(Not me) Official video from David McBride’s Official Youtube channel. If you don’t know who he is - I don’t blame you, with how little coverage this story has gotten
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Can we get a simplified summary?
David McBride is a former British Army major and lawyer for the Australian Army. He leaked documents to the ABC which formed the basis of its reporting on unlawful killings (murders) of Afghan civilians by Australian armed forces. He attempted to seek protection from prosecution through Australia’s whistleblower laws, however the Australian Government denied expert testimony through the use of public interest immunity laws so the case went to trial and he was recently sentenced to five years and eight months imprisonment.
It’s a fucking travesty what’s happening to him. He shone a light on some pretty sordid shit, shit that was definitely in the public interest to be reported, and he’s been made into the villain.
Our government should be fucking ashamed of themselves.
Not my original comment but i saw someone say ‘the first person to go to jail for these war crimes is the man who reported them’.
That’s a really sad, yet probably entirely accurate, assessment.
They had to do what daddy America told them to. Remember what happened to the last Australian government who went against the USA.
This is the best explanation of the case in full context I’ve seen.
When is his “if you’re seeing this video I’ve died mysteriously in prison” video coming out?
Welcome to the present! See my pinned post as to why I am only able to reply to your comment 8 days later (for now!)
I’m gutted. Devastated.
It’s a lot messier than most think.
McBride’s intention was not to leak to expose war crimes, it was to show how troops were being unnecessarily hounded by legal etc , ie ‘over-zealous” investigations of special forces’
The ABC discovered war crimes in the leaks and went down that path.
Now McBride looks like the hero being victimised for exposing the war crimes.
The abc is not biased at all in this, no. They’re not the ones he leaked to.
You make it sound like he accidentally leaked evidence of war crimes. He leaked evidence of war crimes comitted by generals as well as boots on the ground but somehow the abc’s top ‘investigative reporters’ ie gov’t stenographers are still missing that.
Did you ready the article? McBride initially posted on his personal blog, which caught the attention of ABC journalist Dan Oakes. The information was leaked to Oakes and the ABC from there.
My reading of the article was McBride didn’t initially think there were war crimes committed but:
ADF leadership alleg(ed) that SAS soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.
“If there is political bullshit going on against soldiers, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re SAS or not, you need to stand up for it,”
McBride didn’t think war crimes had happened which is why he asserts that the soldiers were being wrongly accused and investigated. Oakes disagreed.
Now the question is, why is Oakes making this allegation allegation against McBride if it’s not true?
I’m pretty sure he thought war crimes were happening, he just thought they were investigating the wrong soldiers to cover up for higher-ranking and more decorated soldiers like Ben Roberts-Smith to pretend that they cared about war crimes
soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.
Is honestly pretty unambiguous wording.
And the other evidence against your claim is, why would McBride had been pissed off by the ABC’s reporting of his leaked files? If you were right, the ABC’s angle would be completely aligned with McBride’s. Why would Oakes allege there was disagreement there?
I think he’d be pissed off at the ABC for missing the point and just covering the war crimes, effectively covering up the arses of those higher up.
soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.
Could mean exactly what I said as well
investigating the wrong soldiers to cover up
That’s what I said. The two statements are not mutually exclusive
I’m willing to entertain the idea that he may not have intended to whistleblow in order to reveal war crimes.
But if that’s the case, why couldn’t the government have relied upon a fair trial to establish his guilt? Even if he is guilty, he is owed due process, and being restricted from presenting necessary evidence is a violation of that due process.
Your link doesn’t appear to be working. Here’s an archived version of that article.
tfw no one commenting on this story seems to point out the fact that david mcbride leaked military documents to prove that commanders were being too harsh on the troops, only to inadvertently expose actual war crimes, proving that the commanders were not only not being too harsh on the troops, but actively covering up their missdeeds, lol
sucks to suck, have a good time in the pokey, buddy
Wow u sailed right past the point didn’t ya. Did u wave at it as it went over your head?
He leaked military documents cos innocent soldiers where being used as scape goats for other people committing war crimes. He didn’t want to see innocent people be punished for other peoples war crimes.
I would also like to point out the fact he was given a show trial where he wasn’t allowed to even use his evidence.
Actual war crimes 🤙
He did tattletale, huh 😡
Removed by mod
Yeah the point stands dumbass. “Over-investigation” of what he believed to be innocent troops.
I read through this and thought it was supportive of his exposing of war crimes. But then youre glad hes in jail for exposing war crimes and im just confused.
I’m neither glad, nor unhappy. I just found it strange no one was mentioning that this idiot thought he was taking issue with the military brass for unfairly targeting soldiers for war crimes his stolen document trove ended up proving were in fact happening.
And I’m enormously amused by the mass intellectual dishonesty in his defenders, on parade in this comment section.
I’m pretty sure that’s not what happened m8….
I’d advise that you do some research before making claims like this
Blow me.
BBC: "McBride, 60, admits he gave troves of document to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), saying he was concerned about the attitudes of commanders and what he then thought was the “over-investigation” of troops, the court heard.
But instead the information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, and contained allegations of war crimes."
No you:
According to the affidavit, McBride wanted Australians to know that “Afghan civilians were being murdered and Australian military leaders were at the very least turning the other way and at worst tacitly approving this behaviour”.
He continued: “At the same time, soldiers were being improperly prosecuted as a smokescreen to cover [leadership’s] inaction and failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.”
oh, HE said that once he got into trouble and needed a better defense than “whopps i was completely 100% percent wrong about why i exposed these highly sensitive national security documents, and now i need an excuse to stay out of prison”?
you don’t say
"He believed the dossier he compiled would show the ADF’s chain of command was so concerned about the perception of unlawful killings that they were scapegoating soldiers and undermining special forces’ confidence to do their work.
Instead, ABC journalist Dan Oakes found they contained evidence that Australian forces had committed war crimes and lied to conceal them.
“The more I looked into it, I couldn’t conceive how anyone would think these guys were being too tightly monitored. It was precisely the opposite,” he recently told the Four Corners programme."
Riddle me this then: Why would he hand evidence of war crimes being committed to a journalist if HE wanted people to know that soldiers weren’t committing war crimes?
That Four Corners episode came out fairly recently. Tell me, what motives would Dan Oakes, an investigative journalist with a reputation, have to disparage a whistleblower who is about to be prosecuted? I dunno, maybe he doesn’t want to be the target of prosecution himself and distancing from him is protection?
Why do you keep referring to the BBC article? It’s quite poorly worded and oversimplified for an international audience. You won’t find many articles about David McBride’s motives from before the case because he was secret then, the ABC gave him up.
“Why would he hand evidence of war crimes being committed to a journalist if HE wanted people to know that soldiers weren’t committing war crimes?”
because he’s a moron
The reporters weren’t ultimately prosecuted because they did nothing wrong in exposing the war crimes, freedom of the press, the public’s right to know, bad publicity for the prosecution service, take your pick
OF COURSE THE ABC GAVE HIM UP, he’s a moron, on the moron scale he’s an 11, his mum slapped herself, his teachers quit and are now living lives of public piety and humiliation in Tibet
So it’s either A:
- David McBride is an idiot who misinterpreted what was happening as a defence lawyer investigating war crimes
- War crimes happened
- Commanders and Politicians aren’t smart enough to cover up war crimes committed by PR exercises like Ben Roberts-Smith by investigating otherwise innocent soldiers
Or B:
- David McBride is not an idiot
- War crimes happened
- Commanders and Politicians are smart enough to attempt to cover up war crimes committed by the likes of Ben Roberts-Smith (Australia’s most decorated soldier, was used to ‘sell’ the war to Australians).
I choose B, but hey, you know better because of some random BBC article and an ABC hit piece
that wording is misleading at best. 2 things were true
- certain people were being overinvestigated in order to use resources so that others who were guilty of far larger crimes wouldn’t be investigated… that’s a VERY different thing
- he also thought that significant war crimes were going unpunished and uninvestigated
lol, no.
"He believed the dossier he compiled would show the ADF’s chain of command was so concerned about the perception of unlawful killings that they were scapegoating soldiers and undermining special forces’ confidence to do their work.
Instead, ABC journalist Dan Oakes found they contained evidence that Australian forces had committed war crimes and lied to conceal them.
“The more I looked into it, I couldn’t conceive how anyone would think these guys were being too tightly monitored. It was precisely the opposite,” he recently told the Four Corners programme."
yours is not what the ABC reporters, who were also under investigation for criminal security breach, and later had their investigation dropped, told the court were his intentions. what you wrote were his after the fact criminal defense strategy that he claimed were at the heart of why he leaked the documents.
the court found they were not, and that he was not entitled to whistleblower protection.
Telling a mod of the community you’re in to “blow me”? Brave move.
I find it amusing how confidently incorrect they are quoting some BBC article (because the BBC would have the best idea as to what is going on in Australia).
ABC : [which I’m sure is also oversimplified, poorly worded for an international audience]
"He spent months staying back at night gathering secret files from his work computer, compiling an internal complaint about the ADF leadership alleging that SAS soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.
“If there is political bullshit going on against soldiers, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re SAS or not, you need to stand up for it,” McBride says.
His complaint was dismissed."
"McBride fled to Spain, leaving his two young daughters with his ex-wife Sarah in Canberra. He also left behind four plastic tubs filled with classified documents in a lounge room cupboard at his apartment.
In his absence, the AFP conducted a search and found the secret files."
Principled Einstein. Obviously.
McBride had been concerned about what he saw as systemic failures of the SAS commanders, and their inconsistency in dealing with the deaths of “non-combatants” in Afghanistan. In an affidavit, he said he saw the way frontline troops were being
improperly prosecuted […] to cover up [leadership] inaction, and the failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.
He initially complained internally, but when nothing happened he decided to go public. In 2014 and 2015, McBride collected 235 military documents and gave them to the ABC. The documents included 207 classified as “secret” and others marked as cabinet papers.
yes, lol, that was his defense, but the court decided it wasn’t his original intent, which is why they found him guilty, and not protected by whistleblower statute
Same article:
Much has been made of McBride’s reasons for going to the media, but this focus on motives is a form of misdirection. Whistleblowers take action for a host of reasons – some of them less honourable than others. But ultimately, what matters is the truth of what they expose, rather than why.
That is why we recognise media freedom as an essential part of a healthy democracy, including the right – indeed the responsibility – of journalists to protect confidential sources. Unless sources who see wrongdoing can confidently expose it without fear of being exposed and prosecuted, the system of accountability falls apart and gross abuses of power remain hidden.
It is also why the formal name for Australia’s whistleblower protection law is the “Public Interest Disclosure Act”.
This law is designed to do what it says on the tin: protect disclosures made in the public interest, including those made through the media. It recognises that sometimes, even when the law imposes certain obligations of secrecy on public servants, there may be an overriding interest in exposing wrongdoing for the sake of our democracy.
.As a highly trained and experienced military lawyer, McBride knew it was technically illegal to give classified documents to the media. The law is very clear about that, and for good reason. Nobody should be able to publish government secrets without a very powerful justification.
But nor should the fact that a bureaucrat has put a “secret” stamp on a document be an excuse for covering up serious crimes and misdemeanours.
In McBride’s case, the judge accepted the first premise, but rejected the second.
