The Team House - Australian SAS Capture/Kill Missions | Ben McKelvey | Ep. 271

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ben Mckelvey is an author, journalist and editor. Ben's books have won the Australian Independent Book Award for non-fiction, an Australian Book Industry Award and the Nib Military History Prize and they have been shortlisted in the Victorian and Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and for the Les Carlyon Literary Prize. Ben has been the editor of Mr Jones, Sports&Style and Juice magazines and worked at the Sydney Morning Herald as a Senior Feature Writer. As a freelance writer, Ben has been embedded with the ADF in East Timor and Iraq, and has worked independently in Iran, Syria and Afghanistan.Ben's books:https://www.benmckelvey.com/------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#australiansas #specialforcesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Hey, folks, welcome to episode 271 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Tonight on the show, we have Ben McKelvey. He is the author of Find Fix Finish. He's also the author of Missoull and The Commando. We're going to be mostly talking about this book tonight, which is about the Australian Special Air Service Registry. some heroic actions that they took and also some allegations of war crimes that we're going to go deep

into. Right before we get into that, I just want to give a shout out to our Patreon and I'd ask folks out there listening or viewing this, click the link down in the description for our Patreon and consider sponsoring the show, supporting the channel. You get access to all of these episodes ad-free when you sign up and we really appreciate you guys helping this thing. chugging along. So thank you. Ben, thanks for coming on the show, man. Hey, guys. How are you? Doing real good. Early morning there in Australia. Yeah, it's a beautiful autumnal day, on my beach, sunny and gorgeous. So, Ben, before we get into the book, I want to ask you a little bit about your background,

how you came into journalism, how you came specifically into, you know, Australian military, security journalism. Yeah. I actually just wrote a book about how I got into journalism and how I got into that national security stuff. I hadn't a phoic stroke when I was 27. So I was working in a magazine, and I was boxing at the time, and then all of a sudden I couldn't speak.

I couldn't, you know, comprehend language, couldn't read, couldn't write, went to a hospital. Oh, my God. had a sort of, you know, recovery of a number of months, you know, going back into, you know, comic books and young adult novels and, you know, like really sort of building up language skills. Yeah. And then I had done all that and I was sort of conceiving a life outside of the journalism

life that I already had. I was working at a men's magazine. I was having a lot of fun with my friends. I had actually done a little bit of work with the commandos. I'd gone and have done their barrier test for a lot of. story. And then I'd also done a sort of exercise with them and the incident response regiment, which was later SOA, the Special Operations Engineering Regiment. And I'd gone to East Timor and an embed, and I'd done a few little bits and pieces, but that's what I really wanted to do. And eventually,

I petitioned to the Australian Defence Force to go to Iraq with them as an embed. And then while I was waiting on that on that that request which I thought was a Hail Mary given where I was working what I was doing I had a heart attack and it was a stemmy heart attack so it was kind of like a pretty serious incident and I had to have some open heart surgeries afterwards and and then I recovered from the last surgery and I was you know I'm I'm 96 kilos or something I was in the 60s after the surgery you know I was I was thin and ill and couldn't even walk up my street. And then I got Nema from the Defence Force saying,

okay, come to Iraq in a few weeks on. And I went to my cardiologist, I went to my surgeon and said, you know, I thought he was going to tell me you can't do this. And he's like, live your life, you know, which is a very sort of surgeon attitude. They're like, I fixed you. My work is good. You go to Iraq. And then that sort of started it for me.

I went to Iraq and then independently I worked as a freelancer and went to Iran and Syria and Afghanistan for other bits and pieces. And then I worked, the thing that really accelerated me in that space was working on a biography of Cameron Baird, who you're aware of, Jack. Yeah, yeah. How did you know of Cam or did you know Cam? Did you have any interactions with him? No, I never met him.

I knew of him through some of his teammates and people on the commandos who knew him. and they told me stories about how he'd camo up, like, the Incredible Hulk. And, like, he was big about charging out there and, like, wanted the enemy to see him and shoot at him so he could shoot back. Like, just like a larger-than-life kind of figure. He really was. I remember one of the first interviews that I did with one of his COs was he always knew when they got out of the helicopters, which one was Betty, because the soldiers were sort of moving forward in a relatively uniform fashion. And then Betty was just, just off being a bullet magnet, you know.

But, yeah, there was this, you know, the Special Operations Task Group, which was Australia's Special Forces commitment to the war in Afghanistan, was large and very kinetic, but not known about much in Australia at all. No one had been embedded with the Special Forces. We have this protected identity status law. meaning that they couldn't legally speak to journalists about what they were doing. And that was the Commandos and the SASR, meaning, and Zohar and everybody else associated. So there was really a dearth of information as to what the Australians had been doing in a risk game.

And then when I got the contract to do the book about Cameron Baird, the posthumous book about Cameron Baird had been killed in combat, I went to Holsworthy and started interviewing the guys, and I was completely shocked. I just had, I had no idea. I kind of felt that I had sort of been paying attention to what had been happening in the war in Afghanistan. And it was a completely different story. And, you know, that was a thread that I sort of pulled and pulled and pulled and

have been doing that all the way to find fixed finish. So you feel that the Australian people were fairly naive about the intensity of the combat that their soldiers were getting into? Yeah. I mean, not just that. you know, there was a failure not only within the public, but, you know, on a political level, to understand just the basic tenor of the conflict. I mean, even now, you know, my pet peeve is there'll be a news report about the commandos on the drug job that they had done. You know, a historical news report might be related to war crimes or something else.

And then uniformly, when they're talking about a gunfight, they refer to the Afghans as Taliban. and, you know, sometimes they were fighting the Taliban and sometimes they weren't. You know, it was just, I knew so little. I realized when I started that book that I knew so little, and that meant that most people in Australia knew so little about the conflict that, you know, we'd sort of been heavily involved in. And we only sort of understood after the fact. I'm just curious for you, because we've talked to American journalists who were

in beds with U.S. forces. How were you received when, you first showed up and what was your relationship like with not only the the command structures but the individual soldiers themselves i think i was received better than most because uh on my body armor i just slapped a a ralph sticker which had a you know so a half-naked woman on the sticker um and soldiers almost uniformly had ralph posters you know in tanks and you know on their lines and you know So, you know, journalists from, you know, ABC or 2GB or something like, they don't really give a shit, but it's like, oh, it's the Ralph guy. It's like, I know what that outlet is.

You know, so I, the story that I ended up doing, I did a piece for Ralph and then I did a piece for the West Australian newspaper and a piece of the bulletin, which was Australia's version of Newsweek at the time. You know, I did a piece that was really a soldier's eye view of things, which up to fine, fix finish was, was sort of the way that I operated was from the perspective of a soldier who's on the ground, you know, because I want to know what they know. And then maybe I'll bring in some information about, you know, contextually where they are. But that's where I really started from a, from a biography background. And that was my perspective up until Find Fix Finish. So to jump into Find Fix Finish, if you can take us a little bit back in time to a little history lesson that you write about in your book about there's this large span of time for the special

air service regiment between the Vietnam conflict where they served and the global war on terror. Could you tell us about the sort of like pre-global War on Terror special air service, what their mission was, what their culture was, and then leading us into the Tampa? Yeah. Well, in Vietnam, they had sort of earned this moniker. the ghost of the jungle, you know, they were sort of, you know, there were special forces as you would understand them to be. They'd sort of, they'd disappear and reappear and, you know, and kill and no one had to know where they'd been. And, you know, they really kind of had this this sort of dangerous kinetic mission. And then after Vietnam, there was a defense white paper,

an Australian defense white paper, which is kind of a big deal. It only happens every, you know, sort of 10 to 15 years or something. And I think the guys remember, Paul Dib wrote this white paper about the defense of Australia, and there was a structure of the Australia defense force that was dedicated on the defense of Australia, which seems sort of obvious and it sort of makes sense. But that meant that we didn't have much capacity for force projection. And within a defense of Australia structure,

the SAS would sort of primarily be engaged with during guerrilla warfare in northern Australia, which is not particularly populated. And there was even a program where they were working with indigenous Australians to do, you know, demolitions and things like that. Yeah, there's still a group up there called Norforce, but they get guys who are, who sort of traditional owners of land and then engage them to, you know, to work in comms or in demolitions. Like sleeper cells. Yeah, that's right. For guys who like really understands the really uninhabited areas of Australia.

So the FASR, that ended up becoming their job. But, you know, there was outside of a few little missions, you know, they, East Tim, was the time where they were, like, seriously engaged. But they, you know, one of the quotes in the book is that they just spend a lot of time wandering around in the desert counting train cars. You know, they sort of secrete themselves in a position and watch a train go by and then, you know, come back. And that'd be their main mission at the time was strategic reconnaissance. Yeah, basically.

That's right. In Australia as well, which is a large empty place. So, you know, it just meant being really good at being out for a long time and then coming back and coming back with information or, you know, or whatever, whatever the job was at the time. But the guys who were within the regiment, there was a lot of people who, you know, it just wasn't, it wasn't an engaging role for them. You know, it was sort of preparing for something that they thought probably was never going to happen. and it wasn't a particularly explosive job. But then Tampa happened. So Tampa was a ship that nearly came into Australian waters with a lot of refugees.

So refugees, and they were mostly Afghan, had come on an Indonesian fishing vessel to try and come to Australia illegally. And then their ship started to sink. and they put out an SOS call and then the Tampa came and rescued them and then a lot of them were sick so the law of the sea is that they need to be they need to be bought to Australia

so they can be given medical treatment but there was a lot of political doing and frying at the moment then and actually at the moment about illegal migrants coming into Australia and they had set up a policy where they weren't going to let

anyone come into Australia So when the Tampa decided that they were going to come to Christmas Island, which is the territory in Australia, the government told them they couldn't. And then there ended up being this stand-up. And then the FAS were actually sent to storm the ship because erroneously there were reports that, you know, some of the refugees, I don't think there were reports that they were armed,

but that they might have been dangerous. And, you know, they all had Castro and they were all lying on the deck and they're all exhausted and sick and they've been at sea for weeks and weeks. So the SAS ended up storming Tampa and there was some leaked photos and video of it and it all looked very, very dramatic. But in the book, I sort of marked that

as the moment where the SAS, to a certain extent, became a political tool because only a few weeks later, 9-11 happened. And as soon as 9-11 happened, the guys at Campbell Barracks where the SASR started preparing for a mission to go into Afghanistan then. And they were one of the first forces after the Marines secured. I can't remember which both it is. I'm sure you guys remember.

Was it Bagram or Kandahar? No, it's in Kandahar, yeah. Okay. Talk to us a little bit about the early G-Watt years in Afghanistan where the Special Air Service really did some quality work, in my opinion, based on what I read in your book. Yeah. I mean, basically, they would, like you said, they were doing reconnaeer. and that, you know, they would, there were a few instances where they would, they're working with the Marines, primarily with Masses. And he really loved their work because they would go out for such a long time. You know, they would have reconnaissance teams that would go out for, you know, I can't, 10, 20 days.

And I think some of the FASR teams went out for 50 or 60 days in these sort of open-top vehicles in the freezing cold, you know. but they were so happy to get the work that they were just meant they were they were happy to you know to just keep going and going and then the they they had done a lot of instances where they had identified targets that there waited looked at the pattern of life then all the information back and then there were either strikes or there weren't strikes or you know a larger force had come in and prosecute the targets um and they had done all that and then they were given a role that ended up being ended up being relatively integral in Operation Anaconda and where Roberts Ridge and all of that activity happened.

But the primary Australian force was working, which was working as a blocking force with other international special forces. But there was one team that was in this position that was just sort of perfect for bringing in air and ordinance. And they did that day after day after day after day after day, you know, without, without having any direct confrontation with the enemy but bringing in this ordinance. But that was at the time a sort of perfect SAA's mission. You know, that's what they were really good at, and they had executed that really well. But that sort of mission moves on because technology moves on. You know, with drones and the sort of satellite technology that we have now,

you don't need as much of that. So then their capabilities and their missions changed. And so with that, if we fast forward a few years, is it Erzgan province? Yeah. Talk to us about, you know, Sasser landing in that province, their first ops in April 2006, and then their relationship with the Dutch who were also in charge of that sector. Yeah, I mean, the Dutch came in a little later. So Australia had put their hand up to say that they would be part of ISAT, of the International Security Assistance Force,

but we didn't know, or the Australian government didn't know exactly where that force was going to end up on what the composition of it was going to be. But there was a suggestion that they would go to Uruggan. And there's a couple of quotes in the book about they just weren't prepared for a province like Uruggan perhaps, or that they didn't know necessarily what they would. were going into the Australian government because, you know, Uruzgan is, along with Kandahar, it's sort of one of the heartlands of the Taliban, you know, it's where Mullahoma was from, that's where his village is. So they sent the SASR into this and ground-truthing. And there's

a story in the book about an element going up to the northwest corner of Uruzgan. And, you know, they see some locals and they're sort of like, hey, how you're going? And then all of a sudden, There's just RPGs and bullets. And, you know, these were just locals who were aggrieved with the Australians coming into Urusgan. They end up being this massive gunfight. You know, they ended up bringing in Apaches, you know, the whole thing. I mean, this is just meant to be a, hey, hey, go on with the locals' groundtruthing mission. And then they come back to, they come back to Terrancott.

And when they do, the Australian Defence Minister, Robert Hill, is there. And he sees all the shut up vehicles and bloodied soldiers, of the Australian SASR guys are killed, but there's a lot of injuries. And he has never spoken about this, but he retired from his position a few weeks later. And the speculation was that he had always had an issue with Australia's involvement in Iraq and that he didn't think that it was within Australia's strategic interest to be involved in Iraq, is my understanding. but there is speculation that he saw what the what the Afghan mission was going to be for the

Australians in the in the sort of year to come and he was perhaps and this is not something I did actually speak to the Prime Minister and the foreign minister at that time it's not something that he that they would speak to me about but there may have been issues within the national security cabinet as to whether Australia should have had that role in Afghanistan and then the SAS are sorry gone I was just going to ask I mean, as things develop, you know, the SAS ends up in this capture, kill mission, but the Dutch have a different approach that's more hearts and minds oriented. Yeah, the Dutch mission was very much, there had to be a political mandate for the things that they were going to do.

And with the way that the Dutch government was constructed at the time, There were a lot of left-leaning parties that had influence into what ended up being the Dutch operations. So that was part of the reason why they weren't comfortable doing kill capture. But the other issue is that they, or wasn't an issue, it was a boon to them. They had these sort of anthropologists. They had a lot of people at this place called the liaison organization that were giving them really great intel into the way that the tribal structure worked in Erasm. And so they were sort of suggesting to the Dutch forces that endlessly attacking the enemies of the warlord that we have associated ourselves with, which was John, a guy called

John Muhammad Khan and then a guy called Matheolokhan afterwards. He said, you're just going to create more conflict. And so they didn't necessarily believe in the American mission that was sort of maximalist and more kinetic than the Dutch thought it should be. And then the Australians put the hand up and they were like, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. Sounds good. And talk to us a little bit about how those ops get stood up. You know, in your book, June 2nd, 2006, there's an operation where a special air service operator,

Ben Robert Smith, is sent to kill the teenager during an engagement, maybe legitimately, maybe not. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was, that's the sort of. of integral and important moment in the history of Australia's engagement in Afghanistan, because this was the sort of combined off. This is when they were working with the Dutch. And the idea of that op was there's a valley coming into Tarancourt, which is where the multinational base is and where the provincial capital is. But there were a lot of, there was a lot of opposing forces. Some of them were associated with the centralized insertion.

but a lot of them were the enemies of this warlord, Joe Muhammad Khan at the time. And Chora and Baluchi came through to a place called Derafshan, which was sort of on the plane, very close to Terrancot. And so you basically had this non-permissive area that was leading into the capital. So the idea was that they would clear Chora out. They'd have this large operation,

and they'd have this force pushed through all the way through to Tarrancourt, and then there'd be a series of battles, and they take, you know, control of this area. And that, you know, the Afghans and the Dutch would sort of seize these areas, put up patrol bases, and then, you know, we'd have a permissive environment close to where the multinational bases and where the provincial capital is. Incidentally, they ended up fighting in that area consistently, you know, all the way through, basically, you know, there were periods of peace and periods of war,

but it never ended up becoming a sort of a wholly permissive area. but Ben Robert Smith was sent up to be part of a patrol that was going to be doing an Overwatch which is not just similar to the Overwatch mission that Matthew Bulliont, who was the guy who was

the patrol leader for the mission Operation Anaconda. Not dissimilar to that. You know, sent up, hang out, have a little spot, see what's happening down there, send Intel back, perhaps bring ordinance in if you have to and then secrete your way back. but you know this is the subject of of a defamation case at the moment so you know we can't specifically know what happened but an armed or unarmed actually I think they've agreed that

it's unarmed but may or may not have been a spotter of a teenage kid walks across perhaps preteen walks across the observation post and they decide to go and find him and kill him and they do that and then that starts an engagement and they have to sort of fight their way back which they do and they end up bringing in air support and you know so the fight ends up the center of gravity of the fight ends up being at the top of the mountain not down in the valley where it's meant to be

but depending on who you speak to that was that was sort of you know an integral and valorous moment within the SASR and people were given medals afterwards and some people have suggested that that sort of set a precent for within the FASR in Afghanistan because, you know, that was, that perhaps could be seen as a strategic negative moment, and yet people were, people were awarded medals for it afterwards. And then you also, as all, you know, going forward a little bit in time, you have the creation

of the Special Operations Task Force, SOTG, which brings in the commandos. Could you talk to us a little bit about the role of the commandos, you know, their history, their mission and the rift that developed between them and the SAS. Yeah. I mean, you know, most of my friends are within the commander regiment in their space. They are a force that is, they were designed to work handing glove with the SASR probably in the way, I mean, you definitely know better than I, in the way that the Rangers were, were they meant to be a cooperative force with J-Socs.

They were not initially stood up for that reason, but I mean, they kind of became that, right? They became, when you need a lot of manpower to do things that a small specialized unit can't do, yeah, you call the Rangers. Yeah, and so they work sometimes with a cord and force and... Or direct action and, you know, to strike targets that a small surgical hostage rescue focused unit isn't necessarily set up for. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're describing the commandos. You know, the commandos. Yeah, yeah. There was a suggestion just before 9-11, actually, that the Special Operations, the Special Operations, the Special Operations Command should be expanded because of the type of technological innovations that had come with the type of heavy weapons that can be carried by

an individual and by the type of communications that can be used. So they thought that the force structure would benefit from having this sort of direct action, you know, sort of hyper-infantry style force that could work with the SASR. So they were starting to be stood up around 99, 2000. In 2001, there was an acceleration so they could bring the companies on board because they assumed that the commandos might be used in the future. They were sent into Iraq. The SASR were doing a series of different things in the western desert of Iraq, including scud hunting. And the commandos were meant to be their quick reaction force. But they were just across the border at H2 in Jordan.

And then they were actually never used, even though there were instances where they could have been used. And that, I think, is the moment where the rift developed between the SASR and the commandos, because the SASR saw them as this force that couldn't be trusted to go out and, to be used. Whereas the commanders, they thought they were ready and they probably were ready. You know, they've been training up in this close quarter battle. They've been stood up for a couple of years at that point. And so a lot of guys within the commandos actually went off and worked with PMCs, you know, especially a lot of the sort of junior NCOs. But then Afghanistan happened. So the Special Operations Task Group with the Special Special Forces, the Special Forces

task group and the special operations task group needed guys to come into a risk gown so a lot of the guys who had been working as PMC sort of came in and that they couldn't get the two units to work cooperatively there are times where they both that they were both on on target at the same time but primarily they they they didn't work together and part of the issue was that you know they were fist fights in the mess there were you know they were they were like people threatening to kill each other you know there was there was there was There was a real runger between those.

You know, there was a lot of fraternity between some of the, some of the parts of those two of those two regiments. But there was definitely animus as well. And I think part of the issue. I was just going to point out, it should probably be mentioned also that these two units were almost pitted against each other by the Australian military in some ways, that you have two soft units.

Eventually they're both given the direct action mission. So they're both competing for missions, which only, I imagine, escalates the animosity. No, that's right. And then if you look at the FASR, you know, they're doing these coordinate search missions and they're doing direct action as well. And they're not necessarily designed for that.

You know, the force structure is that they've meant to be a sort of more surgical and, you know, they are Australia's elite unit, whereas they're doing something that the commandos are actually kind of like perfectly built to do with their force structure. And so sometimes the commandos are sent off to do things that the SAS would like to do, but they're just by dint of their force structure, the commandos are better suited to do it.

And so then that creates this incredible resentment. And the SASR see them as the little brothers and the commandos are like, you know, our guys are dying also. The doze. Which one? I know you've heard that term, the doze. The does? I haven't. What is it? You haven't?

That the SAS guys call the commandos, the doze. The doze? Can you spell it out? D-O-E-S, like a female deer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the doze. Yeah, and the commandos called it S-A-S, the Pooh-Po Barrows. I've heard that. I mean, it's all... A little sophomoric, yes, but...

That's the thing, 15 years later, it seems like... It's life and death, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's like super serious stuff. And some guys did go over, you know, some guys did the Commando, know, at work with commandos and then do selection and go within the SAS, but it never really, it never really disappeared, the animus between the two units. Let's also talk a little bit at this point about some of the structural issues within the

Australian Department of Defense. There's some really interesting stuff in your book. I mean, you talk about a lot of breakdowns that happen, but one of them that especially strikes, me is that it feels like at some point civilian control of the military was lost. And even commanders in the military didn't understand what their own force was doing. Like there's one quote in your book where I think you said it was the commander of Australian special operations saying that capture kill missions are an invention of the media. Which is either a lie or it just speaks to the complete obliviousness of the chain of command. I can answer that one.

It's a lie. Okay. I mean, it's the top of patrol reports. You know, like, everybody knows the nomenclature. You know, the problem in Australia, I think, at that time, was that there was this culture of bullshit because Australia had to be involved in the war in that it was very important for us to be a good alliance partner with the US. And we always wanted to be a good alliance partner. We have always wanted to be a good alliance partner. Not only that, when you go a little bit further down the command structure,

there was this technology transfer and this skill transfer that was happening as well because, you know, we were eventually working as a sort of fungible soft force, or they were working as a fungible soft force. So they were sort of, from a modular perspective, becoming useful within an American structure, which was good for the Australians. You know, they were upskilling very quick. But the Australian public, the political class, would not accept the Australians doing the things that the Americans were doing.

You know, the major thing that I sort of lean on from an ethical perspective in the book is that the Australians were doing these kill-catch emissions and the ROE allowed them to directly target individuals, which is basically an essential. fascination, you know, without any attempt to capture, whether they're armed or unarmed. There is no way that that would have been accepted if a politician explained to the Australian public that that was what was happening in Afghanistan. So there had to be this sort of top level, this sort of top level layer of bullshit between public-facing information from the highest people within government and within the military, saying that, you know, this mission is really about, you know, standing up an Afghan battalion. It's about protection of women's rights.

It's about all these things. Whereas all of those strategic goals had gone in Erzgan by probably about 2009. You know, like it just wasn't happening. You know, everybody on the ground knew that wasn't happening. Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, but there is, in your system, there is a chief of defense, which is a military officer, and there's a minister of defense. which is a civilian. So when the civilian is saying, I can't get information out of the military, I'm not getting all the information I need, I don't know what's going on. Is that a lie,

or is that part of that public-facing propaganda, if you will? Yeah, well, I mean, that's a direct quote from a defense minister who I interviewed for the book, and that was one of two defense ministers who told me that they couldn't get information from the military. And so, you know, in a democracy, that's completely unacceptable. But I think, I think the department and the ministry, there were some things that they didn't want to know. So they had sort of punted on some information. You know, they had empowered the military to do certain things without any understanding and oversight. And then when they do want information, they have already created this system where it's difficult for the ministry to get information.

So the ministry has plausible deniability. And it's the same of the department as well. This is speculation, but this is the way this is, I think, one of the, issues. So yeah, there was a major issue. There may well still be a major issue within the Australian government that there isn't as much civilian oversight as there should be. But to go back to my point of that sort of layer of bullshit that's at the top, that sort of dripped through all the way down to the ground. You know, like as long as we're already not being transparent about our strategic goals. And so then when we're not transparent about what are what the, the

specific types of missions are. And then we're not specific with our patrol reporting, you know, so just drift all the way down. So moving on to some spicy content here. Not particularly... Bring my lawyer in. Hold on a second. Exactly. Not a particularly great moment for the SAS. Tell us about the moment that they were flying a swastika in Afghanistan.

Well, that was actually the commandos. Oh, it was. correctly identified that book, yeah. Okay, thank you for correct. So, yeah, they were out on operations. And, I mean, there has been this issue within, I mean, the soldiers probably wouldn't necessarily say it as a problem, but there is this sort of impunity within some, some, some of the units in that there were rules that were allowed to be bent and rules that

allowed to be broken. Like, one of the obvious ones is drinking. Sure. So the essay has had a bar and tarancourt. You know, they're not meant to be drinking and they have a bar and all the generals went there, you know, like everybody went to the, to the bar. They actually, famously in the book, one of the sort of signature war crimes, one of the things that's being contested in this defamation case at the moment is whether there was an execution of a disabled Afghan who had a prosthetic leg. Yeah. And then that ends up becoming a drinking vessel in the bar that the SASR had. So that was sort of allowed.

So nobody really knew where the line was. And so somebody thought that the line allowed swastikas to be flying on operations. I was told by lots of people that it was a joke. But then I subsequently learned that that guy was actually a Nazi and part of a sort of Nazi group. Holy sure. another regiment before he came to his first operations man. I very much doubt that the other guys around him, you know, were of that, of that. But they certainly saw it.

They certainly saw it. Yeah. They saw it, yeah. And that one of the other issues with that photograph is there's a major there who ended up becoming a very senior soldier and was someone who was on a track to end up being Chief of Defense. And the guys that I spoke to about. that major. I said, well, you know, why didn't he ran them in? Why did he stop them from doing it? And he's like,

well, he didn't necessarily, he didn't like it. He was obviously upset about it, but he didn't feel at the time that he could, he could rein in a sergeant in that way, which is a problem. That's a perfect segue because I want to ask you next about officers losing control of the SAS

and how that kind of came about. Yeah. I mean, one of the problems with the officers in the FAS is that they come in and out of the regiment. So quick. And having having a successful period in the SASR is hugely important for your career, especially if when you're on a sort of combat deployment, you know, that really is your opportunity for advancement in Korea and chances for medals and, you know, having that on your resume

is hugely important. And within the Australian military, there has been a long succession of people who have gone through the FS and then have gone up to, even to the point of our chiefs, our governor general, who's, you know, the most senior person of the government, is a former SAS officer. So it's very important for an officer to have a successful deployment. But if you have your, you know, your sergeants and your corporals in open revolt because they're upset about the things that you're doing,

and these are guys who have sort of set the tone and have a greater understanding of what the ground truth is, then that's going to be a problem in your career. So that means that officers who want to go against something that may be unethical would take a massive amount of moral courage. You would have to go against the entire system. You know, like if you're out, if you, the special operations task groups are relatively small. So if you're an officer and you think that one of your patrols is doing the wrong thing

and you run them in or you bring in, you know, charges or the IGADF, which is basically our military police to investigate these types of things, you'd probably create a C-SOPs. So you might even create like a political issue. So it was incredibly tough for the officers to do that. But then before that, they actually have to understand what's happening in the first place. So quite often they're in this sort of like Overwatch position. You know, they're not necessarily on the ground.

You know, with this defamation case, we had a lot of officers coming in in instances where there had been suspected war crimes and they're like, I don't know, it blew in and there were some dead people. What can I tell you? In the book you talk about how the SAS came to have a tribal culture. I mean, one of the operators you spoke to described it as a ward of the flies culture, where they were sharing kill videos with one another, where there was even, there's this kind of stonewalling

of any acknowledgement of PTSD. within the regiment. Tell us about how that developed. Yeah, I think that quote might actually grew from the unit psychologist of the SASR. But that sort of linger culture, that's how they would describe people who would suggest that they had a PTSD issue.

A linga means that you're a malingerer, so you're not taking on the duties that you should be taking on and you're basically letting everyone down. The way that it was described to me over and over again is like a motorcycle gang. You know, it's like you do not break the trust of the guys within the motorcycle gang. But then also coercive violence is something that was kind of enforced a certain structure there as well. So, you know, guys could be beaten.

It could be slapped. It could be, for some people it could feel dangerous breaking outside of that code of silence. And there was an instance in Australia where somebody says, house got blown up because they had fallen afoul of this code of silence. I don't necessarily understand how it developed, but there were people who sort of talked to me about coming into that environment. Because when you come into Campbell Barracks and you come into the regiment, you know, that's the top of your career, whether you're an operator or whether you're an officer or

whether it's a physio or whatever you are, you know, especially in a time of war. you really want to do the best job, you know, and everybody's super intense and you're like, that's okay, I understand this because this is the time of war, so I want to do the best job. But there were, like you said, there was this, the psychologist described it to me as a sort of tinderbox ready to blow, you know, the fact that there were, a lot of instances of domestic violence, a lot of people getting super drunk, a lot of people assaulting people at pubs, a lot of like death porn being shared as well, like sort of weird, it's not, enough porn. A lot of kill videos, a lot of photos of, you know, heads being blown off and stuff

like that. Like at some point, a sort of responsible adult should have come down and said, okay, we kind of need to, we need to clean this up for the benefit of the people who are within this structure, you know, not to be, not to be a dick about it and tell everyone, hey, you know, you're all getting detention. But just, this is going to be healthier for everybody and we're going to be more effective as a fighting unit if we do clean this stuff up. You write in the book about how as time goes on, the culture of the unit changes, and guys are sort of deferring on advancing their career because they just want to be gunfighters, like they've gotten addicted to the combat.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the idea is that, you know, you're a patrol commander, and then you sort of work your way up and you become a warrant officer, and you sort of spread the experience that you've had across the regiment and sometimes across the military as well. You know, it's meant to be, it's meant to be an area of excellence, and it is an area of excellence where they can go out into the greater defense force and sort of bring some of that excellence with them. But because I think so many of the guys became addicted to the combat,

and we don't have any sort of solid numbers on what the level of PTSD is. But, you know, there's a psychologist explains to me that he's, said, you know, we, the literature that we have suggests that it's not accumulative, it's, it multiplies. And so when you've got guys who've done these sort of eight, nine, ten combat deployments, and that is the number that guys ended up doing, SASR guys, you know, and I can imagine similar to the Americans as well. You know, so there are in these sort of, you know, intense environments for, you know,

10 deployments might be six months each, you know, it's five years. Like, it's a super intense thing to do. they just want to go back in because that's a place where they feel comfortable. They start to feel uncomfortable in a civilian environment. And that was the case of the commanders as well. There was lots of guys who, you know, their lives were falling about to a certain extent outside of the, outside of their deployments. You know, they're having problems with their wives or, you know, their friends.

They didn't relate to their friends anymore. You know, so they just wanted to get back out. And, you know, just being a warrant officer and, you know, you know, working at a QCB course for the rest of your life is not as exciting. Yeah, right, right. Tell us a little bit about the one commando operation

in 2009 where it's sort of like the first time if I'm understanding correctly that the issue of war crime starts coming into the public. Like there are some aspects where they might prosecute this guy, they might not. Yeah, that was sort of a very important sort of forgotten part of the Australian war crime story. So by 2009, we'd had three years of these at these deployments of commandos and SASR.

And, you know, everybody was getting fatigued and, you know, they basically needed to re-up some of the guys who they were bringing into the second Commando Regiment, especially and the SASR. So they decided to do a deployment of one Commando guys who are reservists. This is Australia's oldest continuous special forces regiment. But they hadn't been used in operations for such a long time. So a lot of these guys, you know, some of them are soldiers, full time, some of them are policemen, you know, some of them are, you have other jobs. And so they did pre-deployment readiness, which supposedly was a little lacking.

And then they were sent Neurisgan, and then they were, they were doing the hill capture missions. So there was a house actually again in the place where, you know, Chora and Baluchi and I think it was into actually Darafshan. So it was very close to Tarrancat. And they were going to be this compound of interest. And they were doing a night mission. I think it was, you know, sort of midnight 2am, something like that.

And they go to this house and they find it empty. And so they decide that they're going to just go to the house next door and do that house instead. which they had already had, there was an ISAF order that that was, they were not allowed to do that. You weren't just allowed to go into an adjacent compound because you had some intelligence about a certain compound. Anyway, so they went into this house, you know, and this is something that you have to be sort of relatively legally wary about. But I think it's uncontroversial that there was a guy who was there with his family. he heard someone breaking into his compound. He got his rifle.

One of the soldiers saw him. They shot him. And then they hadn't killed him. He was shooting through a door. A machine gunner fired into the room where him and his family were. And then afterwards, this is the part that is somewhat controversial. Some have suggested that there was a ceasefire call. Some have suggested that they were still shooting.

you know, it's contentious, but grenades were thrown in and some babies were killed and some children were killed. The most interesting aspect of that is what happened next. At the time, the Australian military had this independent judiciary that was beyond the chain of command. There was a brigadier who got a brief from the IGADF and believed that this was a war crime. And so she was going to prosecute the guys and she was going to prosecute lieutenant colonel who ordered the second house. to be to be assaulted. And so she tried to go through this prosecution and the Australian media were very upset by it

and the chain of command were very upset by it. And eventually she was chased out of the army. And there was a ruling that was made in court that previously it was assumed that the soldiers owed a duty of care to civilians in Uruzgan. And then a ruling was passed down that there was no obligation

to have a duty. care for civilians. And she was quite upset by this, this brigadier who was the, who was the chief legal officer of the Australian Defence Force at the time. And she said that she thought that they were creating new law with this ruling. And, yeah, the guys that didn't end up being prosecuted. And so that was the standing rule afterwards, that the Australian forces did not have an obligation of duty of care over civilians.

And then another controversial operation was, an assault, I believe the target was called Whiskey 108? Yeah. Well, Whiskey 108 was the one where the guy with the prosthetic leg was shot. So that's something that's under appeal at the moment. So it had been alleged that there was an assault on Whiskey 108. There was fighting going on between the conventional forces who had a patrol base very close to that compound and guys who were there in that village, which was Deraf Shan as well.

So it was really close to the place where these one commando killings that happened. And where so much of the Australian war crime story happens, despite the fact that it's this tiny little area with not that many people living there. They had been a battle. They called in an airstrike. They'd blown up a compound. The SAS come in. And they either kill these guys legally or don't kill them.

legally, but there were news reports saying that they hadn't killed them legally. The Benra Smith had either executed or ordered the execution of a couple of these guys, including this guy with a prosthetic leg. And, yeah, that's under appeal at the moment. So that's the first instance of SAS murders being reported. Because that happened, I think, in 2009. Out of curiosity, you know, kind of lent or I guess leading into the idea that maybe he was or wasn't executed.

Who was he or who did they think he was? Like, was he just a random guy on target? Or did they think that he was somebody who had been evading capture and that local forces wouldn't hold? Well, in that defamation case, somebody actually suggested that he was a J-PEL target and he was objective ziphoid

and he kept explosives. He was known for keeping explosives in his prosthetic leg. I think we can fairly safely discount that was the case. I don't think he was that Bond villain. But he and the other guy who was killed in this, is the center of the defamation case. They had come out of a tunnel, and in the tunnel there were weapons. The major issue in Erasmusgan, though, is that, you know,

they were almost certainly local militia. But were they, and they were probably local militia who were shooting the Australian conventional forces. But, you know, do you want to kill all of your local militia who agree by putting up a patrol base near New York Village? That's the question. And the only reason I ask is, and it's not to justify a killing if the killing is true, but I'm curious, because in my mind there's like a significant difference between a killing of a guy who just happens to be on a target or, you know, on a, in a house next to a target and killing a guy who is a suspected IED maker who has been rolled up a few times and released every time. And again, I'm not justifying it. I'm just asking if there was something in their mind for them that justified it.

Well, that's the difference between an ethical question and a legal question. Right. You know, because, you know, regardless of whether this person's a civilian or whether they were, had been previously a combat, once the person who's orders to combat, if you kill him, then that's murder. Exactly. So I think, I mean, my instinct that is that the Australians were not just randomly killing people on target. There may have been a couple of instances where they did because they got later on in the war, they believed that there were places where they were just full of shit people. They just, they call them shit cuntz, you know, and in certain. and incident villages is just like all the guys in this village of shit comes.

And I don't know whether you're following the British inquiry that's going on at the moment, but there has been evidence profit that the British SAS in Helmand in some villages killed every finding age male that they could find on certain targets. But I think primarily the Australian SAS, if they had killed people illegally, they generally believed that they were combatants. But yeah. From my perspective, oh, go ahead, please.

Well, no, from my perspective, one of the major issues of Australian operations in Norriscan was an overaggregation of the enemy. You know, I think that you have to be very selective, you know, in coin operations as to who you decide to target. And I think there was a sort of maximal approach sometimes in regards to some places. Yeah. And again, like talking about like the legal versus the ethical, I absolutely agree with you.

It's just, you know, sometimes it's when it's reported that a somebody was killed, you know, somebody was killed in custody. Yeah. A lot of times I think there's a deeper story to it than just, you know, these guys are savage, you know, or the coalition forces U.S., all showing whomever, are just savages off the rails in their minds, even though it's not. legal in their minds it makes sense. I think there probably were some people who had what-lop and I think there were a lot of people who perhaps thought they were doing the right thing. But from a strategic perspective, it's it's not a smart thing to do. You know, you're not getting closer to your strategic goal if your strategic goal is pacification. Right. You know, if your strategic goal is, you know, getting a pat on the back from

from a certain person who want you to kill as many people as possible, then that's different. And that's why I've been arguing for there to be a Royal Commission in Australia into these killings, because I think that they're poorly understood. And I think that we should understand the link between the civilian structure,

the department, and the ministry, Special Operations Command and the soldiers on the ground, because I think there is this sort of connected picture that doesn't exist in the public consciousness in the way that it should. And there's a real scenario in these wars that I think that, you know, Western societies were not ready for in the sense of, you know, if you take like an IED maker, a bond maker who never places the bombs himself,

he pays farmers, he gets rolled up that because of the local justice and, you know, how it is, he gets bought out of jail every time. He gets rolled up. And then he hits coalition forces. He's known for the risk of the death. It's like how many times you want to roll this guy up just for him to release over and over again. And I think that a lot of the soldiers on the ground got frustrated in those situations. Like, how he is an enemy combatant.

He may not be shooting at me right now, but he'll sure as hell blow me up tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, and that's definitely the issue in Australia. You know, there's a chapter in the book, and I describe the sort of poorest Afghan justice structure. Right. And the fact that, you know, there was this sort of, you know, this ability of certain people to take people out of the legal, the legal system, the Afghan legal system, you know, unitarily just because of the power that they had and then recycled them back under the battlefield. And there was an incredibly admirable effort by some of the Australian army lawyers and some of the soldiers and the reservists to create this thing called the rule of law cell. So they tried to, they tried to sort of train a lot of the soldiers.

the SS guys and the commandos to basically work as forensic investigators and then build up the court so they could get the prosecution. And part of the reason there's a quote in the book from one of the guys who was setting up this rule of law cell saying, you know, we thought it was a good thing to do to the soldiers because, you know, it's just not good for the soul to be endlessly killing these people and had this rage about these people who are combatants and were not legally allowed to kill them. But from my perspective of the civilian, so this is something that I sort of stress over and over again, is I am just an impartial observer.

Sure. If I was a soldier, I'd have a completely different perspective, I'm sure. But from a civilian arm's length look at this thing, if that is the case that we are recycling these guys and then the guys are like, fuck it, we have to kill them. You know, we have to protect those guys from doing that because if they do that, they may be subject to Australian laws that might put them in prison for the rest of their life.

Right. And if we are doing that, we have to articulate to the public, these are why we're killing these people, this is why we're doing it, and we have to link it all the way up to some sort of strategic goal that makes sense for Australia. And I think they failed in that obligation. Ben, could you tell us a little bit about the SAS's undeclared fourth squadron? I thought that was an interesting fact in your book. Yeah, I mean, I actually don't know that much about four squadrons,

but I have spoken to some of the guys, and they can't talk to me that much about it. but it's sort of an intelligence gathering squadron. You know, they are sort of the most technologically capable of the squadrons. And they have this gray role, you know, it's not a bit sort of, it's meant to be a sort of clandestine role as well. So one of the tensions that they had within the SPS while they were on operations in Afghanistan, when there were so many guys in operations in Afghanistan, was that they only had, so many soldiers. You know, it's a relatively small regiment, but they were trying to bring these guys into this gray role. So it's, the issue started at selection. So say it's 2009 and you're

in the middle of war in Afghanistan, and you know that, you know, when you, when you have someone that you have selected and then you're going to put them in the Rio cycle, that they're going to go into combat with guys like Ben Robert Smith against, you know, the opposing forces in Urzgan. You want them have the capabilities to succeed in that environment. So one of the guys in the book describes the tension within selection there is because, you know, we want these big scary gunfighters to do this type of direct action stuff. And so we are selecting for that.

And we're selecting for these sort of like ruthless killers, you know, these Cameron Bair types actually, sort of frankly, within the SAS. But there is, there is a tension because if people, within the SAS that are looking at the sort of strategic future of the regiment and they're like, well, we need these sort of wee, weedy dorks who just, you know, can walk on any street and just don't look like anyone. You know, like Ben Robert Smith, there's only certain environments in which he can sort of walk down the street and look normal. I don't know whether you guys are familiar with him, but he's, you know, six foot five,

120 kilos, something like that, you know, he's a joint. He looks like a VC recipient. He looks like a soldier. You know, whereas you need these guys who are going to be. be sort of low pro. So even from a perspective of selection and the way that the FAS, they rotate through to four squadron and then also to the counterterrorism tag capability, you need someone who could sort of do everything. So they were selecting for these guys in Afghanistan. And the other issues that they found, and this is something that one of the people who was doing selection

was, you know, he was doing the psych screening for these guys, is that they were trying to weed out as many as they can, but they weren't at weeding out everybody who wanted to hunt and kill people because they knew that that's what they were doing in Afghanistan. So there were people who were selecting, who were going into the SAS because they knew at some point they'd be able to go on target and start doing this, this, the kill capture mission. So there's an interesting sort of vignette that maybe not a lot of people are aware of,

where the special operations task group, the Australian Special Operations Forces, They have a team up with DEA American Drug Enforcement Agency fast teams in Afghanistan. Can you tell us about that relationship? Yeah, I mean, that came of the tension between the SAS and the Second Commander Regiment. There was a lot of, there was a lot of contention as to who would get the air assets, because Australia didn't bring its own air assets into Afghanistan. So we had to use pull helicopters and pull ISR.

and so there would be these air windows where the SAS would go and they'd have their air window you know so they'd take their helicopters out and do mission and then there were periods where the commanders had their air window and you know if there was bad weather or something like that and somebody missed the day you know the regiments ended up hating each other because you know somebody else would get their helicopters and so the commanders are like well we need to find our own helicopters so I think I have told this story I can't remember all the all the details, but I think it was actually at a funeral. Someone met someone within the DEA and the DEA said, you know, we're running our own helicopters.

You know, we have, you know, these old Russian helicopters and we have these guys that we call the expendables, you know, who these sort of like, some of them flew in Vietnam, you know, these sort of contract pilots that are working for the DEA. So why don't you come and work as gunfighters for us? And it was this really fruitful relationship in the context of they managed to drift. a lot of drugs, they managed to attack a lot of drug labs, you know, there was a lot of fighting. But there has been a lot of questions as to whether that actually, I mean, the idea was that they were going to take money away from the insurgency. That's why they were doing these drug missions.

Right. But there has been a lot of suggestions since that basically they were just working for the benefit of other drug lords who weren't being attacked. Oh, interesting. Like intentionally or that the other drug lawyers were just feeding them the Intel so that they would go like take out the Some of them were feeding me the Intel some of them had political connections you know Especially connections to the Karzai family You know people who had who were working with the coalition in in Urasgan and Helmand because most of these missions were conducted in Helmand But they were that I mean this this this sort of leads into the or goes back to the the the political disconnect

neck. I think if the Australian public really knew the way that these drug missions worked and the way that the DEA worked, they probably wouldn't have allowed it, especially considering that we had this strict mission and these strict parameters under which the Australians could operate. But there was this sort of tendency towards action. So the commandos went and did these missions and there was a lot of action. They really enjoyed it. For, you know, were they, were the Australians under the same strictures like the U.S. forces in terms of like the capture kill? If they're captured, would they just go into basically a coalition detention facility or to the local authorities or what did the Australians have something else set up? No, yeah, they had their own, they had their own facility later on, but then they would go into local detention afterwards because they had to go through Afghan, uh, Afghan, uh,

courts. Going back to the drug missions, the drug missions, they had a certain rule of engagement, a certain set of rules of engagement that was distinct to the other missions that they were doing. And I don't know. Are you guys familiar with the ROEs that ISAF was using in Afghanistan? I would assume you would. Yeah, I mean, relatively so. There were different ones of different times. They changed all the time. So, like, they changed like week to week. Do you know, so there's 429 REOA, 429 A and B, which are the offensive ROEs, as is my understanding. And then is there 429 ROE, which is the direct targeting ROE? Basically, you know, I honest the God could not tell you.

And those ROEs became so complicated from what I've been told. It was like a stack of three ring binders this high. And a very, very small group of people really had any, mostly J-TACs actually, had any sort of understanding of how they were. And I think that the ROE's actually differed. There's a NATO ROE. Yeah, they differ from unit. Yeah, there's a soft ROE.

So they also differ from unit to unit. It was insane. It was insane. That's crazy. I mean, that's something that they, that there is speculation that that's going to pop up in, in the criminal cases. You know,

there has been one SAS guy charge for murder. Yeah. And it's on video. I'm sure you guys have seen it. Yeah, yeah. Standing out of an Afghan says, do you want me to drop this count and kills him? And there is speculation.

that they're going to mount the defense that they believe that that killing was within a certain ROE as it was explained to them. That's part of the Australian issue is that everybody has told me what they believe the ROE that they're operating under was, and quite often it's quite different. I honestly don't, outside of like,

outside of, like Jack mentioned, the J-TAC, because J-TACs, like their job depending on no, depended on knowing the ROEs because they were waiting, like their fire came from higher headquarters, right? Who were, the attorneys were sitting there. But for the average Joe on the ground, whether it was SAS or 10th Mountain or Special Forces or whatever, they have their general ROEs.

Like, you don't, you know, you don't shoot somebody who is a non-combatant. Like, they have the general. But at any given time, they could have been breaking ROEs because they changed him. A little vignette. I mean, I was deployed with Special Forces in 2000. Was it 2008 or 2009? I never saw an ROE. Yeah.

We asked for one, too, and we were never given it. For people who are watching listening, who aren't, who might not, you can probably get it from context. But our ROE is a rule, rules of engagement. And it basically tells a soldier why they can shoot at another person. And you would think it seems like a simple question, but it gets very, very convoluted. It becomes like, how big is the structure? Can the structure be reduced? You know, what is the acceptable SivCAP, if any? Right. And it's armed combatants. Okay, you can shoot at somebody who's armed or what if he doesn't, what if he doesn't raise his weapon at you? What if he's not shooting at you?

What if he has his cell phone and there's intelligence that there are spotters in the area? What if the guy tries to steal your home theme. What if he tries to steal a radio that has encryption? What if he's running, what if he doesn't have a weapon, but he's running off the target where you know bad guys are, and he's running towards a known location of weapons or a suspected location of weapons cash? Like, it gets very convoluted. It sounds like civilians would think, well, it's kind of obvious, right? The guy's a bad guy or not, right? But it gets very convoluted very quickly. Especially when, you know, everybody's ununiformed. And, you know, there are certain groups that you could directly target, you know, the Taliban, obviously, is one of them?

But then there's these other militias, and it's like, is he part of this group or another group? Yeah. If only they would have worn uniforms to let us know who they were. I know. So inconsiderate. I know. Something I want to make sure that we talk about here is I'd like to ask you about the big firefight where Ben Robert Smith was a war of the victorious cross for.

And for our American listeners, the VC, that's the Australian or Commonwealth equivalent of our Medal of Honor. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was the Battle of Tizak, which was part of the Shahwali Kot offenses. Like everything, you know, post this defamation case, there are multiple versions of this. You know, so there was the official version of what Ben Roberts Smith did. Regardless, you know, it was an incredible feat in which he charged a machine gun post there were two machine gum hosts

you know killed lots of people you know they were hugely on the man in in this in this battle of TISZAC but the war crime story has emerged not from without but within you know it's been soldiers who are upset

with with Ben Robert Smith you know Ben Robert Smith has ended up becoming the most decorated soldier since Vietnam because he was awarded the Victoria Cross he was a war of the Medal of Gallantry and the commendation of distinguished service. So when he was awarded the commendation of Distinguished Service, somebody went actually back to Tizak after Ben Robert Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross and paced out where he, where he was

involved in this firefight and looked at the official reporting and said that they, you know, that the official reporting is, um, is, is a little bit skewer. But yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any question that, you know, he was involved in this, in this incredibly difficult Do you want to describe a little bit of that because it sounds like the SAS was engaged in entrenched, you know, dug-in enemy, they were outnumbered, and you write about this scenario where Ben Robert Smith and another operator are like kind of in a jam and are pretty convinced they're about to die. Yeah, they really are. I mean, they're, you know, they're pinned down by PKM to PKK machine guns. And they basically need to seize the initiative again. You know, so they have

to charge across open ground to, you know, to silence their. machine guns and kill these guys while they're getting lateral fire as well, is my understanding. But he did it with another guy who was one of his best friends, who was a junior soldier. And it was contended in the defamation case that this is one of the people that he ordered to commit an execution. And so this person is in their own legal jeopardy. This person is also someone who has a significant psychological issue. But this is also someone who in the defamation case,

case says that, you know, he loves Ben Robert Smith, you know, that he's someone that who he really kind of appreciates. But he claims in the defamation case that both he and Ben Robert Smith basically did the same thing, that they fought together, you know, to resolve this situation. And that Ben Robert Smith was given the Victoria Cross and this guy was given the Medal of Gallantry. After this guy, who hasn't been named, after this guy had been told that he was going to get the Victoria Cross. And an aspect of this defamation case is that after the Battle of Tizak, you know, defense needed a PR win. And Ben Robert Smith is a judge's son. You know, he went to a private school. He looks the way that he does. You know, he could speak well to a certain

category of Australians. And so, you know, it could be argued that this is the point where the rift began. Let's see. What else? What do we want to get into here? Oh, there's another operation that struck me from reading your book that this was a very legitimate, well-executed operation was the 2011 operation where the Australians got intelligence that there was a group of children suicide bombers that were moving into their AO.

Yeah, I mean, one of the problems in, I mean, one of the problems in Afghanistan generally was that the Taliban had this sort of area, this deconfliction area in Pakistan, and that there was a porous border. So they basically, you know, there was a quiddishira that basically ran the centralized insurgency, and they couldn't be touched. And they basically had this city where, you know, they could live with impunity. They, you know, it was four hours away by, by, by motorcycle from, from central Eurasgan.

So they could basically go in and out of theater when they wanted to. And so this is a story that has not been told and perhaps may not be told because of the, you know, because of the compartmentalized nature of some of the information. But they had to sort of build up this intelligence structure that included an understanding of what was happening in Pakistan. You know, so they wanted to, when these guys sort of came in, they wanted to hit them when they'd come into theater and, you know, they couldn't, they couldn't go to Pakistan. But they had heard that these child suicide bombers were coming in. they got some information in the way that the information is gathered I know that isn't detailed in the book and can't be detailed in the book so they get this information that these child

suicide bombers are coming in and I think they actually ended up they ended up neutralizing without killing them is that right yeah that's a couple books that's what's in your book as I recall yeah yeah I mean it's my information but like I said two books ago there's some there's some stuff I don't remember. And then the last couple, the like final years of the SOTG, you write about how that's really where a lot of the murders and mayhem, alleged murders really pick up and things really get bad. Yeah, it's 2012 where the sort of bulk of the murders are alleged to have happened.

And I mean, it makes sense, you know, from an ethical perspective, we are all moral beings. regardless of who we are and what we've done and what we think is appropriate and not appropriate, we have this sort of like understanding of what is right and wrong. And if you're leaving Oruzga and having committed so much bodily and emotionally to the fight, I can understand why you believe that you think there are these people who you know that are bad and that the province will be better off if you have killed them. You know, there is no justification legally, and personally, I don't think there's any justification morally to execute people. But if you are at the back end of this thing, you've seen so much death, you've had friends die as well, you killed so many people.

You don't want it to be for nothing. You know, you don't want to just be walking away and going, oh, well, we didn't win, you know, especially after, you know, spending your entire 30s or, you know, like a great chunk of your life to this thing, you know, in Australia and in the, and in our world. Afghanistan. That's just my speculation as to what happened, but yes, it happened primarily in 2012. The other thing that I read about in the book is that a lot of the guys talk about the incentive structure that had built up around then. Jackpots was a big thing. So jackpots, a J-Peltaget who were prosecuted who were either killed or were in detention, in long-term detention. So if you recycle a guy, you go and catch him and you put him, you know, into the Afghan justice system and it doesn't, it won't count as a jackpot.

But at the top of the mission sheets, it says jackpot, you know, and there's a box for whether you've got a jackpot or one or two. And I think the SOTGs were trying to rack up as many jackpots as they could. And I don't know this because this hasn't necessarily been investigated, but I think some of the orders to combat killings may have been J-PEL targets to make sure that this person was killed rather than recycled them that they weren't counted as a jackpot. One of the things you wrote, actually kind of, even though no one was actually killed in this scenario, there is, I mean, I thought this was in a sense the most shocking part of your book

was that you write that Ben Roberts Smith on training exercises in Australia was having the junior operators conduct mock executions and saying, hey, that's how we do it overseas. that's not something you can't chalk that up to like in the heat of the moment you know we're in combat things happen that's that's very premeditated if it's true well i mean all of all of the alleged murders uh or most of the alleged murders are premeditated in that drop weapons are involved so they took weapons on target or radios on target so that when they had executed people they could for the ssa photos uh drop a weapon or a radio on them um that was evidence that was given at the defamation case by, I think, two witnesses who were involved in these pre-deployment readiness

exercises. From memory as well, they gave evidence that this had happened in front of lots of people that, that, you know, these mock executions in the Ben Robert Smith has, allegedly in this in this defamation case had said to these junior soldiers you know you execute this this afghan because that's how it's going to be over there um and then the one of the guys who gave evidence came and picked him up out of it later and just said what's the what the fuck are you doing you know what are we doing here um and then we get into 2012 ben robert smith is is accused of kicking a guy off a cliff yeah What happened there?

I mean, a few of the killings, and part of the reason that I think Australia needs a Royal Commission is that that was in the wake of a green or blue killing where a guy called Heckmatula had been being trained by conventional forces in a patrol base, and he turned his gun on the Australian conventional forces and killed a number of people and then ran off into the ether.

And they had some intelligence as to where he was, but they were sort of a little bit behind the eight ball. So this is one of the missions where they flew into this area. They were trying to find him. And it's entirely possible that they found someone who had been on a phone who was trying to facilitate his escape and that they may have decided to take things into their own hand in that context.

But yeah, that's one of the things that's up in appeal. It was upheld in the original ruling that Ben Robert Smith had stood a guy in front of a cliff. There was long deliberations as to whether it was a cliff or whether it was an incline or whatever it was. But the judge, which is, this ruling is now an appeal, found it credible that Ben Robert Smith had kicked this guy off this cliff. he sustained some facial injuries, and then he ordered another junior soldier and a machine gun into death afterwards. Going back to that question of things happening

in the heat of battle, all of these murders supposedly happened in a permissive environment after, you know, there was no more shooting. Right. But, and to clarify, this guy was suspected or known to be linked

to the guy they were after? McIntyre? Well, I mean, there's been an incredible amount of reporting about this killing, including two relatively famous Australian books. And the intimation has been that he was someone who just sort of blew into this town and was the wrong place for the wrong time. But I've been told by multiple people that, you know, he was part of a local militia and, you know, took Heckmottila in and basically sent him off north after, you know, after he'd

escape from this Australian patrol base. So, you know, that's something that might come out in a criminal trial. But, yeah, we'll stay. There's a lot of it that's just well safe. You mentioned, you know, some of the ideas for the Australian government and what you think should happen with some of the stuff. How much responsibility do you think that the governments of like Western nations have? When we go into these sort of these nebulous environments with a rotating justice system

and allow soldiers to completely deploy to these. Like they obviously get to a level of frustration where nothing is changing. And yet the governments themselves and their generals, the military structure, is not sympathetic to what's going on there. No, that's right. Do you think there's a solution to that and how the government had, would handle these types of conflicts going forward? Yeah, I mean, my, there were so many times where I was writing fine, fix,

finish where I was like, why, why doesn't a civilian reach down, you know, enforce a fact-finding mission to have an actual understanding of the nuts and bolts, especially of the SOTG operations, and then come back, you know, and you probably need some people who have retired military people to sort of, you know, assemble a plan of action to make sure that we are operating a in a strategically coherent way and be in an ethical and moral way and see in a way that's not going to be damaging to your forces. You know, there were so many times where I just, I just thought,

you know, why does the department of the ministry not reach down? You know, there was a JTF commander. So the structure is that, you know, we have the FOTGs. We have all of the, all the individual task groups across, across the Middle East, the Australian task groups, they report to an officer who's in the UAE, and he's the JTF commander, so he's a major general, and then he reports to Australia, which reports to government.

And the JTF commander, who I interviewed said, JTF commanders quite often didn't even have access to the Australian Special Forces. You know, they were sort of told that they didn't have the required clearance to be around in their compound. You know, so you're never going to have this sort of transparency. if you have major generals who are part of the command structure, unable to gain access to the soldiers. So I think that it would have been useful if the civilians would be able to reach down

and actually speak to the soldiers not only from an operational level, but from an actual boot on the ground level, what do you guys do? You know, grab some of these guys and go, what's your day to day? You know, what are you told about the ROE? What are you told about the missions? And then from that, you can build up an understanding of what the strategic picture is, and then move things because there were these firewalls all the way through. Yeah.

And, you know, I can, I'm very sympathetic with the ministers because they are given this political appointment, you know. But then also, they do have an obligation to, especially when lethal forces being employed, to represent the Australian public, to represent in a democracy the things that are being done on our behalf. And there was a failure in being able to do that. It also seems, you know, we were very busy advising the Afghan military and aspects of the NDS, you know, the security apparatus. But we weren't, to my knowledge, like, there were no coalition forces in the actual correctional system.

And it's like that was the leaky hole. And if somebody hire in command in the military or people in governments would have recognized that. and because I'll tell you like I'm sort of on the opposite side of you in the sense of I know what it's not legal but I do find it ethical but the thing is we need to take people we need to take that situation and and make it so that it meets your expectations right so that any nonjudicial killing is ethical or I mean isn't ethical the tongue yeah yeah so Sorry about that, but it isn't ethical, where these guys aren't rotating back through and you know it's not kind of dirtbags that you're dealing with. Yes. I mean, from my perspective, as an Australian, all Australian forces have to be subject to Australian law. Sure. That's just absolutely because, you know, from a moral perspective, these people are citizens.

They are going to be fighting in Afghanistan for a certain period of time and then they're going to be coming out into the community and they have to be members of the community. you know if if you are going to be pushing the bounds of what is allowed and what is you know what is legal there has to be at least some sort of strategic reasons for that to be happening rather than just you know this is the fight that we're in this is the fight we've been sent in so you know perhaps there is more there is more understanding for rule bending if you are an american because you are committed to this to this war that you have decided that it that is strategically important but if you have you Australian, there's no justification for it if it is just a line to cohere. No, I'm, yeah, I'm agreeing with you on that point in the sense of there shouldn't be

that, there shouldn't be rule breaking. But in order for there not to be rule breaking, I think that the people on the ground have to know that that the rules will be followed, that when they put a guy away, he's going to stay away. And that's what I'm saying is that, that they should, you know, these governments should recognize that there's a leak in their just in like the indigenous justice system and not put the operators or soldiers or people on the ground in the position of making these bad legal decisions. Yeah, but then also, I agree. I wholly agree. But then you also need to understand that, you know, you're here for a reason. You're in a country that has a poorest legal system you have it is a country that that is tribally based and you know the idea of being an

afghan isn't the same idea of as being an american or australian so there are going to be these things that are infuriating to you and perhaps recycling targets over and over again is one of those things yeah but you have to you have to still be an australian and american you know they're going to be an afghan you're not going to be an afghan you have to try and you have to try and understand uh the motivations which is an incredibly difficult thing to do, that's why they're doing the things that they do, but you still have to stay who you are. You have to represent your uniform.

You have to represent your set of rules. As much as it sucks, as it's going to be. But you kind of have to do that. And I mean, I think the major sin of Australian operations in Afghanistan is that doing less might have been the right thing to do because then you can just let Afghans rule the way that Afghans rule. Right.

Yeah. Tell us about how... That's a tough thing to do. How did this whole war crimes issue explode into the public consciousness in Australia? How did that come about leading into the Ben Robert Smith now defamation trial, the Barrington report, all these things? How did that happen, you know, back home? Well, I mean, it happened internally. There were a lot of sort of squeaky wheels within the command who didn't like that, you know, a lot of this stuff had happened. there was a moment where a new special operations command that came in and basically said to the guys,

look, everybody's talking about it. I don't know what year this was. It's in the book. We want to clear the air. It can't be something that sort of drags the command down for the rest of the immediate future. So everybody, you can just write down anonymously on a piece of paper, give me an envelope, and just tell me what happened, you know? Right.

So then we'll just have a sort of understanding. You said he got like 200 letters. Yeah, he got like 200 letters. And some of the stuff are the most outrageous stuff. I think it was sort of like a case of Chinese whispers where lots of people would be like someone, I had heard that someone that I hate did this certain thing, you know, like done these executions or whatever. And, you know, like some outlandish stuff. And I can imagine a lot of the stuff were things that had actually happened.

And so they were like, well, how can we reconcile with this? So they bought in a civilian sociologist, which has been hugely contentious. A woman called Dr. Samantha Cromfitts. And she is, you know, essentially a culture expert. And so she interviewed a lot of soldiers about what had happened. And then she filed this report. And the report was meant to be about, you know, the culture. She gave it to the chief defense about the culture within Special Operations Command.

but a lot of it was detailing the ethical failings as she saw it within the command. And so the Cromford reports, you know, became big news in Australia. It's very much a big deal. And then the IGADF at that point stepped in and they worked on a report for a long time as well. One of the issues with that report, my understanding is that one of the issues of that report is that they compelled witnesses to speak. So they interviewed SAS soldiers and commandos and they were compelled to talk, you know, they couldn't basically take the fifth. And then the report came out and the report detailed 39 murders and there were 19 people who had allegedly committed these murders.

The report stressed that this wasn't a totality of what we think the war crimes problem was, but these are people who we think can be referred to a prosecutor. And so after that, the Australian government, the Burreroen report came out, there was a big day in Australia. You know, the prime minister stood up on the dais with the defence minister and the chief of defence and said, you know, we're all outraged by this. You know, no one's more shocked than I am, blah, blah, saying a lot of things. The Burridden report, by the way, said that, you know,

while there was some moral failings within the command, it's basically their responsibility of the soldiers who pulled the trigger, which is not how I understand. But they then built this new body called the Office of the Special Investigators, and so they were then going to build these briefs of evidence from these referrals, from the Burrotton report, and then take them to the Department of Public Prosecutions, and then these would go through and become trials. but Brereton was 2020 I believe so it's now four years later we've had one arrest

the guy called Oliver Schultz and he was the person who pulled the trigger in the infamous video where he's standing over an Afghan youth saying do you want me to drop this count and he kills him there hasn't been any other referrals there haven't been any other arrest there was one of the other things that after the the Breiton report was announced the Prime Minister announced that there was going to be an implementation panel, an Afghan implementation panel. So this was going to address all the structural issues

and the command issues. So they got these three experts, and they were working on it for a couple of years on the things that the defense might have done wrong. They were meant to table the reports to the government, and then the government were meant to make these reports public. They didn't. So people have had to go and FOI these requests,

which is a freedom of information mechanism that's within Australian law where you can get governments out of you can get documents out of government and then the final report which i can imagine is going to be particularly damning of government and and defense uh that hasn't been made public so the the the deputy prime minister who's also our defense minister has been given the report he given the report a long time ago. F-O-I requests have been made. Those requests have been denied, incidentally, by someone who is involved in the revitalization of defense post-Afghanistan.

The Senate, you know, our Australian Senate, has asked for it to be tabled. In fact, they've ordered for it to be tabled. They have twice ordered it for it to be tabled. It's gone to a vote in the Senate. The Senate that the vote has passed. that report is still not like like it still isn't available to us so you know years and years and years on the thing sort of drags on and we have you know we have this this high-profile venerous misdeformation

case where there's no criminal liability in jeopardy we have this one soldier who is going to to be tried for this murder and then we have this you know report about about defense accountability and what the government of the day knew or didn't know or should or shouldn't have done. And it's nowhere to be seen. And meanwhile, the war goes on for Australian special operations. These guys get sent right off to Iraq to deal with ISIS. Yeah, that's right. And there was always speculation that, you know, the four squadron guys go over to a thing called Gallant Phoenix.

Have you guys interviewed anyone who was supposed? part of Gallantini? I'm pretty sure we have, even if they didn't use that term. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's like a collective intelligence gathering in Jordan, I believe, where they tracked all the international jihadi that went over to Syria and Iraq. Right.

And then, you know, I think there was some targeting. The TF Hydra, the Brits and the French. And from what you write about, the Australians also. Yeah, in Australians as well. So that was an SAS element that went and did that. But then the commandos went on and worked in the strike settled in around Mosul and Alasad and Takad and places like that. And the Australians were actually in a house with Eddie Gallagher when the Eddie Gallagher incident happened. Yeah.

So that was Seals and Commandos who were together in Bartella in the Battle of Mosul. Interesting. Yeah, I've actually been told. that the special air service has kind of taken over from the Americans, kind of mentoring the white reaction regiment in the Philippines. Yeah, I mean, that would make sense, given that we're, you know, you're sort of much closer to the Philippines than you guys are. And the Australians, I mean, the Minternail insurgency issue, I can't remember, do you guys remember when that was? I mean, it's still like ongoing. It's ongoing. Yeah.

But I know Australians are over there, bringing in air strikes, and there were, you know, J-Tex and guys are sort of in proto-typical strike cells there as well. So, yeah, I would imagine. I mean, my visibility is with operations in Afghanistan. You know, I'm not finger on the pulse of stuff that's happening now, but that wouldn't surprise me at all. Do we have questions for, Ben? Yeah.

Do you know, do we have any Patreon stuff? No, no, no, page. Okay. Let me get to this real quick. So where do things stand today, Ben, with, like, if you could talk a little bit about the forced disposition of the Australian Special Operations Community? Well, I mean, everybody, almost uniformly, everybody I'm in contact with is retired because I think part of the reason is because that was the party. Afghanistan was the place where you could be involved in combat. And I think there was going to be at least along in Teregneum after Iraq.

I mean, Iraq was very different. You know, the counter-ISIS stuff was not gunfighting. And the people that I speak to are sort of generally an agree group for various different reasons. You know, I mean, there is a lot of unity within the community in that they think that the command. piece of the war crime story in Afghanistan should be understood and should be exposed. It shouldn't be that the entire weight of those failures should be on the soldiers that have raised the guys who are on the ground. And so even though, you know, there's a lot of different voices and there's a lot of people

who hate each other and, you know, there's a lot of old, old wounds, I think most people think that there should be an understanding of what the command piece is. Yeah. What do we got for Ben here? M. Corbyn, thank you very much. And Ossie Budd asked, how important was BRS's family background in enabling the protection of him? Was there a cultural problem in other squadrons? There was a cultural problem in other squadrons, but presumably it wasn't as bad as two squadrons. So just a bit of background.

They were disbanded, right? Sorry? Was that the squadron that was disbanded? They were supposedly disbanded, but, you know, it's a bit of a black box at the moment. So, yeah, Ben Robert Smith doubted Len Robert Smith, who was a major general, and he was the head of the JAG Corps, I believe, here in Australia. He was the head of a task force, I think just before the Robert Smith alleged murders. he was someone who was in charge of taking bullying out of the Australian Defence Force, I believe.

He was part of the task force doing that. So whether his family, I think it's highly unlikely that his family was sort of directly involved in covering up any of the stuff. And I'd be, that would be, I'd be amazed by that. But I think, you know, being someone who is, you know, being someone who is, from a background that is that is what it was and it may have made it more difficult for people to point the finger and to shine a light. I think the Victoria Cross might have done that as well. So I don't think that they would have been sort of like a cover-up in that way, but I think that it would have given people pause to come forward. Scott G., thank you very much.

What's your opinion, David McBride, and how he would have had protection? under the whistleblower laws with experts testifying, but the government blocked the testimony for security concerns. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. So McBride leaves just down the road from me, someone I used to see all the time. If you don't know what he did, he was a legal officer,

Special Operations Task Group legal officer who was deployed in 2013. And he was given this rule of engagement amplification. So it was basically new steps within, new steps that the soldiers had to adhere to to use lethal force. And his speculation was that this was because command knew that there had been these murders that had happened and that they wanted to have this ROE amplification. So if it all comes to light, they could say, look, you know, we did what we could.

The soldiers were bad soldiers. You know, we'd given this REO that they weren't adhering to. What can we do? And he took umbrage to that. There were a few other things. There were an incident in which a soldier was being investigated for a killing, and he didn't believe that the soldier had erred, and that he thought that this was, again, you know,

this selective prosecution basically protecting themselves against some sort of exposure at these other war crimes that had happened. And so eventually he leaked, a bunch of documents to a journalist, to an Australian journalist who published some of those documents. And, you know, you could argue that that was sort of the beginning of all the internal stuff, you know, the Conflitz report and the Burrant report might not have happened, but that there was this public pressure because these documents had been shared on the ABC. And then the Australian federal police charged him and the journalist who'd been given the documents

with espionage act breaches. McBride was found guilty, and you're making reference the fact that there's these whistleblower protection. David McBride, who's a lawyer himself, and the person who is acting for him, you know, is a very senior lawyer, too. They have built this defense, and I can't go into what the defense is

because of the way Australian law works. But they had built this defense and at the 11,000 Australian Spooks came in and said, you can't present this defense. You know, there's national security information involved, so you can't present this to the court. And so there were going to be witnesses. I had made a submission on his behalf as well that were going to be presented to the judge. And then, you know, this national security information interjection basically meant that he had to abandon his defense. and then either defend himself with no evidence

or plead guilty and sort of throw himself onto the mercy of the court. So he did the latter. He's waiting and sentencing at the moment and that is a blight against Australian law that someone who had done something that ended up being a public good. There's been a lot of contentious conversation

as to why he did what he did. I think it's kind of relatively immaterial. You know, he did expose big crimes. it's a blight on Australian law that he wasn't allowed to announce. The contradiction in the law is it's factually true that he exposed criminal activity, but it's also true that he broke Australian law by breaking classification. And there's a real problem there that he wasn't granted some sort of whistleblower protection. But I think the other issue is, yes, that's true,

that there should have been some sort of whistleblower protection for him. when those two things happen, you know, when there are these sort of immovable forces within the law, there should be some sort of public conversation about where we actually should fall. And that never happened. You know, his trial never happened. He basically, the whole thing just disappeared and he went straight to sentencing, which is what he's waiting for at the moment. And it also sort of highlights the idea that, yes, reporting crimes or, you know, this stuff is important. but if the state commits the crimes, then it's not,

then the state trumps the crimes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely something that happens in Canberra. It's definitely an entity that is incredibly good

of protecting itself. Right. So rules for, you know, the, but not for me, kind of, we have,

I mean, my issue, go ahead, go ahead, no, no, no, no,

no, please, no, go ahead. Your issue is why. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is our national broadcaster, recently did a piece about Dabin McBride. And it, you know, it wasn't a hit job, but it just wasn't particularly sympathetic to him

and especially the reasons why he made his disclosures. And there is just this perception. I mean, it's not even really perception, just the way that it sort of looks is that they ended up being part of the government ganging up on this guy who'd make the all the individuals that end up bearing the brunt of

of, of, of, they think. It's the soldiers. It's always the soldiers. The institution crushes the person. They crush the soldier. And not,

and it's, it's the, generally the low level soldier, right? So it's, it's the enlisted or the 01 to 04 or 03.

It's, the generals, the generals are fine. Generally, At worst, they quietly retire. Yeah, and get a multimillion job on some board somewhere. Nobody's ever going to take them a pass for the lives they told or the people they sent, you know. That's exactly right.

And, you know, the way that it worked is, you know, because we had such a poor understanding of what was happening in Afghanistan, everybody was lauded and promoted and given medals for this campaign that was, that's the lack direction. But then they were already in those positions when all of the failure. were exposed so they're like, oh, well, I'm already here. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, what can we do? Yeah. Yeah.

I got feels about that. Okay. Scott, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. What do you think of how there are soldiers who post on Instagram and describing how when they were in the second commander regiment, they would throw down radios on people they killed to claim they were enemy combatants? I think I know specifically who this person is talking about.

about which Instagram they're talking about. And, you know, he's a good friend of mine and he has a tattoo of a radio of a dead Afghan

on his arm. Yeah, I actually don't believe that this guy ever actually threw a radio down on a dead Afghan if we are talking about

the same people. And in conversations that I've had with him, he's like, we don't set the rules. You know, The rules are if we are told that if we see someone with an ICOM radio, we're allowed to shoot them, those are the rules that we are given.

And the tattoo is making reference to the context, which is you're going to give me shit for the job that I did the way that you told me to do it. Right. You know, that's not appropriate. I'm just going to, I'm going to do what you told me to do. I'm a soldier. I don't get to make my own rules. I don't get to, you know, legal officers tell me what the, what the bounds of engagement are.

So yeah, that's my understanding of the throw-down stuff that's happening on Instagram. Yeah. And that's it for the questions on the feed. Guys, I hope you go out and get yourself a copy of Find Fixed Finish. This book is, this is the best book I have ever read about how elite soldiers come off the rails. Like how does a special operations, a very elite unit, people are specially selected and trained, but also it's a very insular culture. And how does that come undone?

How does that happen and why? And I think this book does a really good job of explaining that. Go check out both find fixed finish, also Masul and the Commando. I don't know, Ben, do you have anything else that you want to tell the audience out there? Where can people find you? What's the next book coming out? Well, I mean, this book came out last year, which is my memoir,

which is about recovering from that stroke and that heart attack and then sort of going off and doing the things that I did. So you can check that out. The other book that I'm working on at the moment is I'm working with the Australian cricket captain, guy called Pat Cummins, on a book about leadership.

So that'll come out back end of this year. so yeah read all of Pat Cummins books that I wrote for you will you hold up your the other book again I'm going to read I'm going to say for the people who are listening on a podcast a scar is also skin I mean the good thing is you probably won't be able to find fine fixed finish in America but scar is also skin it's like on Spotify and audible and well yeah I mean full full disclosure I interview I'm sorry I ordered this book off of Amazon and it only took like three months to get to me. You can probably get it on Kindle quite a bit faster, I would think. That might be the way to go for most of the folks. Yeah, it's on Kindle. So yeah, absolutely. Audio books for the other book. Yeah. So on Monday, we're going to be back with Rick Kaiser, who is a seal that wrote a book about Frogman stories. And then on Friday, we're going to have a retired B-1 pilot here in students.

studio. Our first B-1 pilot. Yeah, we'll be talking about... I'll be gentle with us. Yeah, we won't be talking about grenades and rifles in that one. It'll be more of the strategic level stuff. So that'll be interesting. Ben, thank you for spending your Australian Friday morning with us. Saturday.

That was my pleasure. It's a Saturday morning? Is it Saturday morning or Friday morning? Saturday morning. Saturday morning. You're missing all the cartoons. Yeah. Hey, guys.

Thanks, Ben. We really appreciate it. And we'll see everyone else out there next week. Thanks, everyone.