The Curious Case of David McBride

Author’s Note: This article discusses the deaths of civilians and non-combatants in war. I make a clear distinction between incidents resulting in collateral damage, and those in which civilians/non-combatants are killed as a result of reckless, indifferent or unnecessarily violent conduct by a military force. I am aware of the current world situation (I don’t live under a rock, after all), and want to make it clear that any military action which actively targets civilians is a heinous crime, as is the use of human shields. I do not include these types of actions in my discussion of actions resulting in collateral damage, or excuse the personnel who commit them.

The Curious Case of David McBride

On the 14th of May 2024, former army lawyer David McBride was sentenced to five years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of twenty-seven months, for leaking classified military documents to the media, and publishing them online.¹ The documents he leaked were used by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), among other news media organisations, to compile a series of reports which began known as The Afghan Files. They revealed the shocking and, in many cases, illegal behaviour of some Australian soldiers, predominantly from the SAS, who were committing war crimes with impunity. Following his sentencing, the ABC declared that the first person jailed over the war crimes saga is the man who broke the story.²

Excuse me, but… what?!

David McBride did not break the story of war crimes in Afghanistan.

Samantha Crompverts, a sociologist who had been hired by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to examine their internal culture, was the first person (outside Defence) to raise the allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan.³ She described having heard “whispers” about behaviour which crossed the line from immoral to illegal, and which was being covered up by a warrior culture and a code of silence. She was the first to lift the lid on what has turned out to be one of the most damning scandals in the history of the ADF.

She suffered for it too.⁴ Defence Minister (and now Federal Opposition Leader) Peter Dutton, whose department Crompverts worked closely with, made it clear that she was to be awarded no further contracts for work with Defence. He said that he didn’t want the Australian military, which was, at that time, preparing for what became the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, to be “distracted by the past.” Tasmanian senator (and former member of the Australian Army) Jacqui Lambie questioned Crompverts’ credibility in parliament, under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. Lambie’s position, that those who had not been to war did not get to pass judgement on the actions of those who had, was popular in the conservative press and especially in the Murdoch media. 

I want to deviate here for a moment and examine this claim by Lambie and others. There is certainly an element of truth to it. Military personnel in the field do need to make split second decisions, often while under incredible stress, which can have extreme consequences. They don’t need civilians back in Australia pouring over their every move and deciding whether or not each shot was legitimate. However, something which the critics of Crompverts (and the war crimes inquiry at large) ignored was that these incidents were not the inquiry’s concern. The deaths of civilians and non-combatants are inevitable in war, no matter how careful military forces are. That’s a bloody reality you cannot escape, and sometimes these people are killed in situations which look very much like murder from a civilian standpoint, but which may be legal in a military context. In this sense, Lambie and others are right in reminding those of us at home, who have never been to war, to hold our judgement, but she and others were (and are) wrong to suggest that the actions of military personnel should never be held up for scrutiny by outsiders. 

Incidents in which civilians are killed should (I would even argue must) be investigated, and military personnel should be entitled to the same rights as civilians when accused of a crime: the presumption of innocence etc. It is also reasonable to have outside experts as part of the investigating team, as they may see relevant things the military, who are immersed in the situation, might miss. If nothing else, it also looks much better from a public relations perspective if there is an independent person actively (and I do stress that word, they can’t just be a figurehead or a token) taking part in any investigation, because it lessens the risk of a cover-up, or the perception of a cover-up, which can be just as damning. We, i.e. civilians watching from home without military experience, also need to accept that military rules and laws are different from what would be acceptable in our day-to-day lives. This doesn’t give personnel a green light to shoot anything that moves, but just because it would be murder if it happened on your street does not automatically make it so in a military operation. As Chris Masters says in No Front Line: “When death is expressed as ‘passing,’ when military cadets learn that ‘kill zones’ are now ‘engagement areas’ and enemy combatants are ‘neutralised’ or ‘reduced,’ it is no surprise that the public has come to expect that war can be prosecuted without bloodshed or casualty.”⁵ Because we, the public, have been lulled into what I think is a false sense of security about the blood reality of how warfare is conducted and what the inevitable consequences will be, we have become very quick to judge personnel who do kill civilians/non-combatants, even if their action was legal in the context in which it happened.

But (you knew there was a but coming, didn’t you), when the line between disturbing and heart-breaking split-second deaths made in the heat of combat is crossed, that’s a problem. When the people being killed are unarmed and/or restrained, when they’re injured, when they’ve got their hands up and are offering no resistance, when they’re on the ground and being covered by weapons, when they couldn’t fight back even if they wanted to… these are not incidents of collateral damage. These are out and out war crimes, and it was these types of actions that Crompverts first uncovered, and which were later the focus of Justice Brereton’s Inquiry.

Returning now to David McBride, and the complex issues around the material he has recently been found guilty of releasing. As mentioned in the introduction, many are of the opinion that McBride is a whistleblower and that his conviction sends a chilling message to others who might be inclined to blow the whistle or illegal or unethical practices within their own organisations. 

My (unpopular) opinion: David McBride is not a whistleblower and he should be in jail.

The Afghan Files

Content Warning: War crimes

In 2017, the ABC published a series of reports known as The Afghan Files. These were based on the contents of top secret military reports, helmet camera and drone footage, and internal documents which detailed, and in some cases showed, Australian soldiers from the Special Air Service (SAS) committing war crimes. One of the most disturbing videos (in my opinion) was from 2012, and showed a group of SAS soldiers discussing whether to shoot an unarmed civilian man with an intellectual disability, later identified as Dad Mohammad, who was curled up in a foetal position at their feet.⁶ After they (allegedly) killed him, they (allegedly) placed a weapon they were carrying with them – a practice which was later revealed to be commonplace; these weapons were termed “throwdowns” – and (allegedly) claimed the man had been carrying it and using it when he was killed.⁷ The video, which came from another soldier’s helmet camera, clearly showed otherwise.

This video was among those McBride leaked to the ABC when he was a military lawyer in Afghanistan. The soldier who pulled the trigger, Oliver Schulz, remains the only current or former member of the SAS so-far charged with war crimes.⁸ In my opinion, his companions have a case to answer too, because when Schulz asked “Want me to drop this c***?” any of them could (and should!) have said “No!”⁹ I think this is especially true of the NCO (non-commissioned officer) who was commanding that patrol, who appears to have make no effort to rein Schulz in at any point, and simply shrugged and replied “I don’t know” when Schulz asked again if he should “drop this c***.”¹⁰ The man Schulz (allegedly) murdered was a beloved son, brother, brother-in-law and uncle, with no connection to the Taliban or other insurgent forces.¹¹ 

Along with this and other videos, there was a large trove of documents leaked by McBride to the ABC. The documents revealed (among other things) a deep-seated unease among high ranking officers inside and outside the SAS about the “warrior culture” common in the elite regiment, and whether it was compatible with army values.¹² During the war in Afghanistan, Australian special forces were frequently deployed on rotations where they weren’t needed, and performed tasks which could have been done by conventional forces.¹³ They were very much overused, and (according to the ABC’s reporting on the matter), this bred a sense of entitlement among some SAS soldiers. They came to believe that the war could not be won without them, which in turn led to some of these men believing they were above the law. Their officers were aware of this, as were officers in the conventional forces, who had long been raising concerns about how their own personnel were being treated by special forces, and the effect it was having on morale. There was no evidence in the documents that officers knew about war crimes, but the documents suggest they knew something was amiss, but did little to tackle the problem. At first blush this read like incompetence, but the reluctance of SAS officers to hold their subordinates to account went deeper.

As Mark Willacy revealed in Rogue Forces, the structure of the SAS at this time was an absolute shambles! Troopers and NCOs were walking all over their officers and doing as they pleased, while the officers themselves, who were often younger and less experienced than the personnel they were commanding, were not given the support and training they needed to manage these men. Bullying was rife, and the ADF is currently embroiled in several legal disputes with former officers, who alleged their careers were deliberately sabotaged by a powerful group of non-commissioned officers within the SAS with the disturbing nickname “the NCO mafia.”¹⁴ Officers who attempted to rein in their soldiers were ignored, mocked and abused, and in some cases the bullying was so severe the officers were medically discharged with life-long psychological injuries, and others took their own lives.¹⁵ Those officers who refused to bow to the NCO mafia were often falsely accused of career ending crimes, such as sexual assault, and the Brereton Inquiry revealed a deep-seated culture of fear among officers, especially younger officers, in the SAS. They knew something was wrong, but their soldiers weren’t telling them and they were too afraid to ask or demand to know what was happening on patrols. They had seen what happened to those officers who stuck their necks out and pulled rank on the powerful troopers and NCOs who dominated the culture of the SAS. 

Breaking News?

As mentioned above, despite the sensational media reports to the contrary, McBride was not the person who revealed the allegations of war crimes by Australian special forces to the Australian public. In 2017, when he sent the documents to the ABC, the Brereton Inquiry was already underway, and had been for twelve months. Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters had published more than a dozen of their investigative reports which would eventually lead to the spectacular fall from grace of Ben Roberts-Smith, who had already sued both of them for defamation (although the trial itself would not begin until 2021). Talkback radio and the letters to the editor sections of newspapers were full of people debating the merits of the war crimes probe (sometimes violently!) and Samantha Cromptverts had already been sacrificed by Defence, despite them having asked her to write the report which began the inquiry! Behind the scenes, Justice Brereton and his investigators had been interviewing witnesses from Australia and Afghanistan, they’d been collecting and collating documents, they’d served Defense and individuals with warrants for notes, mission reports, body and helmet camera footage, and had compelled current and former service personnel to testify under oath. Like the rest of the country, David McBride knew about the inquiry, and this is where his story of being a concerned whistleblower first springs a leak.

McBride wasn’t to know it, but the Brereton Inquiry already knew about the allegations he “uncovered” when he leaked to the ABC. The team had interviewed at least one of the men who was with Schulz that day, and they’d also been given the reports McBride would later show the ABC. An important point about the soldier who spoke to the Brereton Inquiry about Schulz: in Australia, testimony given before a commission of inquiry or similar body is protected by law, and they cannot be charged for any crimes they admit to under oath. I cannot help but wonder if this is the reason why Schulz is the only one who has so far been charged over this incident. If the other men testified to what they saw, even though their actions on the day left a lot to be desired, they are now immune from prosecution. Schulz also testified before the Brereton Inquiry, but he either didn’t mention this incident or he lied under oath, which nullifies any protection a person has against self-incriminating evidence being used against them in court. While the rules around immunity can be frustrating at times, especially in serious cases such as this, they exist for a very good reason. After all, we’d never get to the bottom of any serious matters requiring testimony by witnesses if those who may have participated were forced to incriminate themselves.

But, back to McBride. 

If he was, as he claims to be now, a whistleblower concerned by the appalling and inexcusable behaviour he’d witnessed in Afghanistan, why did he give the information to the ABC, rather than the Brereton Inquiry? As mentioned above, he didn’t know they already had it, and (much to the chagrin of those who felt Australian soldiers could do no wrong) the Brereton Inquiry was independent of Defence. The Department of Defence and the ADF had no control over who was called, what evidence could be presented, or what findings could be made. Neither could refuse subpoenas, ADF personnel were not immune from being ordered to testify, and there was no hiding being “operational security.” Had these organisations played a bigger part in the inquiry, or had some kind of power or control over it, I would understand McBride going to the press, but to claim now that he leaked the documents because he wanted war crimes investigated, when at the time he did not give the material to an investigation which was doing just that is… unconvincing. 

Especially when you consider the motives he gave for the leak in 2017.

Does Motive Matter?

Whistleblower advocate Peter Greste, who has supported and defended David McBride since he was arrested in 2018, answers the above question in the negative. It doesn’t matter what the whistleblower’s motives are, the important part is the information they reveal.¹⁶ However, I simply can’t, and don’t, accept that. Blowing the whistle is a fraught process in Australia, as we lack robust protections or legal frameworks to shield from prosecution those who bring important issues to public notice when all other methods have failed. The case of Richard Boyle, who blew the whistle on unethical debt recovery practices at the Australian Tax Office which were driving small businesses and vulnerable Australians to the wall is a case in point.¹⁷ Boyle’s motives were clear: he acted to protect the public from unscrupulous business practices by a powerful organisation that was victimising people.

McBride on the other hand… He didn’t want to alert the public to what was being done by their soldiers in their name on the other side of the world. In fact, he didn’t even see himself as blowing the whistle! He was angry about the investigations which were happening, and felt that soldiers were being victimised for just doing their jobs.¹⁸ This was around 2012, when McBride says most soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan were getting frustrated with the government dishonestly claiming they were winning the war, when it was very apparent to them it was unwinnable.¹⁹ The soldiers Chris Masters interviewed for his book around the same time were feeling much the same way, and it seems that there was a lot of bad feeling on the ground about how politicised the war had become. I can’t blame personnel for feeling this way: since the war had started Australia had changed government twice and Prime Minister three times.²⁰ Each new Prime Minister brought with them a new cabinet, including a new Defence Minister, who were eager to stamp their mark on a war which was already long past unwinnable. 

The thing about every wartime politician in history is they don’t want to be the one to lose the war. It’s bad for re-election prospects and can be career ending, and this was as true for the Australian politicians who held high level positions during the Afghanistan War as at any other time in history. We know now that they were getting reports which were recommending changes, including a reduction in the number of SAS personnel they were sending on near continuous rotations, but they chose not to act on them. They were also very conscious that public opinion, which had been uncertain about getting involved in the war to begin with, had turned sharply against it, and people became more implacably opposed to the Afghanistan conflict each time another Australian came home in a flag-draped coffin. In total, 41 Australian soldiers were killed in action or died of wounds in Afghanistan, and over 200 were injured. Our losses were light compared to some of our allies, but this is no comfort to those who lost a loved one in what was starting to be seen as an increasingly pointless war. 

Political pressure was also building over reports of civilian casualties. As discussed above, this is an inevitable consequence of going to war, no matter how careful militaries are. Civilian casualty counts are hard to quantify for the Afghanistan campaign, as no one was officially counting, and attitudes in places like Australia towards the Afghan people were backwards, to say the least. Around 2012, the Australian government suddenly became very interested in how many Australian soldiers had been involved in incidents which had resulted in civilian casualties, after spending years either ignoring the issue, or airly explaining it away. According to Chris Masters, when a civilian was killed in Afghanistan by ADF personnel, there were a very strict process that had to be followed, which often included an investigation by the military police into the actions which had led to lethal force being applied. This investigative report would then be sent to Canberra, and the politicians in the Department of Defense would decide if independent civilian investigators from the AFP needed to launch a murder investigation. At this time, McBride was a military lawyer, so often represented soldiers who were being interviewed by the military police or the AFP in relation to these incidents.

By McBride’s own admission, he became frustrated with the number of investigations which began happening around 2012.²¹ Soldiers who had been cleared by the military were now being investigated by the AFP, which he felt was unfair. He is right to say there was a political element to these investigations, as the Australian government wanted to be seen to be doing something to address public concern about rising reports of civilian casualties. As I said before, I’m actually in favour of civil authorities investigating civilian deaths in war. Every. Single. One. And it should just be a standard part of the process, not an optional one. What I’m not in favour of, and what happened in Australia in 2012, is governments cherry picking which investigations to open and then using those investigations to bolster their own credibility and curry favour with the public. They didn’t care about the civilians who had been killed or their families who were suffering, nor did they concern themselves with the soldiers who were under investigation. It was entirely a political exercise to appease people at home, who wanted to believe that it was possible to fight a war without civilians being caught in the crossfire. I can understand why McBride was angry about it!

This, he says, is what led him to copy documents and videos, and share then with the ABC and online. He was sick and tired of soldiers being investigated for doing their jobs, and wanted to show the public what it was really like in Afghanistan. He’d launched an internal complaint in 2015, but it had been dismissed. Importantly, he wasn’t complaining about war crimes, just about the number of investigations which were happening: he wanted them stopped.²² This is the bit that is not talked about enough; he wasn’t on some crusade to expose war criminals, and the ADF hadn’t ignored his concerns about war crimes in the ranks, because he hadn’t raised any! But you won’t hear him talking about that as he raises his fist and declares himself a warrior for truth and justice on the steps of the Supreme Court. His motivations for leaking were to stop investigations which he felt (rightly, in the cases he was aware of) were politically motivated. I don’t know if he was aware that war crimes were happening – he wasn’t in the SAS, so it is possible that he didn’t know in the beginning. However, I struggle to see how a lawyer could watch the footage of Schulz (allegedly) murdering an unarmed man curled up at his feet and think: ‘This is ordinary and acceptable behaviour for a soldier that should not be investigated.’

What the hell is going on when a military lawyer can’t tell the difference between collateral damage and the criminal murder of a civilian? 

Given the evidence, I don’t think McBride cared about war crimes at all, and certainly wasn’t blowing the whistle on them. If he had wanted to do something about this behaviour, he would have handed the evidence he stole to the Brereton Inquiry. Instead, he gave it to the ABC, in the hope that it would convince people that soldiers were being unfairly investigated.

Metamorphosis 

When the ABC released it’s report The Afghan Files, McBride was deeply disappointed.²³ Far from using the material he’d sent them to argue that soldiers should not be investigated for their actions, the ABC blew the war crimes scandal wide-open and demanded the soldiers involved be held accountable. They referenced the Brereton Inquiry (which had been underway for twelve months) and were able to confirm that the inquiry team were already aware of the information and were currently investigating it. Confused, upset, and convinced he was right and everyone else was wrong, McBride fled to Spain in 2018. He re-entered Australia later that same year for a family event, and hoped to leave quietly without being caught, as he was aware that he was wanted over the leak. He was arrested as he returned to the airport to fly back to Spain.²⁴ 

However, his attitude changed quickly once he saw the public reaction to the war crimes scandal. People were shocked, horrified, disgusted and furious – war was ugly, but it wasn’t supposed to be that ugly! Australian soldiers were meant to be “the good guys,” and people were revolted by the sight of their soldiers turning their guns on innocent civilians and blowing them away just because they could! As the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial got underway, and ever more allegations were made regarding the behaviour of some Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, the public mood turned from denial and disbelief to outrage and anger. What had happened over there? The loud calls to end the Brereton Inquiry because it was a waste of time and money fell silent (except in the deeply conservative press) and people began asking who was to blame, and demanding accountability for these heinous actions.

The metamorphosis of David McBride began around 2020, when he saw the way the wind was blowing and began styling himself as a whistleblower. He presented himself as a man driven by his personal sense of honour and duty to reveal to the Australian public what was being done in their names overseas. This is a nice story, but it was not why McBride leaked to the ABC. He leaked to try and stop investigations into the conduct of soldiers, because he was annoyed at the ADF for dismissing his complaint. He could have appealed this dismissal, or gone through other channels to have his complaint reassessed. There were options available to him at the time, but he became so convinced of his own opinion that he ignored the options in front of him and decided to go nuclear.²⁵ When that failed to achieve the outcome he believed was the only one available, he reinvented himself and pretended to have been ignored, silenced and ultimately forced to steal and leak documents and video to the press.

I think Dr. Roger Shanahan said it best: 

“Far from the theft and leaking of classified information representing a desperate final act for someone whose pleas for justice had been ignored, McBride was allowed to spend his work hours compiling a formal complaint over what he believed to be corrupt practices to the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force.” ²⁶

Dr. Roger Shanahan, Former Australian Army Officer

He added:

And far from someone whose complaints were ignored, forcing him to disclose classified information that he stole as a last resort, [Justice David Mossop] noted that it was significant that during the trial “no attempt was made to prove as a fact … that the claims made by McBride were justified, that they were inappropriately addressed … or that the mechanisms for complaint or redress available under the law were not adequate.”²⁷

Dr. Roger Shanahan, Former Australian Army Officer

You can read the full judgement here if you’re interested.

In Closing

David McBride’s legal team has indicated that he will appeal his sentence, and his supporters continue to hold him up as an example of why Australia needs better legislative protection for whistleblowers. They are right, Australia’s whistleblower protections are shocking inadequate and need to be strengthened, but none of that would help David McBride. McBride isn’t a whistleblower, he isn’t a hero, and he isn’t a victim of government persecution. He’s a thief, plain and simple, and an egotistical one at that. He’s also a very intelligent man who has successfully conned an awful lot of people into believing he is one some kind of crusade for the truth, when, if he’d has his way, we would still be in the dark about the (alleged) war crimes committed by our forces overseas. 

There are plenty of real heroes in this story. Here are some I think are worthy of notice: 

• Samantha Crompverts, who first officially revealed the deep-seated cultural problems and lifted the lid on war crimes allegations.

• Members of the ADF and SAS communities who were ostracised by their comrades after breaking the ‘code of silence’ and speaking out regarding what they did and saw in Afghanistan.

• The people of Afghanistan who braved speaking out against powerful, foreign militaries whose soldiers had killed their family members without justification.

• Investigative journalists such as Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and Mark Willacy, who persisted with uncovering the truth despite being threatened, sued, and harassed.

• Justice Paul Brereton, who doggedly continued with his inquiry, despite both public and private suggestions that he wrap it up, and got to the bottom of many events which had been only whispered about for years.

As for David McBride, all I have to say is that I hope he takes the time to reflect on his actions while in jail, and that he is able to enjoy a long, healthy life when he is released. I’m not hopeful the former will occur, but I don’t wish him ill. But, please, let’s save the title of ‘whistleblower’ for those who actually blow the whistle, not those so wrapped up in their own egos that they can’t see the opinions of others, or the options laid out in front of them.

1. Paul Sakkal. “Defence whistleblower sentenced to years in jail.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 14 May 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/defence-whistleblower-sentenced-to-years-in-jail-20240514-p5jdf9.html ↩︎
2. Rachel Mealey. “PM on the ABC.” ABC Radio. (Canberra, ACT), 14 May 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/pm/defence-whistleblower-david-mcbride-jailed/103744340. ↩︎
3. Samamtha Crompverts. “I exposed war crimes among the SAS. A few weeks ago, my car was repossessed.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 27 June 2023. https://www.theage.com.au/national/i-exposed-war-crimes-among-the-sas-a-few-weeks-ago-my-car-was-repossessed-20230621-p5diay.html ↩︎
4. Nick McKenzie & Chris Masters. “Attacks on war crimes researcher in a tawdry, misogynistic tradition.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 19 June 2021. https://www.theage.com.au/national/attacks-on-war-crimes-researcher-in-a-tawdry-misogynistic-tradition-20210617-p581y0.html. ↩︎
5. Chris Masters. No Front Line. (Crow’s Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2017), 637. ↩︎
6. Nick McKenzie & Michael Bachelard. “Gruesome video shows special forces brutality as ex-soldier alleges murder.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 16 March 2020.https://www.theage.com.au/national/gruesome-video-shows-special-forces-brutality-as-ex-soldier-alleges-murder-20200316-p54aqk.html. ↩︎
7. I have to say “allegedly” because none of the soldiers involved in the incident have been convicted of a crime. ↩︎
8. Jamie McKinnell. “Former SAS soldier Oliver Schulz charged with war crime granted bail.” ABC News. (Canberra, ACT), 28 March 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-28/former-sas-soldier-oliver-schulz-granted-bail-war-crime-trial/102153756. ↩︎
9. Mark Willacy. Rogue Forces . (Sydney, NSW: Simon & Schuster, 2023). ↩︎
10. “Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith Truth on Trial.” Directed by Dora Weekley. Streamed on Stan 10 December 2023. https://www.stan.com.au/watch/revealed-ben-roberts-smith-truth-on-trial-2023 ↩︎
11. Rogue Forces ↩︎
12. Jane Cadzow. “David McBride on whistleblowing, his famous dad – and a possible jail sentence.” The Good Weekend. The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 2 March 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-on-whistleblowing-his-famous-dad-and-a-possible-jail-sentence-20240129-p5f0vq.html ↩︎
13. No Front Line, 648. ↩︎
14. Rogue Forces ↩︎
15. Ibid. ↩︎
16. Cadzow. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-on-whistleblowing-his-famous-dad-and-a-possible-jail-sentence-20240129-p5f0vq.html ↩︎
17. Evelyn Leckie. “Tax office whistleblower Richard Boyle continues legal fight to avoid prosecution.” ABC. (Canberra, ACT), 9 August 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-09/ato-whistleblower-richard-boyle-continues-legal-fight/102707768. ↩︎
18. Cadzow. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-on-whistleblowing-his-famous-dad-and-a-possible-jail-sentence-20240129-p5f0vq.html ↩︎
19. Ibid. ↩︎
20. In total, before Australian troops pulled out permanently, Australia had six Prime Ministers, two changes of government, and five leadership spills or votes. ↩︎
21. Cadzow. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-on-whistleblowing-his-famous-dad-and-a-possible-jail-sentence-20240129-p5f0vq.html ↩︎
22. Roger Shanahan. “David McBride is not a whistleblower or a hero. He is a man convinced of his own opinion.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC) 17 May 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-is-not-a-whistleblower-or-a-hero-he-is-a-man-convinced-of-his-own-opinion-20240516-p5je8u.html ↩︎
23. Cadzow. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-on-whistleblowing-his-famous-dad-and-a-possible-jail-sentence-20240129-p5f0vq.html. ↩︎
24. Ibid. Also, Spain has an extradition treaty with Australia, so it wouldn’t have been a permanent safe haven if the government had elected to chase him. ↩︎
25. Shanahan. https://www.theage.com.au/national/david-mcbride-is-not-a-whistleblower-or-a-hero-he-is-a-man-convinced-of-his-own-opinion-20240516-p5je8u.html ↩︎
26. Ibid. ↩︎
27. Ibid. ↩︎

SOURCES

Books & Audio Books

Masters, C. No Front Line. (Crow’s Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2017).

Willacy, M. Rogue Forces . (Sydney, NSW: Simon & Schuster, 2023).

Newspaper Articles

Bachelard, M. & McKenzie, N. “Gruesome video shows special forces brutality as ex-soldier alleges murder.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 16 March 2020.

Cadzow, J. “David McBride on whistleblowing, his famous dad – and a possible jail sentence.” The Good Weekend. The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 2 March 2024.

Crompverts, Samamtha . “I exposed war crimes among the SAS. A few weeks ago, my car was repossessed.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 27 June 2023.

Leckie, E. “Tax office whistleblower Richard Boyle continues legal fight to avoid prosecution.” ABC. (Canberra, ACT), 9 August 2023.

McKenzie, N. & Masters, C. “Attacks on war crimes researcher in a tawdry, misogynistic tradition.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 19 June 2021.

McKinnell, J. “Former SAS soldier Oliver Schulz charged with war crime granted bail.” ABC News. (Canberra, ACT), 28 March 2023.

Sakkal, Paul. “Defence whistleblower sentenced to years in jail.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC), 14 May 2024.

Shanahan, R. “David McBride is not a whistleblower or a hero. He is a man convinced of his own opinion.” The Age. (Melbourne, VIC) 17 May 2024.

Multi-Media

Mealey, Rachel. “PM on the ABC.” ABC Radio. (Canberra, ACT), 14 May 2024.

Weekley, D. “Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith Truth on Trial.” Streamed on Stan 10 December 2023.