Comment on If you're seeing this, I'm in jail.

• downpunxx@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Blow me.

  BBC: "McBride, 60, admits he gave troves of document to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), saying he was concerned about the attitudes of commanders and what he then thought was the "over-investigation" of troops, the court heard.

  But instead the information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia's elite special forces in Afghanistan, and contained allegations of war crimes."

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  • unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No you:

    According to the affidavit, McBride wanted Australians to know that “Afghan civilians were being murdered and Australian military leaders were at the very least turning the other way and at worst tacitly approving this behaviour”.

    He continued: “At the same time, soldiers were being improperly prosecuted as a smokescreen to cover [leadership’s] inaction and failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.”

    theguardian.com/…/war-crimes-whistleblower-david-…

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    • downpunxx@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      oh, HE said that once he got into trouble and needed a better defense than "whopps i was completely 100% percent wrong about why i exposed these highly sensitive national security documents, and now i need an excuse to stay out of prison"?

      you don't say

      "He believed the dossier he compiled would show the ADF's chain of command was so concerned about the perception of unlawful killings that they were scapegoating soldiers and undermining special forces' confidence to do their work.

      Instead, ABC journalist Dan Oakes found they contained evidence that Australian forces had committed war crimes and lied to conceal them.

      "The more I looked into it, I couldn't conceive how anyone would think these guys were being too tightly monitored. It was precisely the opposite," he recently told the Four Corners programme."

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      • unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Riddle me this then: Why would he hand evidence of war crimes being committed to a journalist if HE wanted people to know that soldiers weren’t committing war crimes?

        That Four Corners episode came out fairly recently. Tell me, what motives would Dan Oakes, an investigative journalist with a reputation, have to disparage a whistleblower who is about to be prosecuted? I dunno, maybe he doesn’t want to be the target of prosecution himself and distancing from him is protection?

        Why do you keep referring to the BBC article? It’s quite poorly worded and oversimplified for an international audience. You won’t find many articles about David McBride’s motives from before the case because he was secret then, the ABC gave him up.

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Telling a mod of the community you’re in to “blow me”? Brave move.

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    • unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not as bad as what they said to someone else in this thread, but I find it amusing how confidently incorrect they are quoting some BBC article (because the BBC would have the best idea as to what is going on in Australia).

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      • downpunxx@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        ABC : [which I'm sure is also oversimplified, poorly worded for an international audience]

        "He spent months staying back at night gathering secret files from his work computer, compiling an internal complaint about the ADF leadership alleging that SAS soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.

        “If there is political bullshit going on against soldiers, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re SAS or not, you need to stand up for it,” McBride says.

        His complaint was dismissed."

        "McBride fled to Spain, leaving his two young daughters with his ex-wife Sarah in Canberra. He also left behind four plastic tubs filled with classified documents in a lounge room cupboard at his apartment.

        In his absence, the AFP conducted a search and found the secret files."

        Principled Einstein. Obviously.

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  • pupbiru@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    that wording is misleading at best. 2 things were true

    • certain people were being overinvestigated in order to use resources so that others who were guilty of far larger crimes wouldn’t be investigated… that’s a VERY different thing
    • he also thought that significant war crimes were going unpunished and uninvestigated

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    • downpunxx@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      lol, no.

      "He believed the dossier he compiled would show the ADF's chain of command was so concerned about the perception of unlawful killings that they were scapegoating soldiers and undermining special forces' confidence to do their work.

      Instead, ABC journalist Dan Oakes found they contained evidence that Australian forces had committed war crimes and lied to conceal them.

      "The more I looked into it, I couldn't conceive how anyone would think these guys were being too tightly monitored. It was precisely the opposite," he recently told the Four Corners programme."

      yours is not what the ABC reporters, who were also under investigation for criminal security breach, and later had their investigation dropped, told the court were his intentions. what you wrote were his after the fact criminal defense strategy that he claimed were at the heart of why he leaked the documents.

      the court found they were not, and that he was not entitled to whistleblower protection.

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  • Ilandar@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    McBride had been concerned about what he saw as systemic failures of the SAS commanders, and their inconsistency in dealing with the deaths of “non-combatants” in Afghanistan. In an affidavit, he said he saw the way frontline troops were being

    improperly prosecuted […] to cover up [leadership] inaction, and the failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.

    He initially complained internally, but when nothing happened he decided to go public. In 2014 and 2015, McBride collected 235 military documents and gave them to the ABC. The documents included 207 classified as “secret” and others marked as cabinet papers.

    Source.

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    • downpunxx@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      yes, lol, that was his defense, but the court decided it wasn't his original intent, which is why they found him guilty, and not protected by whistleblower statute

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      • Ilandar@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Same article:

        Much has been made of McBride’s reasons for going to the media, but this focus on motives is a form of misdirection. Whistleblowers take action for a host of reasons – some of them less honourable than others. But ultimately, what matters is the truth of what they expose, rather than why.

        That is why we recognise media freedom as an essential part of a healthy democracy, including the right – indeed the responsibility – of journalists to protect confidential sources. Unless sources who see wrongdoing can confidently expose it without fear of being exposed and prosecuted, the system of accountability falls apart and gross abuses of power remain hidden.

        It is also why the formal name for Australia’s whistleblower protection law is the “Public Interest Disclosure Act”.

        This law is designed to do what it says on the tin: protect disclosures made in the public interest, including those made through the media. It recognises that sometimes, even when the law imposes certain obligations of secrecy on public servants, there may be an overriding interest in exposing wrongdoing for the sake of our democracy.

        .As a highly trained and experienced military lawyer, McBride knew it was technically illegal to give classified documents to the media. The law is very clear about that, and for good reason. Nobody should be able to publish government secrets without a very powerful justification.

        But nor should the fact that a bureaucrat has put a “secret” stamp on a document be an excuse for covering up serious crimes and misdemeanours.

        In McBride’s case, the judge accepted the first premise, but rejected the second.

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