces Task Group and then the Special Operations Task Group needed guys to
come into a risk and so a lot of the guys who had been working
as PMC sort of came in and that they couldn't get the two units to
work cooperatively. There are times where they both that they were both on on
target at the same time, but primarily they they they didn't work together.
And part of the issue was that, you know, there were fistfights in
the mess. There were you know, there were like people threatening to kill
each other. You know, there were there was there was there was a
real rancher between between those you know, there was there was a lot of
fraternity between some of the some of the parts of those two of those two
regiments, but but there was there was definitely animus as well, and I
think part of the issue I was just going to point out. It should
probably be mentioned also that these two units were all pitted against each other by
the Australian military in some ways. That you have two soft units. Eventually
they're both given the direct action mission, so they're both competing for missions which
only I imagine escalates the animosity. No, that's right. And then if
you look at the SASR, you know they're doing this coordinate these coordinate search
missions, and they're doing direct action as well, and they're not necessarily designed
for that. You know, there are the four structures that they've meant to
be a sort of more surgical, and you are that they are Australia's elite
unit. Whereas they're doing something that the commandos are actually kind of like perfectly
built to do with their force structure. And so sometimes the commandos are sent
off to do things that the essays would like to do, but they're just
just by dint of their force structure, the commandos are better suited to do
it. And so then that creates this incredible resentment and the SASR see them
as the little brothers and the commandos like, you know, our guys are
dying. Also the dose, the which one. I know you've heard that
term, the doze, the dose, I haven't what of it? You
haven't that the sas guys call the commando's the does the dose? Can you
spell it out? D oees like a female deer? Oh yeah, yeah,
the dose? Yeah, and the commandos call the SAS the poo poop
barrows. I've heard that. I mean, it's all a little sophomoreck.
Yes, but that's the thing fifteen years later and Sime, it's black and
dead, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's like super serious
stuff. Uh. And some guys did go over, you know, some
guys do the commando it work as commandos and then do selection and go within
the SAS. But it never really it never really disappeared the animals between the
two units. Let's also talk a little bit at this point about some of
the structural issues within the Australian Department of Defense. There's that's really interesting stuff
in your book. I mean, you talk about a lot of breakdowns that
happened, but one of them that especially strikes me is that it feels like
at some point civilian control of the military was lost and even commanders in the
military didn't understand what their own force was doing. Like there's one quote in
your book where I think you said it was the commander of Australians Special Operations
saying that capture kill missions are an invention of the media, which is either
a lie or it just speaks to the complete obliviousness of the chain of command.
I can answer that it's a lie, okay, I mean, it's
a top the patrol reports. You know, it's like everybody knows the nomenclature.
You know. The problem in Australia, I think at that time was
that there was this culture of bullshit because Australia had to be involved in the
war in that it was it was very important for us to be a good
alliance partner with the US, and we always wanted to be a good alliance
partner. We have always wanted to be a good alliance partner. Not only
that, when you go a little bit, a little bit further down the
command structure, there was this technology transfer and this skill transfer that was happening
as well, because you know, we were eventually working as a sort of
fungible software, so they were working as a fungible soft force. So they
were sort of from a modular perspective, becoming useful within an American structure,
which was which was good for the America. For the Australians, you know,
they were they were up skilling very quickly. But the Australian public,
the political class would not accept the Australians doing the things that the Americans were
doing. You know, the major, the major thing that I sort of
lean on from an ethical perspective in the book is that the Australians were doing
these kill capture missions and the ROW allowed them to directly target individuals, which
is basically an assassination without any attempt to capture, whether they're uned or unarmed.
There is no way that that would have been accepted if a politician explained
to the Australian public that that was what was happening in Afghanistan. So there
had to be this sort of top level, this sort of top level layer
of bullshit between public facing information from the highest people within government and within the
military saying that you know, this mission is really about you know, standing
up for an Afghan battalion, it's about protection of women's rights, it's about
all these things. Whereas all of those strategic goals had gone in Urazgan by
probably about two thousand and nine, you know, like it just wasn't happening.
You know, everybody on the ground knew that wasn't happening. Correct me
if I'm wrong, band, But in your system, there is a a
Chief of Defense, which is a military officer, and there's a Minister of
Defense, which is a civilian. So when the civilian is saying, I
can't get information out of the military, I'm not getting all of the information
I need. I don't know what's going on. Is that a lie or
is that part of that public facing propaganda if you will. Yeah, well,
I mean that's that's a direct quote from a defense minister who I interviewed
for the book, and that was one of two defense ministers who told me
that they couldn't get information from from the military, and so, you know,
in a democracy that's completely unacceptable. But I think I think the Department
and the ministry there were some things that they didn't want to know, so
they had they'd sort of punted on some information. You know, they had
empowered the military to do certain things without any understanding and oversight, and then
when they do want information, they have already they've already created this system where
it's difficult for the ministry to get information. So the ministry has plausible deniability
and it's the same as the Department as well. This is this is speculation,
but this is this is the way that this is I think one of
the issues. So, yeah, there wasn't there was a major issue.
There may well still be a major issue within the Australian government that there isn't
as much civilian oversight as there should be. But to go back to my
point of that sort of layer of bullshit that we were at the top that
sort of dripped through all the way down to the ground. You know,
like as long as we're already not being transparent about our strategic goals and so
then when we're not transparent about what are what the specific types of missions are,
and then we're not specific with patrol reporting, you know, so just
dripped all the way down. So moving on to some some spicy content here,
not not not particularly lawyer exactly not not not not a particularly great moment
for the s. A S tell us about the moment that they were flying
a swastika in Afghanistan that was actually the Mandos. Oh it was identified that
book. Yeah, okay, thank you for for having so. Yeah,
they were out on operations, and I mean there has been this this issue
within I mean, the soldiers probably wouldn't necessarily said as a problem, but
there is this sort of impunity within some certain some some of the units in
that there were rules that were allowed to be bent and rules that were allowed
to be broken. Like one of the obvious ones is drinking. So the
Essay has had a bar in tarn Cott. You know, they're not meant
to be drinking, and they have a bar, and all the generals went
there, you know, like everybody went to the to the bar. They
actually famously in the book one of the one of the sort of signature war
crimes. One of the things that's being contested in this defamation case at the
moment is whether there was an execution of a disabled Afghan who had a who
had a prosthetic leg. Yeah, and then that ends up becoming a drinking
vessel in the bar that the SASR had, So that was sort of allowed.
So nobody really knew where the line was, and so somebody thought that
the line allowed swastikas to be flat on operations. I was told by lots
of people that it was a joke. But then I've subsequently learned that that
guy was actually a Nazi and part of a a sort of Nazi group,
another regiment before he came to this prest operations man. I very much doubt
that the other guys around him, you know, were of that of that,
but they certainly saw it. They certainly saw it. Yeah, they
saw it. Yeah, And that one of the other issues with that photograph
is there's a major there who ended up becoming a very senior soldier and was
was someone who was on a track to end up being chief of chief of
Defense. And the guys that I spoke to about that major, I said,
well, you know, why didn't he and the men why did he
stop him from doing it? And he's like, well, he didn't.
Necessarily he didn't like it. He was obviously upset about it, but he
didn't feel at the time that he could he could reign in a sergeant in
that way, which is which is a problem that That's a perfect segue because
I want to ask you next about officers losing control of the SAS and how
that kind of came about. Yeah, I mean, one of the problems
with the officers in the SAS is that they come in and out of the
regiment, and having having a successful, successful period in the s a SR
is hugely important for your career, especially if when you're on you know,
on a sort of combat deployment. You know that really is your opportunity for
advancement in Korea and and chances for medals, and you know, having that
on your on your resume is hugely important. And within the Australian military there
there has been a long succession of people who have gone through the sas and
then have gone up to even to the point of ar chief are are governor
General who's you know, the most senior person of the government is a former
Essays officer. So it's very important for an officer to have a successful deployment.
But if you have your your you know, your your sergeants and your
corporals in open revolt because they're upset about the things that you're doing. And
these are guys who have sort of set the tone and have a greater understanding
of what the ground truth is, then that's gonna that's going to be a
problem in your career. So that that that means that officers who want to
go against something that may be unethical would take a massive amount of moral courage.
You would have to go against the entire system. You know, like
if you're out, if you the special Operations task groups are relatively small.
So if you're an officer and you you think that one of your patrols is
doing the wrong thing and you run them in or you bring in you know
charges or the I G. A d F, which is basically our you
know, our military police. To investigate these types of things, you've probably
create a seaesops. So you might even create like a political issue, right,
So it was it was incredibly tough for the officers to do that.
But then before that they actually have to understand what's happening in the first place.
So quite often they're in this sort of like overwatch position, you know,
they're not necessarily on the ground. You know, with this defamation case,
we had a lot of officers coming in in instances where there had been
suspected war crimes and they're like, I don't know it blew in and there
were some dead people. You know, what can I tell you? In
the book, you talk about how the sas came to have a tribal culture.
I mean, one of the operators you spoke to described it as a
ward of the Flies culture where they were sharing kill videos with one one another,
where there was even there's this kind of stone walling of any acknowledgment of
PTSD within the regiment. Can tell us about how that developed. Yeah,
that I think that quote it might actually go from the the unit psychologist of
the s A s R. But the that that sort of linger culture,
that's the that's how they would describe people who would suggest that they had a
PTSD issue. A linger means that you're a malingerer, you know, so
you're you're not taking on the duties that that you should be taking on,
and you're you're basically letting everyone down. The the the way that it was
described to me over and over again is like a motorcycle gang. You know,
it's like you do not break the trust of the guys within the motorcycle
gang. But then also coercive violence is something that that that was kind of
enforced a certain structure there as well, So you know, guys could be
beaten, guys could be slapped, it could be for some people it could
feel dangerous breaking outside of that code of silence. And there was an instance
in Australia where somebody's house got blown up because they had fallen off out of
this this code of silence. I don't necessarily understand how it developed, but
there were people who who sort of talked to me about coming into that that
environment, because when you come into Campbell Barracks and you come into into the
regiment, you know, that's that's the top of your career, whether you're
a whether you're an operator, or whether you're an officer, or whether it's
a physio or whatever you are. You know, especially in a in a
time of war, you really want to do the best job, you know,
and everybody's super intense, and you're like, that's okay, I understand
this because this is the time of war, so I want to do the
best job. But there were there were, like you said, there was
this that the psychologist described it to me as a sort of tinder box ready
to be ready to blow. You know, the fact that there were a
lot of instances of domestic violence, a lot of people getting super drunk,
a lot of people assaulting people at pubs, a lot of like death porn
being shared as well, like sort of weird snuff porn, a lot of
kill videos, a lot of photos of you know, heads being blown off
and stuff like that. Like at some point a sort of responsible adultshire to
come down and said, Okay, we kind of need to we need to
clean this up for the benefit of the people who were in this structure,
you know, not to be not to be a dick about it and tell
everyone, hey, you know you're all getting detention, but just this is
going to be healthier for everybody, and we're going to be more effective as
a fighting unit if you did clean this stuff up. You've writ in the
book about how as time goes on, the culture of the unit changes and
guys are sort of deferring on advancing their career because they just want to be
gunfighters, like they've gotten addicted to the combat. Yeah. Well, I
mean the idea is that you know, you're a patrol commander and then you
sort of work your way up and you become a warrant officer, and you
sort of spread the you know, the the experience that you've had across the
regiment and sometimes across the military as well. You know, it's meant to
be it's meant to be an area of excellence, and it is an area
of excellence where they can go out into the Greater Defense Force and sort of
bring some of that excellence with them. But because I think so many of
the guys became addicted to the combat and we don't have any any sort of
solid numbers on what the level of PTSD is. But you know, there's
a psychologist explains to me that he said, you know, we the literature
that we have suggest that it's not accumulative. It multiplies. And so when
you've got guys who've done these sort of eight, nine, ten combat deployments
and that is the number that guys ended up doing. SASI guys, you
know, and I can imagine similar to the Americans as well. You know,
so they're in these sort of you know, intense environments for you know,
ten deployments might be six months each, you know, it's five years,
like it's a super intense thing to do. They just want to go
back in because that's a place where they feel comfortable. They start to feel
uncomfortable in a civilian environment. And there was that was the case of the
commanders as well. There was lots of guys who's you know, their lives
were forming a bar to a certain extent outside of the outside of their deployments.
You know, they're having problems with their wives or you know, their
friends, they didn't relate to their friends anymore, or you know, so
they just wanted to get back out, and you know, just being a
warrant officer and you know working at working at QCB course for the rest of
your life is not as exciting. Yeah right right. Tell us a little
bit about the one Commando operation in two thousand and nine where it's sort of
like the first time I if I'm understanding correctly that the issue of war crime
starts coming into the public, like there are some aspects where they might prosecute
this guy they might not. Yeah, yeah, that was that. That
was a sort of a very important, sort of forgotten part of the Australian
war crime story. So by two thousand and nine, we'd had three years
of these at these deployments of commandos and SASR, and you know, everybody
was getting tagged, and you know, they basically needed to re up some
of the guys who they were bringing into the Second Commando Regiment especially and and
the s s R. So they decided to do a deployment of one Commando
guys who are reservists. This is this is Australia's oldest continuous Special Forces regiment,
but they hadn't been used in operations for such a long time. So
a lot of these guys, you know, some of them are soldiers full
times. Some of them are policemen, you know, some of them are
have other jobs. And so they did they did pre deployment readiness, which
supposedly was was a little lacking, and then they were they were sent to
Uruzgan and then they were they were doing the hill cap trovisions. So there
was there was a house actually again in the place where you know Chare and
Blueci and I think it was into actually direction, so it was very close
to to taren Cott and they were going to be this compound of interest,
and they were good night mission. I think it was midnight, two am
something like that, and they go to this house and they find it empty,
and so they decide that they're going to just go to the house next
door and do that house instead, which they had already had. There was
an ESAP order that that was they were not allowed to do that. You
wanted just allowed to go into an adjacent compound because you had some intelligence about
a certain compound. Anyway, so they went into this house, you know,
and this is something that you have to be sort of relatively legally wary
about. But I think it's uncontroversial that there was a guy who was there
with his family. He heard someone breaking into his compound. He got his
rifle. One of the soldiers saw him, they shot him, and then
they hadn't killed him. He was shooting through a door. A machine gunner
fired into the room where him and his family were. And then afterwards this
is the the part that is somewhat controversial, as there some some have suggested
that there was a ceasefire call, some have suggested that they were still shooting.
You know, it's contentious, but grenades were thrown in and some babies
were killed and some children were killed. The most interesting aspect of that is
what happened next. At the time, the Australian military had this independent judiciary
that was beyond the chain of command. So there was a brigadier who got
a brief from the IGADF and believed that this was a war crime, and
so she was going to prosecute the guys, and she was going to prosecute
Lieutenant colonel who ordered the second house to be to be assaulted. And so
she tried to go through this prosecution and the Australian media were very upset by
it, and the chain of command were very upset by it, and eventually
she was chased out of the army and there was there was a ruling that
was made in court that previously it was assumed that the soldiers owed a duty
of care to civilians in Uruzgan, and then a ruling was passed down that
there was no obligation to have duty of care for civilians. And she was
quite upset by this. This this brigadier who was who was the chief legal
officer of the Australian Defense Force at the time, and she said that she
thought that they were creating new law with this ruling. And yeah, the
guys that didn't end up being prosecuted, and so that that was the standing
rule afterwards that the Australian forces did not have an obligation of judio care over
civilians. And then another controversial operation was an assault. I believe the target
was called Whiskey one o eight. Yeah, well Whiskey went Away. It
was one where the guy with the prosthetic leg was was shot. So that's
something that's under appeal at the moment. So it had been alleged that there
was an assault on Whiskey one o eight. There was fighting going on between
the conventional forces who had a patrol based very close to that compound and guys
who were there in that village which was ration as well, So it was
it was really close to the place where there's these one commando killings that happened
and where so much of the so much of the Australian war crime story happens,
despite the fact that it's this time in area with with with not that
many people living there. They there had been a battle, they called in
an air strike. They've blown up a compound. The Sas come in and
they either kill these legally or don't kill them legally. But there were there
were news reports saying that they hadn't killed them legally. The Bender of the
Smith had either executed or ordered the execution of a couple of these guys,
including this guy with the prosthetic leg and yeah, they'd under apeal at the
moment. So that's that's that's the first instance of SAS murders being reported happened,
I think in two thousand and nine out of curiosity, you know,
kind of lent or I guess, leading into the idea that maybe he was
or wasn't executed. Who was he or who do they think he was?
Like was he just yeah, Was he just a random guy on target or
did they think that he was somebody who had been evading capture and that local
forces wouldn't hold well? In that defamation case, somebody actually suggested that he
was a jpel target and he was objective zyphoid, and he kept explosives.
He was known for keeping explosives in his prosthetic leg. I think we can
fairly safely discount yeah, that was the case. I don't think he was
that Bond villain. But he and the other guy who was killed in his
sumb is the center of this defamation case. They had come out of a
tunnel and in the there were weapons. The major issue in her as again
though, is that you know they were they were almost certainly local militia.
But were they and they were probably local militia who are shooting at the Australian
conventional forces. But you know, do you want to kill all of your
local militia who agreed by putting up a patrol base village question? And the
only reason I asked is and it's not to justify a killing if if the
killing is true. But I'm curious because there were In my mind there was
like a significant difference between a killing of a guy who just happens to be
on a target or you know, in a house nest target and killing a
guy who is a suspected ID maker who has been rolled up a few times
and released every time. And again I'm not justifying it. I'm just asking
if there was something in their mind that for them that justified it. Well,
that's that's the difference between an ethical question of the legal question, right,
you know, because you know, regardless of whether this person's a civilian
or whether whether they were had been previously a combat, once the person is
sourced to combat, if you kill him, then that's merger exactly. So
I think, I mean my instinct that is that the Australians were not just
randomly killing people on target. There may have been a couple of instances where
they did, because they got later on in the war they believed that there
were places where they were just full of shit people. They just they call
them shit cuns, you know, and in certain incant villages it's just like
all the guys in this in this village of shit cums. And I don't
know whether you're following the British inquiry that's going on at the moment, But
there has been evidence profit that the British says, in hellmant In some villages
killed every finding age male that they could find on certain targets. But I
think primarily the Australian says, if they had killed people illegally, they generally
believed that they that they were were combatants. But yeah, oh go ahead,
please, well no, from my perspective, one of the major issues
of Australian operations in Neuroscam was an over aggregation of the enemy. You know,
I think that you have to be very selective, you know, in
coin operations as to who you decide to target, and I think there was
a sort of maximal approach sometimes in regards to some places. Yeah, and
again like talking about like the legal versity ethical, I absolutely agree with you.
It's just you know, sometimes it's when it's reported that a somebody was
killed, you know, somebody was killed in custody. Yeah, a lot
of times I think there's a deeper story to it than just you know,
these guys are savage, you know, or the Coalition Forces US Australian whoever,
are just savages off the rails in their minds, even though it's not
legal, in their minds, it makes sense. I think there probably were
some people who had white luft, and I think there are a lot of
people who who perhaps thought they were doing the right thing. But from a
strategic perspective, it's not a smart thing to do. You know, you're
not getting closer to your strategic goal. If your strategic goal is pacification,
right, you know, if your strategic goal is you know, getting a
paddle of the back from a certain person who wanted to kill as many people
as possible, then that's different. And that's why I've been arguing for there
to be a Royal commission in Australia into these killings, because I think that
they've poorly understood, and I think that we should understand the link between the
civilian structure of the Department and the Ministry Special Operations Command and the soldiers on
the ground, because I think there is this sort of connected picture that doesn't
exist in the public consciousness in the way that it should. And there's a
real scenario in these wars that I think, you know, Western societies were
not read for or ready for in the sense of, you know, if
you take like an id maker, a bomb maker who never places the bombs
himself. He pays farmers. He gets rolled up because of the local justice
and you know how it is, he gets bought out of jail every time
he gets rolled up, and then he hits coalition forces. He's known for
the risk the death. It's like, how many times do you want to
roll this guy up just from the released over and over again. And I
think that a lot of the soldiers on the ground got frustrated in those situations,
like how he is an enemy commandant. He may not be shooting at
me right now, but he'll sure as hell blow me up tomorrow. Yeah.
Yeah, And that's definitely the issue in allstrlim you know, there's there's
a che There's a chapter in the book and I described the sort of porous
Afghan justice structure, right and the fact that you know, there was this
sort of you know, this ability to certain people to take people out of
the legal the legal system, the Afghan legal system, you know, unitarily
just because of the power that they had, and then recycle them back into
the battlefield. And there was an incredibly admirable effort by some of the Australian
Army lawyers and some of the soldiers and the reservists to create this thing called
the Rule of Law Cell. So they tried to they tried to sort of
train a lot of the soldiers, the SS guys, and the commandos to
basically work as forensic investigators and then build up the courts so they could get
the prosecutions. And part of the reason, there's a quote in the book
from one of the guys who were setting up this Rule of Law cell saying,
you know, we thought it was a good thing to do to the
soldiers because you know, it's just not good for the soul to be endlessly
killing these people. And had this rage about these people who are combatants and
were not legally allowed to kill them. But from my perspective as a civilian,
so this is something that I sort of stress over and over again.
Is I am just I'm just an impartial observer. Sure, if I was
a soldier, I'd have a completely different perspective, I'm sure, But from
a civilian's arms length, look at this thing. If that is the case
that we are recycling these guys, and then the guys are like, fuck
it, we have to kill them, you know, we have to protect
those guys from doing that, because if they do that, they may be
subject to Australian laws that might put them in prison for the rest of their
life. Right, And if we are doing that, we have to articulate
to the public, these are why we're killing these people, this is why
we're doing it, and we have to link it all the way up to
some sort of strategic goal that makes sense for Australia. And I think they
failed in that obbligation. Ben, could you tell us a little bit about
the SAS's undeclared fourth Squadron. I thought that was an interesting fact in your
book. Yeah. I mean, I actually don't know that much about four
squadrons, but I have spoken to some of the guys and they can't talk
to me that much about it. But it's sort of an intelligence gathering squadron,
you know. They are sort of the most technologically capable of the squadrons,
and it's they have this gray role, you know, it's not a
bit sort of it's meant to be a sort of clandestine role as well.
So one of the tensions that they had within the SBS while they were on
operations in Afghanistan when there were so many guys in operations in Afghanistan was that
they only had so many soldiers. You know, it's a relatively small regiment,
but they were trying to bring these guys into this gray role. So
it's the issue started at selection. So say it's two thousand and nine and
you're in the middle of war in Afghanistan, and you know that you know
when you have someone that you have selected and then you're going to put them
in the rear cycle, that they're going to go into combat with guys like
Ben Robert Smith against you know, the opposing forces in Uruzgan. You want
them to have the capabilities to succeed in that environment. So one of the
guys in the book describes the tension within selection there is because you know,
we want these big, scary gunfighters to do this type of direct action stuff,
and so we are selecting for that, and we're selecting for these sort
of like ruthless killers, you know, these Cameron bed types actually sort of
frankly within the SAS, but there is there is there is a tension because
there's people within the SAS that are looking at the sort of strategic future of
the regiment and they're like, well, we need these sort of weedy dorks
who just you know, can walk on any street and just don't look like
anyone. You know, like Ben Roberts Smith. There's only certain environments in
which he can sort of walk down the street and look normal. I don't
know whether you guys are familiar with him, but he's you know, six
or five, one hundred and twenty kilos something like that. You know,
he's a giant. He looks like a v SER recipient. He looks like
a soldier, you know, whereas you need these guys who are going to
be sort of low pro so, even from a perspective of selection and the
way that the sas they rotate through to four Squadron and then also to the
the can terrorism tag, had the ability you need someone who could sort of
do everything. So they were selecting for these guys in Afghanistan and the other
issues that they that they found. And this is something that one of the
people who's doing selection was, you know, he was doing the psych screening
for these guys. Is that they were they were trying to weed out as
many as they can, but they weren't weeding out everybody who wanted to hunt
and kill people because they knew that that's what they were doing in Afghanistan.
So there were people who select who were selecting who were going into the SAS
because they knew at some point they'd be able to go on target and start
doing this this these kill capture missions. So there's an interesting sort of vignette
that maybe not a lot of people are aware of where the Special Operations Task
Group do Australian Special Operations for USS. They have a team up with DA
American Drug Enforcement Agency Fast Teams in Afghanistan. Can you tell us about that
relationship? Yeah, I mean that came of that came the tension between the
SAS and the second commander. There was a lot of there was a lot
of contention as to who would get the air assets because Australia didn't bring its
own air assets into Afghanistan, so we had to use we had to use
pool helicopters and pull ISR and so there would be these air windows where the
SAS would go and they'd have their air window, you know, so they'd
take their helicopters out into ambisions and then there were periods where the commandos had
their air window and you know, if there was bad weather or something like
that, and somebody missed the day. You know, the regiments them not
hating each other because you know, somebody else would get their helicopters, and
so the commandos are like, well, we need to find our own helicopters.
So I think I have told this story. I can't remember all the
details, but I think it was actually at a funeral, someone met someone
within the DEA and the DA said, you know, we're running our own
helicopters. You know, we have you know, these old Russian helicopters,
and we have these guys that we call the expendables, you know who these
sort of like some of them, some of them flew in Vietnam, you
know, these these sort of contract pilots that are working for the DA.
So why don't you come and work as gunfighters for us? And it was
this really fruitful relationship in the context of they managed to destroy a lot of
drugs, They managed to attack a lot of a lot of drug labs.
You know that there was a lot of fighting. But there has been a
lot of questions as to whether that actually I mean, the idea was that
they were going to take money away from the insurgency that's why they were doing
these drug missions. But there has been a lot of suggestions since that that
basically they were just working for the benefit of other drug laws who weren't being
attacked. Oh interesting, but like intentionally, or that the other drug lawyers
were just feeding them the intel so that they would go like take out them.
Some of them were feeding in the intel. Some of them had political
connections, you know, especially connections to the Karzai family, you know,
people who had who were working with the coalition in Uruzgan and Helman. Because
most of these missions were conductive in the Helmant, but they were I mean,
there's this this sort of leads into the or goes back to the political
disconnect. You know. I think if the Australian public really knew the way
that these drug missions worked and the way that the DA worked, they probably
wouldn't have allowed it, especially considering that we had this strict mission and the
strict parameters under which the Australians could operate. But there was there was this
sort of tendency towards action. So the commandos went and did these missions and
you know, and there was a lot of action. They really enjoyed it
for you know, were they were the Australians under the same structures like the
U S forces in terms of like the capture kill. If they're captured,
would they just go into basically a coalition detention facility or to the local authorities
or what. Did the Australians have something else set up? No, yeah,
they had their own, They had their own their own facility later on,
but then they would go into into local tension afterwards because they had to
go through Afghan courts. Going back to the drug missions, the drug missions,
they had a certain rule of engagement. They certain set of rules of
engagement was distinct to the other missions that they were doing. And I don't
know you guys, Are you guys familiar with the ros that the ISAC was
using in Afghanistan? I assume you would. I mean relatively. So there
were different change all the time, So like they changed like week to week.
Do you know? So there's four twenty nine ROE four twenty nine A
and B, which are the offensive ros as is my understanding, And then
is there four twenty nine ROI E which is the direct targeting ROI. Basically,
honestly, I, honest to God, could not tell you. And
those ROS became so complicated. From what I've been told, it was like
a stack of three ring binders this high, and a very very small group
of people really had any mostly j Tax actually had any sort of understanding of
how they were. And I think that the r's actually differed. Uh there's
a NATO, Yeah different there. Yeah, there's soft ROI, so they
also differ from unit to unit. It was it was insane. It was
insane. That's crazy. Yeah, I mean that's something that that they that
there is speculation that that's going to pop up in in the criminal cases.
You know, there has been one essays got charge for murder and it's on
video. I'm sure you guys have seen its standing out in Afghani says do
you want me to drop this count and kills him, and there is speculation
that they're going to mount the defense that they believe that that killing was within
a certain r OI as it was explained to them. That's part of the
Australian issue is that everybody has told me what they believed the ro O E
that they were operating under was, and quite often it's quite different. I
honestly don't outside of like outside of like Jack mentioned, the g tax because
the G tax like their job depending on note dependent on knowing the roes,
because they were waiting, like their fire came from higher headquarters right who were
who the attorneys were sitting there for. But for the average joe on the
ground, whether it was SAS or Tenth Mountain or Special Forces or whatever.
They they have their general roes like you don't you know, you don't shoot
somebody who is a non combatant like they have the general. But at any
given time they could have been breaking ro O s because they've changed a little,
a little vignette. I mean I I was deployed with Special Forces in
two thousand and it was two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine.
I never saw an ROE. Yeah, we we asked for one too,
Yeah, and we were never giving it for people who are watching, listening,
who aren't, who might not you can probably get it from context,
but are r O E is a rule rules of engagement and it basically tells
a soldier why they can shoot at another person. And you would think it
seems like a simple question, but but it gets very very convoluted. It
becomes like how big is the structure? Can the structure be reduced. You
know, what is the acceptable sieve cast if any right, and it's and
armed combatants. Okay, you can shoot at somebody who's armed. Or what
if he doesn't. What if he doesn't raise his weapon at you. What
if he's not shooting at you. What if he has his cell phone and
there's intelligence that there are spotters in the area. What if the guy tries
to steal your home v What if he tries to steal a radio? What
if he's running What if he doesn't have a weapon, but he's running off
a target where you know bad guys are, and he's running towards a known
location of weapons or a suspected location of a weapons. Cash like it gets
it sounds it sounds like civilians would think, well, it's kind of obvious,
right the guy's he's a bad guy or not right, But it gets
very conflicent in very quickly, especially when you know everybody's on uniformed and you
know there are certain groups that you could directly target, you know, the
telebate and obviously is one of them, but then there's these other malicious It's
like, is he part of this group or another group? Yeah? Then
if only they would have worn uniforms to know who they were. I know,
there's consider it. I know, something I want to make sure that
we talk about here is I'd like to ask you about the big firefight where
Ben Roberts Smith was a ward of the Victorious Cross for and for our American
listeners, the VC if that's the Australian or Commonwealth equivalent of our Medal of
Honor. Yeah, yeah, I mean it was the Battle of Tizzak,
which was part of the Shawoi offensive. Like everything you know, post this
defamation case, there are multiple versions of this, you know, so there
was the official version of what Ben Robert Smith did regardless. You know,
it was an incredible feat in which he charged a machine gun post, two
machine gun posts. You know, killed lots of people. You know,
they were they were hugely undermanned in in this in this Battle of Tiszac.
But the war crime story has emerged not from without but within. You know,
it's been soldiers who are upset with with Ben Robert Smith. You know,
bener of Smith has ended up becoming the most decorated soldier since Vietnam because
he was awarded the Victoria Cross. He was warded the Medal of Gallantry and
the Commendation of Distinguished Service. So when he was awarded the Commendation of Distinguished
Service, somebody went actually back to Tizzak after Ben Robert Smith was awarded the
Victoria Cross and past out where he where he was involved in this firefight and
looked at the official reporting and said that they you know that the official reporting
is is a little bit skew if but yeah, I mean, I don't
think there's any question that you know, he was involved in this, in
this incredibly difficult situ. Do you want to describe a little bit of that,
because it sounds like the SAS was engaged in entrenched you know, dug
in enemy they were outnumbered, and you write about this scenario where Ben Roberts
Smith and another operator are like kind of in a gem and like are pretty
convinced they're about to die. Yeah, they really are. I mean,
you know, they're pinned down by PKM two PK and machine guns and they
basically need to see the initiative again, you know, so they have to
charge across open ground to you know, to silence these machine guns and kill
these guys while they're getting lateral fire as well. It's my understanding, but
he did it with another guy who who was one of his best friends,
who was a junior soldier, and it was contended in the defamation case that
this is one of the people that he ordered to commit execution, and so
this person is in their own legal jeopardy. This person is also someone who
has a significant psychological issue. But this is there's also someone who in the
defamation case says that, you know, he loves Ben Robert Smith, you
know that that he's someone that who who he really kind of appreciates. But
he claims in the defamation case that both he and Ben Roberts Smith basically did
the same thing. That they fought together, you know, to resolve this
situation, and that Ben Robert Smith was given the Victoria Cross and this guy
was given the Medal of Gallantry after this guy who hasn't been named, after
this guy had been told that he was going to get the Victoria Across.
And an aspect of this defamation case is that after the Battle of Tizzak,
you know, defense needed a pr win and Ben Robert Smith is a judge's
son. You know, he went to a private school. He looks the
way that he does you know he could he could speak well to to a
certain category of Australians and so, you know, it could be argued that
this is the point where the rift began. Let's see, what else do
we want to get into here. Oh, there's another another operation that struck
me from reading your book that this was a very legitimate, well executed operation
was the twenty eleven operation where the Australians got intelligence that there was a group
of children's suicide bombers that were moving into her Ao. Yeah, I mean
one of the problems in I mean, one of the problems in Afghanistans generally
was that the Taliban had this sort of area, this decomfliction area in Pakistan
and that there was a porous border. So they basically, you know,
there was the crediturer that basically ran the centralized insurgency and they couldn't be touched
and they basically had this city where you know, they could live with impunity.
They you know, it was four hours away by by motorcycle from central
Luriscan, so they could basically go in and out of theater when they wanted
to. And so this is a story that has has not been told and
perhaps may not be told because of the you know, because of the compartmentalized
nature of some of the information. But they had to sort of build up
this intelligence structure that included an understanding of what was happening in Pakistan, you
know. So they wanted to when these guys sort of came in, they
wanted to hit them when they'd come into theater, and they you know,
they couldn't they couldn't go to into Pakistan. But they had heard that these
these child suicide bombers were coming in. They got some information in uh the
way that the information is gathered, I know, but it isn't detailed in
the book and can't be detailed in the book. So they get this information
that these these child suicide bombers are coming in, and I think they actually
ended up they ended up neutralizing them about killing them. Is that right?
Yeah, that's that's that's what's in your book as I recall read. Yeah,
I mean it's my information, But like I said, two books,
so there's some there's some stuff I don't remember. And then the last couple,
the like final years of the SOTG, you write about how that's really
where a lot of the murders in Mayhem, alleged murders really pick up and
things really get bad. Yeah, it's twenty twelve where the sort of bulk
of the murders are alleged to have happened. And I mean it makes sense.
You know, from an ethical perspective, we are all moral beings,
you know, regardless of who we are and what we've done and what we
think is appropriate and not appropriate, we have this sort of like understanding of
what is right and wrong. And if you're if you're leaving Orusgan having committed
so much bodily and emotionally to the fight, I can understand why you believe
that you think there are these people who you know that are bad and that
the province will be better off if you have killed them. You know,
there is no justification legally and personally, I don't think there's any justification morally
to execute people. But if you are at the back end of this thing,
you've seen so much death, You've had friends die as well, you
killed so many people, you don't want it to be for nothing. You
know, you don't want to just be walking away and going, oh,
well, we didn't when you know, especially after you know, spending your
entire thirties or or you know, like a great chunk of your life to
this thing, you know, in Australia and in Afghanistan. That's just that's
just my speculations as to what happened, But yes, it it happened in
primarily in twenty twelve. The other thing that I wade about in the book
is that a lot of the guys talk about the incentive structure that had built
up around then. Jackpots was a big thing. So jackpots j PEL targets
who were prosecuted, who were either killed or were in detention, in long
term detention. So if you recycle a guy, you go and catch him
and you put him, you know, into the Afghan justice system, and
it doesn't it won't count as the jackpot. But at the top of the
mission sheets it says jackpot, you know, and there's a box for whether
you've got a jackpot or one or two. And I think the sotgs were
trying to rack up as many jackpots as they could. And I don't know
this because this hasn't necessarily been investigated, but I think some of the ogster
combat killings may have been JPELL targets to make sure that this person was killed
rather than recycled them, that they weren't counted as the jackpot. One of
the things you wrote actually kind of even though no one was actually killed in
this scenario, there is I mean, I thought this was in a sense
the most shocking part of your book was that you write that Ben Roberts Smith
on training exercises in Australia was having the junior operators conduct mock executions and saying,
hey, that's how we do it overseas. That's not something you can't
chalk that up to, like in the heat of the moment, you know,
we're in combat, things happen. That's very premeditated. If it's true,
well, I mean all of all of the alleged murders, or most
of the alleged murders are premeditated. In that drop weapons were involved, so
they took weapons on target or radios on target so that when they had executed
people they could for the sc photos drop a weapon or a radio on them.
That was evidence that was given at the defamation case by I think two
witnesses who were involved in these in these pre deployment readiness exercises from memory as
well. They gave evidence that this had happened in front of lots of people
that you know, these mock exe mock executions, and the Ben Robert Smith
has allegedly in this in this deformation case, had said to these junior soldiers,
you know, execute this this outgame, because that's how it's going to
be over there. And then one of the guys who gave evidence came and
picked him up at it later and just said, what the what the fuck
are you doing? You know, what are you doing here? And then
we get into twenty twelve, Ben Robert Smith is accused of kicking a guy
off a cliff. Yeah, what happened there? I mean a few of
the killings. And the part of the reason that I think Australia and it's
a royal commission is that that was in the wake of a Green Old Blue
killing where a guy called Hec Matula had been being trained by conventional forces in
a patrol base and he turned his gun on the Australian conventional forces and killed
a number of people and then ran off into the ran off into the ether,
and they had some intelligence as to where he was, but they were
sort of a little bit behind. The eight ball. So this is one
of the missions where they flew into this area they were trying to find him,
and it's entirely possible that they found someone who had been on a phone
who was trying to facilitate his escape, and that they may have decided to
take things into their own hand in that in that context. But yeah,
it's it's that that's one of the things that's up an appeal. It was
upheld in the original ruling that Ben Robert Smith had stood a guy in front
of a cliff. You know, there was long deliberations as to whether it
was a cliff or whether it was an incline or whatever it was. But
the judge, which is misruling is now an appeal, found it credible that
Ben rob Smith had kicked this guy off this cliff. He sustained some facial
injuries, and then he ordered another junior soldier in a machine gun into death
afterwards. Going back to that, to that question of things happening in the
heat of battle, all of these murders supposedly happened in a permissive environment after
you know, there was no more shoes, right. But and to clarify,
this guy was suspected or or known to be linked to the guy they
were after hanging about to her. Well, I mean, there's there's been
an incredible amount of reporting about this killing into including two relatively famous Australian books,
and the intimation has been that he was someone who just sort of flew
into this town and was the wrong place for the wrong time. But I've
been told by multiple people that you know, he was he was part of
a local militia and you know took Heck matullur In and basically set him off
north after you know, after he after he'd escaped from this Australian Patrol base.
So you know that's something that might come out in a criminal trial.
But yeah, we'll see. There's a lot of it that's just will say.
You mentioned, you know, some of the ideas for the Australian government
and what you think should happen with some of the stuff. How much responsibility
do you think that the governments of like western nations have when we go into
this sort of these nebulous environments with the rotating justice systems and allow soldiers to
complete, you know, repeatedly deployed to these like they they obviously get to
a level of frustration where nothing is changing and yet the governments themselves and their
generals, the military structure is not sympathetic to what's going on there. No,
that's right. Do you think there's a solution to that? And how
the government had would we would handle these types of conflicts going forward? Yeah?
I mean, my there were so many times where I was writing fine,
fixed finish, where I was like, why why doesn't a civilian reach
down, you know in false effect finding mission to have an actual understanding of
the nuts and bolts, especially of the s OTG operations and then come back,
you know, and you probably need some people who are retired military people
to sort of, you know, assemble a plan of action to make sure
that we are operating a industry strategically coherent way and b in an ethical and
moral way and see in a way that's not going to be damaging to your
forces. You know, there were so many times where I just I just
I just thought, you know, why does the department on the ministry not
reach down? You know, there was there was a JTF commander. So
the structure is that, you know, we had the s O tgs,
we have all of the all the individual task groups, across across the Middle
East, the Australian Task Groups. They report to an officer who's in who's
in the UAE, and he's the JTF commander, so he's a major general
and then he reports to Australia which reports the government. And the JTF commander,
who Boy interviewed, said JTF commanders quite often didn't even have access to
the Australian Special Forces, you know, they were sort of told that they
didn't have the required clearance to be around in their compound, you know.
So you're never going to have this sort of transparency if you have made generals
who are part of the command structure unable to gain access to the soldiers.
So I think that it would have been useful whether if the civilians would be
able to reach down and actually speak to the soldiers, not only from an
operational level, but from an actual boots on the ground level. What do
you guys do you know, grab some of these guys and go what's your
day to day? You know, what are you told about the ROE,
what are you told about the missions? And then from that you can build
up an understanding of what the strategic picture is and then move things because there
were these firewalls all the way through. And you know, I I'm very
sympathetic with the ministers because they are given this political appointment, you know,
but then also they do have an obligation, especially when lethal forces being employed,
to represent the Australian public, to represent in a democracy, the things
that are being done on our behalf, and there was a failure in being
able to do that. It also seems, you know, we were very
busy advising the Afghan military and aspects of the NDS, you know, the
security apparatus, but we weren't to my knowledge, like there were no coalition
forces in the actual correctional system. And it's like that that was the leaky
hole. And if somebody higher in command in the military or people in governments
would have recognized that. And because I'll tell you, like, I'm sort
of on the opposite side of you in the sense of, I know what,
it's not legal, but I do find it ethical. But the thing
is we need to take people, we need to take that situation and make
it so that it meets your expectations right, so that any non judicial killing
is ethical or I mean isn't ethical. It isn't ethical. Yeah, yeah,
sorry about that, but isn't ethical where these guys aren't rotating back through
and you know it's not kind of dirt bags that you're dealing with. Yeah,
I mean, from my perspective as an Australian, all Australian forces have
to be subject to Australian law. Sure, that just absolutely, because you
know, from a moral perspective, these people are citizens. They are going
to be fighting in Afghanistan for a certain period of time and then they're going
to be coming out into the community and they have to be members of the
community. You know, if you are going to be pushing the bounds of
what is allowed and what is you know, what is legal, there has
to be at least some sort of strategic reason for that to be happening,
rather than just you know, this is the fight that we're in, this
is the vice we've been sent in. So you know, perhaps there is
more, there is more understanding for rule bending if you are an American because
you are committed to this, to this war that you have decided that that
is strategically important. But if you're an Australian, there's no justification for it.
If it is just alliance coherence, no yeah, I'm agreeing with you
on that point. The sense of there shouldn't be that there shouldn't be rule
breaking. But in order for there not to be rule breaking, I think
that the people on the ground have to know that the rules will be fault
that when they put a guy away, he's going to stay away. And
that's what I'm saying is that that they should, you know, these governments
should recognize that there's a leak in there, just in like the indigenous justice
system, and not put the operators or soldiers and people on the ground in
the position of making these bad legal decisions. Yeah, but then also I
agree, I highly agree. But then you also need to understand that you
know, you're here for a reason. You're in a country that has a
poorest legal system you have. It is a country that is tribally based,
and you know, the idea of being an Afghan isn't the same idea as
being an American or Australian. So there are going to be these things that
are infuriating to you, and perhaps recycling targets over and over again is one
of those things. But you have to you have to still be an Australian
and American they're going to be an Afghan, You're not going to be an
Afghan. You have to try and you have to try and understand the motivations,
which is an incredibly difficult thing to do as to why they're doing the
things that they do. But you still have to stay who you are.
You have to you have to represent your uniform, you have to represent your
set of rules, as much as it sucks, annoying as it's going to
be, but you kind of have to do that. And I mean,
I think the major thin of Australian operations in Afghanistan is that doing less might
have been the right thing to do, because then you could just let Afghans
rule the way that appens. Rule right. Tell us about how that's tough
thing to do. How did this whole war crimes issue explode into the public
consciousness in Australia. How did that come about, leading into the the Ben
Roberts Smith that now defamation trial, the Barenton Report, all these things?
How did that happen? And you know back home, well, I mean
it happened internally. It was there. There were a lot of sort of
squeaky wheels within the command who didn't like that you know, the lot of
this stuff had happened. There was a moment where a new Special Operations commander
came in and basically said to the guys, look, everybody's talking about it.
I don't know what year this was, it's in the book. We
we you know, we want to clear the air this This can't be something
that sort of drags the command down for the for the rest of the immediate
future. So everybody, you can just write down anonymously on a piece of
paper, give me an envelope, and just tell me what happened, you
know, so then we'll just have a sort of un understanding. And you
said he got likes, Yeah, he got like two hundred letters. And
some of the stuff are the most outrageous stuff, I think. I think
it was sort of like a case of Chinese whispers, where lots of people
would be like someone I had heard that someone that I hate did this certain
thing, you know, like done these executions or whatever, and you know,
like some outlandish stuff. And I can imagine a lot of the stuff
were things that had actually happened, and so they were like, well,
how can we reconcile with this? So they brought in a civilian sociologist,
which was has been hugely contentious. A woman called doctor Samantha Comforts, and
she is, you know, essentially a culture expert, and so she interviewed
a lot of a lot of soldiers about what had happened, and then she
filed this report and the report was meant to be about, you know,
the culture. She gave it to the Chief Defense about the culture within Special
Operations Command, but a lot of it was detailed detailing the ethical failings as
she saw it within the command. And so the Comfort Reports, you know,
became big news in Australia. It was you know, it was very
much a big deal. And then the IGADF at that point stepped in and
they worked on a report for a long time as well. One of the
issues with that report, my understanding is that one of the issues of that
report is that they impelled witnesses to speak. So they interviewed sas soldiers and
commandos and they were compelled to talk, you know, they couldn't basically take
a fifth. And then the report came out and the report detailed thirty nine
murders and there were nineteen people who had who had allegedly committed these murders.
The report stressed that these this wasn't the totality of what we think the war
crimes problem was, but these are people who we think can be referred to
a prosecutor. And so after that the Australian government there was the Burdon Report
came out. It was a big day in Australia. You know, the
Prime Minister stood up on the Dais with the Defense Minister and the Chief of
Defense and said, you know, we're all outraged by this. You know,
no one's more shocked than I am, saying all the right things.
The Buron Report, by the way, said that you know, while there
was some moral failings within the command, you know, it's basically the responsibility
of the soldiers who pulled the trigger, which is not how I But they
then built this new body called the Office of the Special Investigators, and so
they were then going to build these briefs of evidence from these referrals from the
Breton Report and then take them to the Department of Public Prosecutions and then these
would go through and become trials. But Brereton was twenty twenty I believe,
So it's now four years later we've had one arrest a guy called Oliver Schultz,
and he was the person who pulled the trigger in the infamous video where
he's standing over an Afghan youth saying do you want me to drop this count?
And then he kills him. There hasn't been any other referrals. There
haven't been any other arrests. There was one of the other things that after
the Breton was announced, the Prime Minister announced that there was going to be
an implementation Panel and Afghan Implementation Panel, so this was going to this was
going to address all the structural issues and the command issues. So they got
these three experts and they were working on it for a couple of years on
the things the Defense might have done wrong. They were meant to table the
reports to the government and then the government were meant to make these reports public.
They didn't, so people have had to go on FI these requests,
which is a freedom of information mechanism that's within Australian law where you could get
governments out of you can get documents out of government. And then the final
report, which I can imagine there's going to be particularly damning of government and
defense that hasn't been made public. So the Deputy Prime Minister who's also our
Defense minister, has been given the report. He was given the report a
long time ago. FOI requests have been made. Those requests have been denied,
incidentally by someone who is involved in the the the revitalization of defense post
Afghanistan. The Senate in our Australian Senate has asked for it to be tabled.
In fact, they've ordered for it to be tabled. They have twice
ordered it for it be tabled. It's gone to a vote in the Senate.
The Senate that the vote has passed, that report is still not like,
it still isn't available to us. So, you know, years and
years and years on, the thing sort of drags on and we have you
know, we have this this high profile General Smith's defamation case where there's no
criminal liability in jeopardy. We have this one soldier who is going to be
tried for this murder. And then we have this you know report about about
defense accountability and what you know what what the government of the day knew or
didn't know or should have s wouldn't have done and it's nowhere to be seen.
And meanwhile the war goes on for Australian special Operations. These guys get
sent right off to Iraq to deal with ISIS. Yeah, that's right.
And there was always speculation that, you know, the four Squadron guys go
over to a thing called Gallant Phoenix. Have you guys interviewed anyone who was
part of Gallaphini. I'm pretty sure we have, even if they didn't use
that term. Yeah, it's like a collective intelligence gathering in Jordan, I
believe, where they tracked all the international jihihi that went over to Syria and
Iraq. And then you know, I think there was some targeting the TF
Hydra, the Brits and the French and from your what you write about the
Australians also, Yeah, in Australians as well. So that was the that
was an s AS element that went and did that. But then the commandos
went on and worked in the in the strike cells in around Mossel and Alasade
and attacking them and places like that. And the Australians are actually in a
house with Eddie Gallagher when when the Eddie Gallagher incident happened. Yeah, So
that was seals and commandos who were who were together in Bartella in the Battle
of Mosol. Interesting. Yeah, I've actually been told that the Special Air
Service has kind of taken over from the Americans, uh, kind of mentoring
the white reaction regiment in the Philippines. Yeah, I mean that would make
sense given that we're you know, we're sort of much closer to the Philippines
than you guys are. And the Australians, I mean, the Mint and
now insurgency issue, I can't remember. Do you guys remember when that was?
I mean, it's it's still like ongoing going. Yeah, but I
know Australians are over there bringing air strikes and jay tax and sort of the
prototypical strike cells there as well. So yeah, I would imagine. I
mean, I'm my visibility is with is with operations in Afghanistan. You know,
I'm not figuring on the pulse of stuff that's happening now, but that
wouldn't surprise me at all. Do we have questions? Yeah? Yeah,
did you know if do we have any Patreon stuff? Okay, let me
get to this real quick. So where do things stand today, Ben?
With like, if you could talk a little bit about the forced disposition of
the Australian Special Operations community, Well, I mean everybody almost uniformly everybody I'm
in contact with is retired because I think part of the reason is because that
was the party. You know, Afghanistan was the place where where you know,
you could be involved in combat, and I think there was going to
be at least a long interregnum after Iraq. I mean, Iraq was was
very different. You know, the caw rice, this stuff was was not
gun fighting. And the people that I speak to are sort of generally an
agree group for various the various different reasons, you know, I mean,
there are a lot of there is a lot of unity within the community in
that they think that the command piece of the war crime story in Afghanistan should
be understood and should be exposed. It shouldn't be that the entire weight of
those failures should be on the soldiers, of the guys who are on the
ground. And so even though you know there's a lot of different voices and
there's a lot of people who hate each other, and you know, there's
a lot of old, old, old wounds, I think most people think
that there should be an understanding of of of what the command piece is.
Yeah, what do we got for ben here M Corbyn, thank you very
much. And Aussie budd asks how important was b R. S's family backgrounding
the protection of him. Was there a cultural problem in other squadrons? There
were, there was a cultural problem in other squadrons, but presumably it wasn't
as bad as two squadrons. So just a bit of background. They were
right, Sorry, was that the squadron that was disbanded. They were supposedly
disbanded, but you know it's a bit of a black box at the moment.
So yeah, Veneral smith'sdat is Lenn Robert Smith, who was a major
general and he was he was the head of the jagquars. I believe here
in Australia he was the head of a task force. I think just before
the Robert Smith alleged murders. He was someone who was in charge of of
taking bullying out of the Australian Defense Force. I believe he was part of
a task force doing that. So whether his family, I think it's highly
unlikely it his family was was sort of directly involved in covering up any of
the stuff, and you know that would be I'd be amazed by that.
But I think, you know, being someone who is from a background that
is that is what it was, and it may have made it more difficult
to people to point the finger and to shine a light. I think the
Victoria Cross might have done that as well. So I don't think that they
would have been sort of like, you know, a cover up in that
way, but I think that it would have given people pause to come forward.
Scott G. Thank you very much. What what's your opinion David McBride
and how he would have had protections under the whistible olarge with experts testifying,
but the government blocked the testimony for security concerns. Yeah, that's a really
interesting question. So McBride lived just down the road from me, someone that
needs to see all the time if you don't know what he did. He
was a legal officer Special Operations Task Group legal officer who was deployed in twenty
thirteen and he was given this Rule of Engagement amplification. So it was basically
new steps within the new steps that the soldiers had to adhere to to use
lethal force. And his speculation was that this was because commands knew that there
had been these murders that had happened and that they wanted to have this ROI
amplification. So if it all comes to light, they can say, look,
you know, we did what we could. The soldiers were bad soldiers.
You know, we've given this roe that they weren't adhering to what can
we do? And he took umbrage to that. And there were a few
other things. There were an incident in which a soldier was being investigated for
a killing and he didn't believe that the soldier had erred, and that he
thought that this was again, you know, this selective prosecution, basically protecting
themselves against some sort of exposures to these other war crimes that had happened.
And so eventually he leaked a bunch of documents to a journalist, to an
Australian journalist who published some of those documents, and you know, you could
argue that that was sort of the beginning of all the internal stuff. You
know, the Conference Report and the Burnt Report might not have happened, but
that there was this public pressure because these documents had been had been shared on
the ABC. And then the Australian Federal Police charged him and the journalist who'd
been given the documents with Espionage Act breaches. McBride was found guilty, and
you're making reference to the fact that there's these whistleblower protections. McBride David McBride,
who's a lawyer himself, and the person who was acting for him,
you know, is a very senilar too. They have built this defense and
I can't go into what the defense is because of because of the way Australian
law works. But they had built this defense and at the eleven thousand Australian's
books came in and said, you can't present this defense. You know,
national national security information involved, so you can't present this to the court.
And so there were going to be witnesses. I had made a submission on
his behalf as well, that we're going to be presented to the judge.
And then you know, this national security information interjection basically meant that he had
to abandon his defense and then either defend himself with no evidence or pleet guilty
and sort of throw himself onto the and to the mercy of the court.
So he did the latter. He's waiting and sentencing at the moment, and
that that is a blight against Australian law that someone had who had done something
that ended up being public good. There's been a lot of contentious conversation as
to why he did what he did. I think it's kind of relatively material.
You know, he did expose these crimes. It's you know, it's
a blight on Australian law that he wasn't without the contradiction in the law is
it's factually true that he exposed criminal activity, but it's also true that he
broke Australian law by breaking classification. And there's a real problem there that he
wasn't granted some sort of whistlebull or protection. But I think the other issue
is, yes, that's true that there should have been some sort of whistleblower
of protection for him. But when those two things happen, you know,
when there are these sort of immovable forces within the law, there should be
some sort of public conversation about where we actually should fall. And that never
happened. You know that his trial never happened. He basically the whole thing
just disappeared and he went straight to sentencing, which is what he's waiting for
at the moment. And it also sort of highlights the idea that yes,
reporting crimes or you know this stuff is important, but if the state commits
the crimes, then then it's not. Then then then the state trumps the
crimes. Yeah yeah, I mean that's that's definitely something that happens in Camber.
You know, it's definitely an entity that is incredibly good at protecting itself.
Right, So rules for you know, the but not for me kind
of we have issue ahead. Your issue is what the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
which is the the National broadcaster, recently did a piece about David McBride.
Uh and you know, it wasn't a hitch of but but it just it
just wasn't particularly sympathetic to him and especially the reasons why he made these disclosures.
And it there is just this there's this perception, I mean it's not
even really perceptions, just the way that it sort of looks is that they
ended up being part of the government ganging up on this guy who it's all
the individuals that end up bearing the brunt of of of these things. The
soldiers. It's always the soldiers. The institution crushes the person they crushed the
soldier and and not and and it's it's the generally the low level soldier,
right, So it's it's the enlisted or the one to four or three.
It's the general. The generals are fine. At worst, they quietly retire,
yeah and get it and get a multi million job on on some board
somewhere. Nobody's ever going to take him a pass for the lies they told
or the people they sent. You know. Yea's exactly right. And you
know, the way that it worked is, you know, because we had
such a poor understanding of what was happening in Afghanistan, everybody was lauded and
promoted and given medals for this campaign that was that was the lack direction.
But then they were already in those positions when when all of the failures were
exposed, so they're like, oh well I'm already yeah, yeah, it's
like what we do. Yeah yeah, I got feels about that. Okay,
Scott, thank you very much. We really appreciate. What do you
think of how there are soldiers who post on a scrab and describing how when
they were in the Second Commander Regiment they would throw down radios on people they
killed to claim they were enemy combatants. I think I think I know specifically
who this person is talking about, which Instagram they're talking about, and you
know he's he's a good friend of mine, and he has a tattoo of
a radio of a dead affgues on his arm. Yeah. I actually,
I actually don't believe that this guy ever actually threw a radio down on a
dead app gut if we are talking about the same people. Uh. And
in conversations that I had with him, he's like, we don't set the
rules. You know. The rules are if we are told that if we
see someone with an ICM radio, we're allowed to shoot them. Those are
the rules that that we're given. And the tatoo is making reference to the
context, which is you're going to give me ship for the job that I
did the way that you told me to do it. You know that that's
that's not appropriate. I'm just going to I'm going to do what you told
me to do. I'm a soldier. I don't get to make my own
rules. I don't get to you know, legal officers tell me what the
what the what the bound of engagement are. So yeah, that's that's that's
my understanding of the of the throwdown stuff that's happening on Instagram. Yeah,
and that's it for the questions on feed guys. Uh, I hope you
go out and get yourself a copy of Fine Fixed Finish. This book is
this is the best book I have ever read about just how how how how
elite soldiers come off the rails? Like how does how does a special operations
a very elite unit people were specially selected and trained, but also it's a
very insular culture and how does that come undone? How does that happen and
why? And I think this book does a really good job of explaining that.
Go check out the both find Fixed Finish, also Masul and the Commando.
I don't know, Ben, do you do you have anything else that
you want to tell the audience out there? Where can people find you?
What's the next book coming out? Uh? Well, I mean this book
came out last year, which is my memoir, which is about recovering from
that stroke and that heart attack and then sort of going off and doing the
things that I did, So you can check that out. The other book
that I'm working on the moment is I'm working with the Australian picket captain called
Pet Cummins on a book about leadership. So that'll come out out back into
this year. So yeah, read all the pet Commons books, but I
write will you? Uh? Will you hold up your the other book again,
I'm going to read I'm going to say it for the people who are
listening on a podcast, a scar is also skin. I mean the good
thing is you probably won't be able to find fine fixed finish in America,
but scars also skin. It's like on Spotify and Audible and well yeah,
I mean full, full, full disclosure I interview or I'm sorry. I
ordered this book off of Amazon and it only took like three months to get
to me. You can probably get it on Kindle quite a bit faster.
I would think that might be the way to go for most of the folks.
So yeah, books for the other books. Yeah. Uh So on
Monday we're going to be back with Rick Kaiser, who is a seal that
wrote a book about Frogman stories. And then on Friday we're going to have
a retired B one pilot here in studio our first Yeah, we'll be talking
we'll be talking about with us. Yeah, we won't be talking about grenades
and rifles in that one. It will be more of the strategic level stuff.
So that'll be interesting. Ben, thank you for spending your Australian Friday
morning with us. Saturday a Saturday morning is a Saturday morning or Friday morning,
Saturday morning, Saturday morning. You're missing all the cartoons. Yeah,
big guys. Thanks, I appreciate it, and we'll see everyone else out
there next week. Thanks everyone,