That is some twisted narrative the abc has been spinning about their own source.

If David hadn’t wanted to expose the murders, he wouldn’t have leaked evidence of it. What’s more, he leaked evidence of their cover-up up to the highest ranks, which could be argued is he graver war-crime, since it fosters a culture of impunity.

It is true that David saw some soldiers, who served in Afghanistan the year after a lot of those murders took place, prosecuted unfairly, the way he saw it. He believes the Defence leadership were scape-goating these soldiers to be seen to be doing something about war crimes when in reality they continued the cover-up for the murderers. This flauting of command responsibility is the bigger story which the abc continues to ignore.

Edit: also, motive was never discussed during trial. Trial only ever got as far as pre-trial, where the justice ruled on the meaning of ‘duty’ (just follow your orders) and in a closed session allowed the govt to scoop away David’s evidence, leading him to plead guilty.

McBride handed over his original complaint about the “over-zealous” investigations of special forces soldiers along with thousands of pages of supporting documents.

Oakes says McBride was very clear about the story he wanted told.

“He really simply wanted to say that the special forces in Afghanistan were being unfairly targeted and unfairly scrutinised.

“There was no mention of potential war crimes.”

Oakes came to an entirely different conclusion.

“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.

“What happened out in the field stayed in the field.”

I knew the essentials of this, that the story he wanted told was more about Army treatment of SAS soldiers. I didn’t realise the story was meant to be basically the complete opposite to the Afghan files, though.