Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/30/24 Cathy Vogan and Eddie Lloyd: Australia Just Imprisoned David McBride for Reporting War Crimes

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Scott interviews journalist Cathy Logan and lawyer Eddie Lloyd about David McBride, the Australian whistleblower who revealed war crimes committed by Australian forces during the war in Afghanistan. McBride was just sentenced to prison. Vogan and Lloyd recount McBride’s story and then dig into the technicalities of the case. Discussed on the show: “Whistleblower McBride Sentenced to 5 Yrs., 8 Mos.” (Consortium News) “If you're seeing this, I'm in jail.” — McBride’s latest YouTube video Scott’s interview with Braden Chapman Scott’s interview with Ben Mckelvey Cathy Vogan is a journalist with Consortium News.  Eddie Lloyd is a defense attorney representing David McBride This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. Almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right, you guys, introducing Kathy Vogan from consortium news.com and Eddie Lloyd. She is a lawyer from the defense team of David McBride, the Australian one.

War Crimes Whistleblower from the Afghan War. Welcome both of you to the show. Appreciate you joining us today. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Okay, so I guess we'll start with you, Kathy, if you want to give us the overview here. And then maybe we'll get into some of the legal nuts and bolts with Eddie here. Okay, Scott.

Well, the short story is that David is in jail. And we had a trial after many, many years in November last year. It was supposed to be a week long, but it didn't even last that long. And essentially what happened over some dispute over the notion of duty, whether the duty of Major David McBride, who was a legal officer, a barrister, in fact, whether his duty was solely Alan Juremberg to obey orders, or whether if there was something amiss, whether it was his duty as a legal officer of the court.

And in fact, Eddie can go into more detail about that. It is actually legislated whether he had a duty to disclose that information. And in fact, David had discovered that back in 2012, there were some terrible things going on murders and he wasn't there at the time. He arrived in 2013 and he got some information that they wanted to change the rules of engagement and he said, oh, really? Why? And there was sort of resisting giving him. that reason why they wanted to change the rules and engagement.

But he kind of pushed forward and he took a look and he started looking back at what had happened the year before and he realized that there were some serious war crimes being committed. But then in 2013, there were investigations that began into other soldiers, who some of whom he said had not committed crimes at all. And it was sort of to make it look like something was being done. And then he saw the rules of engagement and he thought, well, you know, they don't need to be changed. But in the first place, they're not, you know, they're not good enough.

But they don't need to be changed in a way that would put a soldier's life at risk, like asking himself six questions before. he defends himself in a life-threatening situation for example and so he he launched an inquiry he tried to get some resolution some remedy internally and discovered it wasn't happening and then in 2014 towards the end of 2014 he decided to go to the media and he leaked information between 2000 and 2014 and 2016 and to three different journalists. One of them was called Dan Oaks in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And there was a series of revelations that were published both in print and also as a video document.

that really shocked Australia. The collection was called The Afghan Files, and it was about war crimes. And for the first time ever, the Australian public saw an execution of an unarmed civilian on their TV screens, and it shocked the country. Now, before that, in 2016,

there was an inquiry launch that went until 2020 before some public findings were made. That was initiated by Australian Major General Justice Paul Brereton, and out of that came the Brereton report. And even though the findings pointed to credible information about Australian war crimes, McBride in September 2018, he was charged with allegedly stealing government property and that was in violation of criminal code that was more or less a civil offense and then there were three more

more charges added and called it that violated the Defense Act of 1903 and then another one piled on top of that relating to the Crimes Act of 1914 which is actually the cousin of the Espionage Act and the Official Secrets Act. All three come from a common origin. So it's gone on and on, and then in November, his trial finally came up. And what happened at the trial was that it was decided, first of all, that McBride had no public interest defence. And then secondly, towards the end of that week, men in suits from the Attorney General's department. came in and removed all of the documents, all of the evidence from the court,

including exculpatory evidence that would show McBride's cause and, you know, the problem. The problem was not the war crimes in themselves. Of course, that was a great problem. But the problem that McBride was signaling was this cover-up that they were actually investigating other soldiers, and not the really serious war crimes that had happened the year before in 2012. So that unfortunately put McBride in the terrible situation where he had no real alternative but to plead guilty. And last month I went back to Canberra to report on a day of sentencing.

and we heard arguments all day long about how McBride should be punished. And one way which had been raised by the judge himself back in November was something akin to house arrest. It's called an intensive correction order. Sounds scary and it is quite intense in a way because his movements would be severely restricted. But it would be served in the community. community. And, you know, we all thought that that's what was going to happen. But the judge

deferred his decision for about a week. And then we went back for the final announcement of what was to happen to David McBride. And, you know, the prosecution, in fact, had been asking for a prison sentence. And we thought it might be this kind of intensive corrections order, a kind of house arrest could go up to four years. So it was already severe enough. But the way it turned out is that the judge decided that it was going to be five years and eight months in prison, custodial sentence, with two years and three months non-parole period. And that just absolutely shocked everyone. And I believe I could hand it over now to Eddie to to elaborate on how they would appeal that.

There was one moment when McBride said that, you know, he was sort of hoping, half hoping that he would be put in jail and then this matter could be taken to a higher court. I'll just explain that it started in the Supreme Court. Now the Supreme Court in Australia, is one below the High Court. Our highest court is the High Court.

And in between the Supreme Court and High Court, you've got the Court of Appeal. So that would be his next step, but that it would eventually be heard in the High Court. And we would get back to this fundamental question about the Nuremberg question is, is a military officer, legal officers, only duty to obey orders or if something is appears to be unlawful is it is it is it is it is it not always

the case that you should obey orders in fact that you should um execute your your duty to disclose and eddie will tell you um how that is actually legislated there is actually legislation that says that McBride's paramount duty was to the court and and also in turn to the public, the public interest.

So that's where we are now, Scott. Okay, well, so Eddie, if you could, tell us exactly what was his job? Again, he was a lawyer there. He sent over there, I guess, attached to the special forces, but exactly what was the role

And then I noted in the BBC article I read about this that they said that, well, they were, they decided that they could exclude his, I was trying to serve the public interest defense because the law that he's charged under doesn't provide for that defense. But it raises the question of whether there's any other law in Australia, which would provide for that defense. that, of course, if acts are in violation of the Australian Constitution, which created the power of the Australian government in the first place, obviously people within that government have to be able to be protected when they blow the whistle and tell the truth about crimes that other government agents are committing. Or is that they don't even pretend that over there? That's how they pretend here. They don't really have accountability, but they pretend. They'll indict you.

They'll convict you for hush money for extracurricular antics, apparently, but never for actual acts of state. Yes, well, pretending is what we do very well here in Australia, Scott, also. And the law doesn't provide for that defense, but that was only decided by Judge Mossop in November last year in the pre-trial argument about whether he had a duty under, you know, his legislated duty as a lawyer to report what he believed were crimes and whether he had a duty as a soldier to the public of Australia. And a new law was created by that judge to say that no. Neither of those duties apply. And I as a lawyer was personally quite affronted by that decision

because it felt like his honour was throwing out hundreds of years of legal professional duty and obligations to the public. And when you become a lawyer, which is what McBride was, and it was a prerequisite of him becoming a military lawyer, hence the word lawyer in the job title military lawyer, he had to be a lawyer. He had to be admitted to one of the Supreme Courts of Australia, which he was. And when you are admitted to one of the Supreme Courts of Australia, you are then subjected to mandatory legislative provisions. the most important one is that you have a paramount duty to the court and to the administration of justice. And the definition of court goes all the way back and the definition of profession in Latin actually goes all the way back. Those two matters relate to the community, the public,

that overriding your duty is to the public because you must be, you must uphold the law, you must respect the law, you must not lead the court. one of our duties that we have because if we don't comply the law with our clients, you know, and we're misleading the court and not telling them the truth, then we are really assisting and, you know, disintegrating the law and the public confidence in the law is going to deteriorate. And that's why as a lawyer, you have this special duty as a government lawyer, as McBride could be characterized as being.

He had this special duty as a model litigant to do what he did was his job. And when he was sitting at his desk job in Canberra overseeing some of these investigations, this is what he started noticing, that things were not being, like, rules and procedures were not being followed. It sounds very boring to people. In other words, they weren't just breaking the law. murdering people. They, of course, had to break all kinds of other laws in order to get away with that. Well, that's what McBride picked up on, and he couldn't understand it, because when

McBride started making his complaints, he didn't know about the murders in the year before. He just saw that all of a sudden things started changing. He was being asked to look at the rules of engagement that Kathy talked about that suddenly apparently needed changing, and he asked why. They produced three incidents from the year before that were still in the middle of being investigated and they tried to use those as justifications as to why the rules of engagement need to be tightened up. He saw that as putting soldiers' lives at risk. He asked for the government's advice because they said they got some legal advice on that. He asked for that advice. He saw that advice and the advice said, no, the rules do not need changing. So he was

scratching his head more and more. And then came the investigation of some of the people under his command where there was no reasonable suspicion to investigate them for serious war crimes. And so he just began complaining within amongst his colleagues. And then he eventually escalated up to the ranks, up to the inspector. And this is what's quite important, the inspector general of the ADF, which is IGADF, we call that person. No, they weren't taking his complaint seriously. So he went to the police. As a lawyer, you have a duty. If someone comes into my office and says, I'm going to burn my house down today, Eddie, and I'm going to burn Rhonda inside of it, then I must go to the police.

A serious crime might about to be committed. I must go to the police, and that's when I have the right to breach my client's, you know, confidence, you know, because I must prevent this serious crime. Now, if I go to the police and the police say, oh, and they investigate, and Rhonda was a figment of that person's imagination, and they're just off their medication, and it's not real, that doesn't abrogate my duty. Well, in this case, he wasn't their defense lawyer, right? He was there to advise them about what they were allowed to do in real time while they

were fighting, right? Exactly. McBride was simply doing his job when he went to report these crimes to the police, but the whole thing got spun around on him and they ended up investigating him. And to date, Scott, which I find quite harrowing, His initial complaints have never been investigated. So his complaints really were the trigger that led to the Afghan file story, which revealed a lot of crimes, war crimes.

And his complaint most definitely led to, was one of the reasons why they set up this independent, they called it, independent inquiry into war crimes, which was set up by the IGADF, who McBride had complained. to. Who had dismissed his complaint? So now we've got the IGADF setting up this Brereton inquiry to investigate these war crimes to whether or not they happened. It was all just so perverse. But the way the Raritan inquiry was set up, it was only really ever going to get the low-hanging

fruit. It was only going to be about the bad soldiers. It was never going to be about the leadership. McBride's complaint from day dot was about the leadership of the ADF, the CDF, the IGADF, the ministers involved, the politicians, the attorney general, all of these people that he was pointing to that had some blood on their hands in regards to the sudden change. And, you know, I've done a bit of a chronology and you can see it's very suspicious where all of these different people were at different times, but they were all around in 2012 when all of those harrowing murders were happening. And that is why, in my belief, McBride's trial has been subjected to these secrecy provisions that have come in, a lot of the evidence was not allowed

to be heard by the public because it was deemed to be classified information. McBride is maintained to date. That is because that information will lead to exposing those at the top who knew what was going on and not only did nothing about it, but continued to award medal after medal after medal upon themselves, their mates. And one of the, one of the people, one of the soldiers who has been found in a defamation trial to more likely or not have committed many murders in Afghanistan. So there's a cover up and a cover up over a cover up in this case. And sadly that has led to McBride being led down to the gallows away from his assistant's dog. He's a man, a veteran. He's got complex PTSD.

He served on the front line of it in Afghanistan. But what compounded his PTSD was the gaslighting that he has received the last 11 years with no one taking his complaint seriously. And so now he's sitting inside wearing a grey jumpsuit in a very cold prison in Canberra for the next 27 months. Now, so you mentioned this Brereton. report and he was a two-star general correct a major general set two stars are there um yeah it seems they get their own to to investigate themselves as as you would be aware that's the process um

and interestingly enough mr brereton who is linked with the army who did oversee that report he was the one that that decided um you know who was who was to be you know what what was suspicious he revealed there were 39 unlawful killings and there were about 19 people responsible. So after the Beretian inquiry, a new investigation organisation was set up called the Office of the Special Investigator. And they've been set up since the Brereton inquiry came down in 2020 to investigate these 39 unlawful killings and to make arrest and to date only one person has been arrested. And the reason for that is because they're not allowed to use the OSI are not allowed to use the evidence in the

baritian inquiry if it was compelled by someone. So you were compelled to give evidence at the baritian inquiry. And in those circumstances, you don't have the right to silence. So the police and the OSI are not allowed to use any of that evidence. And you can imagine how many soldiers that were compelled in the baritin inquiry that were perhaps culpable, none of their evidence is allowed to be used. Because if they were allowed to use that evidence, the first thing I reckon that those soldiers would be doing is saying they knew, they knew, they knew, they'd all be pointing upwards. And I think this whole Brereton inquiry, the way it's been set up, has been a way out of not exposing the leadership. And of course, many people, including McBride, have wanted to make

a complaint about the behaviour of the leadership to the International Criminal Court. But guess what? They're not allowed to make that complaint. They don't have jurisdiction to enter that jurisdiction whilst there is an investigation on foot in the member state, i.e., the Brereton Inquiry and now the Office of Special Investigation. So the leadership are still not held accountable, and that is what McBride is continuing to campaign about whilst he sits in custody. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable.

Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom, Real history, real economics, real education.

People say to me, Scott, how do you get so much work done all the time? Coffee. It helps keep me from falling asleep. and it tastes really good because I get it from Moondose Artisan Coffee at Moondoseartisan Coffee.com. Moondose is kind of the anti-starbucks in that their coffee tastes real good. They have lots of great choices, representing all kinds of regions, blends, and flavors. I'm drinking the Ethiopian presently. Hey, wait, also, do you like saving money on good tasting coffee? Right now, you can get 10% off and help support this show if you just go to Moondoseartisancoffee.com

slash Horton. Find the link and the QR code in the margin at Scott Horton.org. That's Moondoseartisan coffee.com slash Horton. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred. proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th.

Get tickets now. And now, so when you guys are trying to make your case, I understand it sounds very American the way the judge is just excluding your right to even introduce certain lines of argument for your defense. But I don't know, like in pretrial hearings and so forth, you must argue with them that the Brereton report, especially, because, you know, the Afghan files, that's great journalism, and that, I guess, does make a difference, but, and is, you know, publicly and widely known. But the Brereton report, even though it doesn't go for the higher-ups, it goes for the lower-down guys who actually committed the crimes, isn't that prima facie evidence of something that, Your Honor, obviously McBride was on to something here because we have this official report we know from, and they've indicted,

I did one guy, and we have all this journalism and all of these things. Braden Chapman, of course, was another whistleblower who came out and talked about what was going on over there. And so isn't that enough to at least be some kind of counter, I guess apparently not sufficient, but it seems like some kind of counter to the quotes that I read in the press of the prosecutor saying, Oh, and McBride thinks that his opinion over what's happening is what's paramount, but it's not up to his opinion. But if his opinion is that he's a lawyer and people around him, government officials, are committing crimes, and then here we have very real cooperation of that, proven cooperation of that, including guys executed on video out in the field and all of that. and he's saying that, you know, the stuff that he blew the whistle on, obviously is part and parcel of that same scandal there from those two years.

That absolutely counts for nothing. And the prosecutor's argument that it was essentially just none of his business is really all that has weight here. Well, it's, I mean... It's because the Brerichin inquiry, of course, you'd want to be... They tried to use that. The judge actually said, no. His information didn't lead to any of the revelations in the Brereton Inquiry.

And how would any of us know? Because if you go and try to get a copy of the Brereton Inquiry, you're looking at pages and pages and pages of redacted black lines. And that was the problem in the case. And whatever the Crown says out of her mouth is not evidence. But this was how the case was run by the Commonwealth Prosecution. It was run where there was very little public information available. and a lot of information that fell down the memory hole.

And so people were able, the media and the Commonwealth were able to craft together their own narrative about what was going on for McBride and what he did and didn't do because all of the information that supported David McBride, that supported what you're saying, that things were going awry, things were being conducted unlawfully, operations and investigations and conducted unlawfully, none of that information was allowed to be made public. it still sits in a safe and even the judge was not able to see it and that as a lawyer and that as any person who thinks they're living in a democracy in Australia should be opening their

eyes up to and should be very very very very afraid because when we have the executive arm of government and the politicians coming into the special so-called independent remit of the judiciary and taking evidence away from the judge and shoving it in a safe so he can't even see then we are not living in a democracy, we are living in an autocracy. The public must have somewhere to turn a safe place where they can turn to get justice for the courts. That's what our courts are supposed to do. They're supposed to be completely independent of government.

But in this case, that is where we saw the complete deterioration of that separation of power and the government, the attorney general, come in and remove evidence. and I think that that was done in a way to leave certain bits of evidence out that were harmful to McBride's character and completely denied him any defence in a trial, which is why he pleaded guilty. And I should just say, Mr. Brereton, who headed up the Brereton inquiry, he's now the head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission in Australia, which is also was a big election issue in our last election that the Labor government were going to set up the knack, they call it NACC, they're going to set up the knack. That's who got the job after he

finished the Brereton inquiry. Mr. Brereton now is the head of the knack. And despite the public, the knack being set up because the public were losing confidence in government because there were so many secrets being withheld from the public. The knack is now a new organization that's meant to investigate those things. But the Labor government, when they set it up, they've made it completely private so it's not even going to be public this new anti-corruption commission so you know lots of questions to be asked that should raise a lot of suspicions so hopefully through the journey of the appeal some of those matters will be ventilated into in the public arena and people can start paying attention because we need everyone should be shuddering

everyone should be shuddering about the mcbride case because it really impacts our freedoms and It really is, before our eyes, we're bearing witness to the destruction of democracy. I'd like to just make two points as well, Scott. First of all, the flatness of these charges. He was charged with stealing documents. He was charged with disclosing, passing documents on to journalists, people who were not authorised to receive them. this is very reminiscent of the espionage act and and finally he was charged with publishing documents

because he published some things on a website now this is all of this is based on what he is not allowed to do right it completely distract you from the substance the content of of what he is disclosing the second thing i'd like to draw attention to over and above this hierarchy that Eddie has spoken about that goes, you know, pretty close to the top, right up to the Attorney General of Australia, of the Australian Capital Territory, at least, we have at one moment in the proceedings. We have a King's Council, Andrew Berger, his name was, who came in, who interrupted somewhat, although he had the right to speak, but for the prosecution, And he made this declaration and he, I'm going to quote what he said.

He said, it is a nuanced field, the very important relationship with Australia's foreign partners. The public interest in maintaining confidentiality outweighs the interest of open justice. And so, you know, I ask Eddie, well, how much is this about the Americans? And of course, they were in Afghanistan as well. And what we don't actually know, but when this point is made about Australia's foreign partners and that being a reason to outweigh the public interest with secrecy, then we have to scratch our head and ask some questions.

Absolutely. Well, the US own us. I mean, I think that's very, very apparent. And if anyone has been following the McBride case and the Julian Assange case, I've been to lots of McBride's talks and read lots of things about him and listened to all his YouTube videos and whatnot and followed the trial very closely. And it's very, very clear that this is all about the US, about the McBride trial. And interestingly enough, the operation in Afghanistan, which went from what, 2002 to 2014,

of 2001, was under this Bannercourt Operation Slipper. And apparently every single thing that happened in Operation Slipper over those 13 years was deemed classified where the toilet was at Taryn Cout, where the bread was stashed in the kitchen shelf, who's, you know, where the beds were, absolutely innocuous details were all deemed classified. And so we don't really know, you know, what is in the same. that the judge couldn't see. I don't really trust that the information that had this banner classified

that McBride was in possession of was actually classified. I think it was more about information about, you know, Australia and the US and things that perhaps were being done unlawfully in terms of entering operations with the US, perhaps without a lawful basis and things like that. And they call that classified. I call that embarrassing and information that the Australian government doesn't want the community to know. It's very different to dealing with sensitive information.

But unfortunately for McBride, because the judge didn't even see all of this information, one of the main reasons that McBride ended up getting a full-time custodial penalty was because all of the information was deemed to be classified. and his honour made, went to great lengths to describe how this kind of information could severely harm Australia and endangerous all and whatnot. And it was just really quite perverse because he hadn't even seen the evidence. So he's just going off what the, you know, the Australian government solicitor and the attorney was saying as instructed by the attorney general.

So, you know, that might be an area of appeal, I would hope that. we would dig down a bit deeper into what that classification system actually meant and whether or not that material could reasonably be interpreted as being classified information. Yeah. I think there's one more thing I wanted to tell you, Scott, is that there's a fundamental contradiction in all of this. I mentioned earlier on that one of the journalists that McBride gave the information to from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,

well, there was some talk of him being prosecuted, Dan Oaks, his name was. And the Commonwealth direction of public prosecutions advised the Australian Federal Police, the AFP, that it was that although they could easily obtain a conviction, that it was not in the public interest to prosecute a jury. Analyst, especially one who is reporting on war crimes in Afghanistan. Now, number one, that sort of draws a line between Australia and what's happening to Julian Assange in the United Kingdom and America, because, you know, there is, you know, the opinion is that he should be prosecuted for disclosing this kind of information.

But it also contrasts starkly with the removal of a public interest defence for McBride when Oaks and McBride were collaborating on a project that led to the same outcome, the disclosure of war crimes and, well, not quite the cover-up that McBride wanted to expose, but at least the murder of 39 innocent Afghan civilians in, you know, terrible circumstances. At least we got to hear about that. And that was in the public interest for the journalist, but it wasn't in the public interest for the whistleblower. So go figure. Well, I wonder, Kathy, if you can tell us how public opinion is handling all this. Oh my God. I mean, David has got so much support. There are crowds. There were crowds outside the court. There were up to 10 speakers, very high profile speakers. Even the former Attorney General spoke. I mean, the opinion all around Australia and legal opinion as well is that, you know, McBride should never have got

anything at all. He shouldn't have been prosecuted in the first place. It should have been consistent with the decision in relation to the journalists who published this material. But this is the way it turned out. And one wonders that there, you know, there wasn't some notion of either revenge or ensuring that McBride would stay silent. And one of those people was the senator. So in our highest, highest, you know, the federal government is, you know, the upper house is the Senate, and one of the senators, David Shoebridge, he's been a very big supporter of David McBride, and he attends every single court appearance. He's been incredible support.

He announced yesterday that he has now discovered that the Australian government spent $2.5 million prosecuting David McBride, $2.5 million. This is the kind of, you know, these are the kind of resources that David McBride was up against. It's like coming to a gun fight with a with a knife you know he just there was so many what we call spooks and and government officials and lawyers in the courtroom and then the bride's team and so I'm in the new team running this appeal and we are just asking people to to help out go on to David McBride's YouTube video and watch his last video if you're watching this I'm in jail and donate to his go fund me if they can help us with some legal fees because we are up a good

against it in the appeal going forward in terms of the resources that they're going to throw at this to try to, you know, outgun David McBride as we go and seek justice for him. And we will, and we will, we will get justice for David McBride. Yeah, well, I sure appreciate you fighting for him and Lord knows he needs the help. And that goes for you too, Kathy. you know good coverage in the media is so important when the establishment media can certainly not be counted on and if anybody wants to know more about what we're talking about here I have previous interviews with Braden Chapman who is a veteran and also a whistleblower

from the Australian Special Forces and also a previous interview of a journalist named Ben McKelvey who wrote a book all about it and really gets into all the details about what happened and as you guys said of course it's america's afghan war australia is you know essentially just tagging along and then these special forces guys are deployed out there they got no one to kill so they just start murder and innocent people and uh there's an ugly chapter there in your history and ours and theirs there's a pattern that's got not just there but in other countries as well other jurisdictions too and in fact There was evidence in what David had.

He saw evidence that this kind of thing hadn't just been happening in Afghanistan. And Scott, I'm wondering, like, just, you know, because I don't really talk to many people in the States, you know, how you feel about what you're hearing about David McBride and whether there's any traction over there, how is it sounding to you over there? Is it, does it concern you? Does it surprise you?

about this, that this is what's happening in Australia? Well, I'm probably not a very good random sample. I've been covering the Afghan War since it started and wrote a book about it. And so, you know, and I don't watch TV, so I don't know. I mean, I'm sure this is not getting mentioned on there at all. For people who read anti-war.com a lot or, you know, even just read the post, the Times in the journal a lot. They've probably heard of this.

I know the BBC has covered it quite a bit, and the AP has at least a little bit. So I think, you know, for people who are interested in the Afghan war, probably most of them have heard that the Australian Special Forces got caught, you know, crossing lines over there. It's, I don't know what difference it makes in terms of the narrative, but I would say at least, I would guess it's pretty well known among people who are interested. in the Afghan war, which is a vanishingly small percentage of the population as far as that goes. Yeah, and I guess that's the job of the McGride, you know, a little campaign team is to really

get the message out, you know, globally as well, because this isn't just, this isn't about David McBride's personality or motives or anything. This is about our democracy at the end of the day. This is a real David versus Goliath, you know, situation that we've got going on here. Clearly. I mean, the guy's sticking his neck out. out and taken a risk in order to do the right thing. It's a self-sacrificial deal on the face of it, obviously. Well, he didn't think that he was breaking the law. In fact, that piece of legislation that obliged him to disclose is called the legal professional uniform law. Regulation 3.1 provides that a solicitor's duty to the court and the administration of justice is paramount and prevails

to the extent of inconsistency with any other duty. I just wonder if there is some equivalent law in the United States whereby legal officers are obliged to disclose, you know, law-breaking, wrongdoing. Yes, Cathy, they are. In any Western democracy, every single solicitor. It's a, you know, I think I sent you that quote from Voltaire a while ago where he says and I'm not going to say it in French because it'll sound terrible but it's the law is not a profession it's a priesthood you know that's the kind of reputation that lawyers need to

uphold you know this distinct kind of independence from from you know the public you know they've got to be the public have confidence in the law and the rule of law that it's being upheld and that's really what McBride was doing and it's just harrowing you know Scott you know I've had a few conferences with him in jail over the AVL and flying down to Canberra next week to see him. And his former wife, Sarah, she's amazing. Sarah McBride, she's been visiting him every Thursday. But I'm just looking at him on my little screen and he's wearing like this grey track suit. Everything around him, I had a joke.

I said, you're the 50 shades of grey guy because everything around him is grey in his world now, you know. And it's just, it just is good. You know, it's the final nail in the coffin, so the government thinks, in terms of the gaslighting of him. Now they've really got him and I just worry, I worry so much about his mental health in there because it did come out in the trial. You know, he's got PTSD. That's why he had his assistant's dog with him 24-7.

He would massage Jakey his little dog to get out his anxieties. Jakey's no longer with him. He doesn't have that support. He was in remission from a major depressive disorder. No doubt the symptoms are going to arise again, given where he is in regards to that. His best friends with his daughter, Georgie, she's only 15. And he's just without all of his supports. He's a very strong man mentally, but how much can you take?

There's 11 years he's been walking this lonely, lonely journey. And now he has just been taken away from his family. family, his dog, his friends, his support. He's in an area of the prison now where he's among all kinds of people, people who have been convicted of murders and rapes and pedophiles and whatnot. And it's a very frightening place that he is now sitting in. And I just, every time I have a conference with him, it just actually breaks my heart. I just think, what a travesty of justice. If this was, you know, in the Encyclopedia, a visual encyclopedia of what is a travesty of justice, there'd be a picture of David McGride sitting in his cell, sitting in grey with grey all around him for doing his job.

There is no whistleblower protection in this country. It doesn't sound like there's much going on in the US either. The whistleblower protection laws are created by the Parliament. The Parliament are the ones that are, you know, delving into the, the independence of the court to remove evidence, we've got no faith in the government here anymore. But we do have faith that as we go into the higher courts, that we are going to get more of an intelligent kind of, you know, hearing in terms of the evidence. And they're going to take more seriously those arguments on appeal that David McBride was just

doing his job. And we do not want the judges in the higher court to, you know, endorse the removal of this legal duty that lawyers have because, you know, that is the end of everyone. If lawyers don't have a duty to the court and the administration of justice and the public, then, yeah, what's the point of being a lawyer? And then why do you need to have a law degree to enter the military and be a military lawyer if your job is to obey your master and not the law? Well, that's right. That's right. And another thing, that came out in the proceedings is that David had otherwise a glowing record. He excelled in all of his performance reviews and he was constantly being recommended for promotion. This is the only thing.

And as I said, he was not under the impression that he was breaking the law. He knows the law. And as, as Eddie said, he was doing his duty to a tea. But, you know, that doesn't do when you're squealing about people that, you know, we have nice relationships apparently with foreign partners, the American friends, as they were called in the Assange case. And now, so you did mention Eddie that One soldier has been charged with war crimes, but he hasn't been prosecuted yet. Is that correct? No, he's been charged with murder, but there was a video. You know, there was, you know, in Afghanistan, of course, as the years went on, the technology got better.

People had, you know, cameras on their helmets and their drone footage and whatnot. I believe that that soldier was Oliver Schultz. He's been charged with murder. That was reported in a later episode of Four Corners. That wasn't part of any of the evidence that McBride gave the ABC that came from a different source. They were never prosecuted. Or was that journalist? But, yeah, only one person. And that matter is stuck in the lower court, in the local court at the moment in New South Wales. And they're going to fight technicalities around that.

It's going to be years before they prosecute him. He's out on bail, you know. He's out on bail, enjoying all of the liberties. I mean, it's just after how many years, four years, this special investigation team have been set up to quarantine what evidence was compelled in the Burlington inquiries so they could distill what they could actually use as leads to investigate people.

It's all just a set up in my view in regard to that investigation. So we hope that there has been a complaint put into the International Criminal Court, but there's not even been an acknowledgement of that that was sent in about a year ago so it's a worrying time for the world as to what court we can actually trust and believe in to administer justice to uphold the rule of law to uphold what we call a democracy and what we rely on for all of our freedoms that are now starting to disappear in stealth at night without people even realising what's happening. So very frightening times that we're living in at the moment.

And we've got a really big fight on our hands. We've got a very small team around David McBride, a very small team and not really many funds at the moment. So we're just calling out for people to just get themselves informed about the David McBride case and pass the video on on his YouTube and donate to his GoFundee and help us, you know, fight this. David and Goliath war help us bring a gun to the fight and not a knife yeah all right well thank you both so much for your efforts and free time on the show i really appreciate it

thank you for the time i really appreciate it okay y'all have a good one all right everybody that is kathy vogan she is a journalist with consortium news dot com and eddie lloyd a defense attorney on the david mcbride team the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on K-P-F-K 90.7 FM in LA. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.