Meet Heston Russell: The Veteran Falsely Accused Of War Crimes

Heston Russell has lived a life most of us couldn’t imagine. A former special forces commander, he’s been shot at, dropped out of helicopters, and led troops through the chaos of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But it wasn’t until he came home that he faced his toughest fight yet — not against an enemy overseas, but against his own country. Heston and his men were accused of war crimes, and suddenly, he was battling to defend their names against the weight of national headlines and public judgment.

In this episode, we dive into Heston’s intense defamation case against the ABC, but we go deeper, too, into what it’s like to be a soldier at war and what you do when you’re wrongly accused of a crime you didn’t commit.

You can listen to The ABC’s of Heston Russell podcast here.

CREDITS 

Guest: Heston Russell

Host: Claire Murphy

Producer: Tahli Blackman

Audio Producer: Jacob Round

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Us.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Average ossie civilians can't ever truly know what it's like
to go to war, to be on the ground when
the enemy is upon you, guns and IEDs, ready to
kill and maim your life or theirs constant battle. For
Heston Russell, a Special Forces combat veteran, it was his

(00:36):
job to navigate that on a daily basis. When he
and his November Platoon colleagues landed in Afghanistan, amongst the
dust and the wreckage of years of fighting, Heston had
to make decisions that none of us would ever hope
to be responsible for. Do I pull the trigger? Do
I send my men into that building? Do I continue

(00:59):
to engage with the enemy or help retrieve the pieces
of my fallen soldier? All of these very iant decisions
have to also be weighed up against the rule of
war that the Australian Defense Force abound by when on
the battlefield. But what if you were accused of breaching
those rules? What if the media then ran stories linking

(01:20):
your name to the words war crimes without there ever
having been a trial. I'm Claire Murphy and This is
True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast exploring the world's
most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know

(01:42):
the most about them. Heston Russell's been through more than
many of us can imagine. He's been shot at, dropped
from helicopters, survived tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. He's led
his men into uncertain territory, relying on intelligence to point
them in the right direction when the enemy looks all
too similar to civilians. But it was when he was

(02:05):
back home he faced the challenge that would become his
life's purpose. How do you defend yourself when you and
your men are accused of war crimes, even when you
have the evidence that the story being told doesn't match
up to the reality, but no one will listen. How
do you do that when those who had your back

(02:26):
one hundred percent while you were in battle all of
a sudden leave you in the dust. Heston sat down
with us to discuss his life in uniform and the
fight for his and his men's reputations. Hessen, thank you
so much for agreeing to sit down and have a
chat with us today. We've got decades of things to

(02:46):
discuss with you today. So we're going to try our
best to get through it with you. But I wanted
to start kind of back at the beginning because you
grew up. When we say in a military family, normally
it means like mum or dad served and you become
like an army brat and you move around the country
a lot. But your type of military family is like
grandparents and great grandparents, and we're talking about, you know,

(03:10):
a relative who served on the Western Front in World
War One. Like, You've got a very long family history
of military service. So for you as a kid, was
it ever an idea that you were going to do
anything else other than serve in the military.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, I'm a fifth generation veteran. Even my brother served
as well. But growing up, you know, dad was in
the military, and we moved around, and we knew that
mum's dad and mum had been in the military, but
it wasn't spoken of a lot. It's only been these
last few years, going through all these trials and tribulations
and media and all the rest, that my ancestral heritage

(03:45):
going back five generations has become the topic of conversation.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
But no, I mean, growing up, going through school.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
There were all the different machinations of everything from an
astronaut through the Superman all sorry Batman.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
At some stage I was going to be Batman. Got Together.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Absolutely that was my favorite T shirt. I wouldn't let
mum wash it. Apparently I'd sneak out at night as
a four year old and get it from the washing hamper.
Being brought up around Dad and his mates and their
sons and all the aspirational men in my life, particularly
as I went through a phase of being.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Overweight and unpopular at high school.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
It's of I kind of saw myself self actualized, or
at least the most aspirational version of men in my
life being those in the military. And that was more
so the influence to me as opposed to a you know,
designment to fulfill a family legacy.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Let's talk about that struggle. When I've read comments from
you or listened to the podcast that you've done, you
talk about high school like it was a real trauma
time in your life for you, and you talk about,
you know, you describe yourself as you know, the fat
I'm cool kid, which I know will resonate with so
many people listening to this right now. What was that

(04:53):
like for you and I know that you're also the
target of bullying. How do you think that shaped you
think who you've ended up becoming.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, yeah, I hated it.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
It just came from a place of not knowing who
I was and so readily looking to change myself to
fit in. And it's interesting because being where I am now,
in the experience I've had since, it's actually kind of
the personality profile that kind of thrives for Defense force recruitment.
We call it the lost Boys, the Peter Pan lost

(05:22):
boy syndrome, where yeah, it's actually really easy to then
go on and see a life of the military as
this opportunity, this journey that provides this structure to help
you develop an identity. And yeah, it was a really
confusing time for me, even on a sexual perspective, Like
I never had a girlfriend.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
I tried to have a girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
I guess I started to find guys attractive, but more
so in an aspirational way. I wanted to be fit
like them. I didn't want to be romantic with them.
But yeah, at the same time, it was you know, parents, divorce,
all that good stuff, and I just really struggled not
having I guess a good friend or a good friendship
group and mentoring within that that helped me to get
that through or was a pretty pretty crazy state. And

(06:06):
I also didn't want to bring those troubles home, so
I really dealt with them a lot on my own
and didn't really tell my parents a lot about what
was going on.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Was that choice because you knew that your mum and
dad's relationship was struggling too, that you didn't want to
add to that because they did, as you mentioned, separate
when you were younger too, Was that part of that
decision not to want to bring that to them.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
I think it was more so about not wanting to
seeing it as failure and not wanting.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
To you know.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Just further, I guess own up that I was struggling,
that I wasn't achieving as high as I expected me
to be, or they expected me to be, or more so,
they wanted me.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
To be happy and all the rest.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
So I've developed along my life a good skill of
being able to I guess gloss over things so as
others don't worry about me.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Essentially, we are going to bring up your sexuality as
it pertains to your actual defamation case later on. In
your case, it does become interesting when you factor in
that you are in the military at that point where
you're still trying to figure yourself out. Yeah, what was
it like for you to be in that really hyper
masculine environment around men who And I know you've kind

(07:14):
of said that there's a little bit of a lost
boys perspective there, but you know the perspective we see
if military men are like these tough, sometimes homophobic, like
real straight man's men kind of environment, how is that
for you when you're trying to figure out who you
are when you're in that hyper masculine environment.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I think context is key in particular.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
I joined the military in two thousand and three, so
very different time, and I then joined into the Special
Forces in twenty ten, which is.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Like a whole other level again, right, because sas have
got a real expectation on who that man is.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, so sas and commandos.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
I joined the Commandos in Sydney and yeah, very hyper
masculine even going through the selection course.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
So everyone has a call sign what you call each.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Other on the radio, so you don't use your names
to protect people's identities.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
And it's just like Maverick and goose on top gun
kind of.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Kind of but more more structured, more phonetical.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Those those jet pilots get to make up their own
As the commander. I was an officer and I became
a commander, so a platoon commander of forty people. In
the commandos, your courselime was always alpha, so the commander's
course sign was Alpha. And then my platoon was November,
so I was November Alpha. And even throughout your training,
it's like, you know, you're the alpha, you need to
be the alpha male, so on and so forth, and

(08:32):
fast forward to the end of my career. I actually
coined the phrase alphabetical male, because you just need to be,
as the leader, adaptable to achieve the purpose and not
get into these personal confrontations with people. But you know,
the unit was four hundred men qualified commandos, plus another
you know, five or six hundred support staff and not
one single openly gay person.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
But again this was twenty ten onwards.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
And the fascinating part is, you know, like to call
someone gay and all the rest was still you know, derogatory,
but in like a jovial way. But the hard part
is to those on the outside, that military culture and
that hyper operationally focused Special Forces culture where it really
did not matter what you did in your personal life

(09:16):
as long as it did not impact on your ability
to deploy at a moment's notice to achieve a mission.
You know, we deployed on a dime to Afghanistan, Iraq,
to other theaters of war, to other conflicts, to other
emergencies to help out the government, and it really came
down to how good you were at your job and
how well you work together as a team. And that

(09:38):
being said, by the time in twenty fifteen when I
finally decided and accepted that I was gay after spending
many years trying to literally change the way in which
I saw my sexuality, seeing it as a choice, I
can tell anyone out there, I went through my own
conversion therapy and all the.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Rest, and it definitely is not.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
But then at that point in time, you know, again,
there wasn't another openly gay person in Special Forces l
alone as an officer. At that time, I was a major,
and I just it made the decision that I didn't
need that self affirmation or that public affirmation of accepting
my sexuality within a workplace where I saw it only
potentially being something that brought uncertainty into what needed to

(10:19):
be a certain environment, which needed to be mission focused
and team focused, where I didn't need to have, you know,
stigmas or shame that people naturally have through the upbringings,
worrying is the boss checking me out in the showers
and all the rest. And I didn't need, you know,
that entitlement because my love and my passion was my job,
and me accepting myself made me better at my job,

(10:42):
and I just accepted that's a part of service, that's
a part of putting the mission and team before yourself.
But the hardest part, in particular was just not having
someone like me that I.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Could look forward to.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
People call it Jovic chokingly that I was like, you know,
a bit of a unicorns. You know, Australia is only
of a Special Forces officer who was gay that we
know of, And.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
They say that about footballers too. There's one that actually
comes out. Who knows how many there actually are.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Absolutely, and not having someone that I could see a
part of myself in in front of me as a mentor.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Was really difficult.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
But it just made me at an early age, I guess,
learned that lesson of self acceptance which I know many
people struggle with. But coming to that self acceptance, telling
my mum and sister and just those that I wanted
to and just appreciating that so much more of my
identity was simply was more than simply my sexuality.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
That's a lesson I got to learn very young, well
very young in my growth as it would be anyway.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
I'd love to know how you made it through ADFAR,
which is the officer training facility, because I've known a
few people who've gone through that and done true and
they described to me a culture which I have not
known to exist in any other training facility. There are
lots of hazing rituals, there's lots of interesting opinions towards women,

(12:07):
and there is essentially a body count for sexual partners
for a lot of the officers that I have known
in that time. And I don't know if that culture
has changed since then, But I, like I said, young man,
still trying to identify who you are in the world,
Like how did you find officer training?

Speaker 2 (12:25):
When I marched into ADFAR in January two thousand and three,
I had just turned seventeen November beforehand, being in being
in school from Queensland. So I had a fake id
my whole first year, and that was my first introduction
to drinking and to everything. I loved ADVA. I loved
the Military College the year after even more. But I

(12:45):
never encountered a lot of that what you speak of.
And I'm interesting if they went through Adver before or
after me, because straight from the outset, you're in communal living.
You know, there's forty of you living in a building,
and you live in sort of section hallways for this
and for that side, each sharing a bathroom and a laundry.
And for us it was four boys this side, four
ladies that side, and you were just integrated and everything

(13:06):
was mixed from the day dot and you really had
to work together in that communal environment, and it was
really enjoyable because you kind of got sisters and cousins
and you were all going through I loved ad For because,
unlike high school, where there was kind of social rankings
based off how you looked and popularity and all the rest,
we were all at ad For together, all at a
common starting line, and there was just such a fire

(13:28):
hose of information, both in academics but particularly in military
training that we all were going through for the first
time together. And one thing that I was very good
at was learning things very quickly and a very practical
hands on learner, and most of this stuff was very
practical hands on.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
So it was really enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Where you might bring in some high school stigmas of
social constructs and all the rest, but very rapidly people
were exposed based on their confidence level and again how
you operated with others in a communal environment. And the fat,
unpopular kid from high school was very good at doing
things practically, learning things quickly, and others were forced to
be my friend, including living with me as well.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
So it was fun to plastic.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
And there was such a focus on physical fitness as well.
Everything was so really focused on physical fitness, and such
a great structure and all the resources and gyms and
food and everything, so it was really it really was
a great environment. And I'm very lucky I went to
ad For as the little shit of a seventeen year
old I was before marching out four years later to
become an officer in charge of soldiers.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
So when you come out of ad For, you.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Are I go up to the normal army first?

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Normal army first?

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah? I go up to the normal Army in Townsill
for three years and then I try out for the
Special Forces in twenty ten.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, so it's after Special Forces training commando training that
you come out as the commander for November Platoon. Correct,
you're still quite a young man, and the people that
you are leading, they have already done tours, they've already
been to Afghanistan. Like, these are experienced team members that
you're now in charge of. You haven't been deployed to

(15:02):
Afghanistan yet by this stage. What was that like for
you to try and come in and lead people who
essentially have a lot more experience than you. Was that
a tough gig from the get go?

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, really imposter syndrome, you know, an inferiority complex and
all the rest. The Kommando selection course was six weeks
and then you'd go on for the whole year's worth
of training doing all sorts of specialist courses from fast roping, demolitions, weapons,
you know, parachuting and all the rest. And most of
your instructors throughout that year's worth of training come from
the unit that you're going to go into, and so

(15:34):
I'd already got experience to some of these you know,
some of these people that I was going to be
in charge of had been instructing me to get my qualifications.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Throughout that whole year.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
And also twenty ten, You're right, I was twenty five
and November Platoon was in Afghanistan for part of that time,
and they suffered a helicopter crash that killed three members Zimapplin,
Ben Chuck and Scott Palmer, and injured a bunch. More So,
then when I took over November Platoon, it was off

(16:04):
the back of that, off the back of like you say,
I was the youngest person in the platoon, a platoon
full of warriors who had deployed multiple times beforehand and
who had just recently on their last appointment, encountered one
of the greatest tragic incidents and losses of life. So
it was really really difficult from a on paper, Holy cow,
I'm not good enough for this. And as I talk

(16:25):
about when I do a lot of my public speaking
in the book and in the podcast I've done, it
was one of the greatest lessons I've learned in leadership,
where it just comes down to being competent in your craft,
being good at your job. My job as a platoon
commander was to be an expert in leadership and planning.
And as a part of that leadership, it's to bring
in the experience of those in my team to collaborate

(16:49):
as we communicate and plan ultimately with the person to
decide and accept the responsibility for the plan, whether it's
good or bad, whatever the results are, and then go
through the process of forming, normaling and storming and bringing
people together. But first and foremost, like being proficient at
your job. With that group of people, it didn't matter
how much of a good bloke you were, you'd come in.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
There and try and make friends with everyone. They don't care.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
They've seen commanders come and go, and they've experienced the
tip of the spear staff that no matter how good
a bloke you are, you know you can still suffer
tragedies overseas on operations. So my job was to be
the best I could be at my job, earn their
respect through doing my job, and then from there looking
for the opportunity to draw on their collective knowledge and

(17:32):
provide the best outcomes for the missions that were our
ultimate purpose together.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Can I ask a bit about the training that you've
kind of touched on a bit there. I know it's
a part of your training to become desensitized to killing
human beings. Now, that is just a fact of being
in the military, even if you find it a barrent
as you know, a citizen, it's just part of what
you have to learn. Can you tell me through a
little bit about how you become desensitized to killing another

(18:00):
human being? It seems such a foreign idea for us.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, it's not so much overt, like you're not sat
down in front of PowerPoint presentations and videos, you know,
watching people die and all the rest. It's kind of
ingrained from even basic training. Entering into the military. You
have to go to the range and learn how to
shoot the rifle and the targets you shoot at, you know,
sort of the outlines of people, like an armed person
running at you through to just so much of the

(18:26):
training that you do, whether it's blank fire training and scenarios.
You know, you're shooting at people, you're shooting at each other,
you're playing dressing up, playing the enemy against each other.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
When you say dressing up like the enemy, is it
the enemy of the dear? Time like is it? Because
I'm presuming at some stage it would have been German
soldiers in our history, and now it seems, you know
still Middle Eastern people who aren't. We're in uniforms, like
are we talking about dressing up?

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Like that? Great question.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
So throughout basic training, so throughout my ad for days,
and even in my time in the normal infantry up
in Townsville, so the military has developed this doctrinal enemy
called the Missourians that have their own uniforms, their own
weapons and equipment. We basically designed a whole doctrinal enemy
force that are per the conventional.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
Land on land, air on airc on sea battle.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Then when you go into specific training for deployments and
operations like in the Special Forces, that's indeed when we
adapted it to the specific role players and outfits and
all the rest that we encountered within where we were
going in the Middle East to where we were going
in Iraq.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Heston Russell, the Australian Special Forces veteran
who won a defamation case against the ABC over false
war crime allegations. Up next, Heston tells me about his
first deployment to Afghanistan. So I love that your first

(19:58):
deployment to Afghanistan wasn't like the standard military deployment because
you got to escort then Prime Minister Julia Gillard to Afghanistan.
Can you tell me what that was like?

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yes, I was her personal security officer, So for ease
of explanation, I was her personal one on one bodyguard.
And yeah, you're right again, I've been chomping at the
bit to deploy to Afghanistan. This is November twenty eleven.
But my first job was maanning the counter terrorism which
is you know, the critical response requirement in Australia and

(20:30):
these trips come up and we need to provide protective
security detachments. And given that she is the Prime Minister,
she had to attend all these very high level security
meetings and also the great diplomatic opportunity there is being
with her and having the conversations that are needed, you know,
to help our own equities and others. You know, it
was put forward that I should be her personal security officer.

(20:53):
Apparently I was a quite jovial, good looking person in uniform.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yes, and you.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Can imagine straight away I just went straight back into
that inferiority complex and that imposter syndrome. It's like, Holy cow,
this is our national nation's leader. I haven't been Afghanistan beforehand,
you know, surely I should have some deployments and experience,
But again it comes down to what are the specific
skills and drills you require for that. I'm one person
within a protective team and then a whole security architecture

(21:21):
around that. My job has just been an expert in
my job, focusing on her and doing what's required there.
And it was really incredible. I left that deployment with
an excellent impression of Julia Gillard. Whereas previously just watching
on TV in all the politics, I did not I
saw very prepared speeches. I saw so much politics and

(21:43):
segues and all the rest. And I got to really
spend some personal one time with her, and the conversations
she openly had with me as well really helped me
to see so much of the natural leadership potential she had,
or the leadership potential, be it natural or not. And
it also made me quite you know, sympathetic to the
fact that she wasn't able to show a lot of
that just given the nature of politics and personally think

(22:06):
that is one of the saddest revelations is that you know,
someone like her was not able to truly shigne with
all the skills that I have seen. And I say
that now coming from someone who's been responsible for selecting
and training special Forces soldiers and officers, you know there's
something wrong with our system where you know, politics takes
precedence over real leadership.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Can you take me to your first tour of Afghanistan,
not as Julia Gillard's personal bodyguard, but when you do
go with November Platoon and you are in Afghanistan? What
is that like on the ground. When I envision what
it's like, I'm only piecing together things that I've seen
in news footage or from movies, and you know, it

(22:49):
feels very scary and very dusty, and the enemy can
also look like a civilian, and the civilian can look
like the enemy. Like it seems like a really confusing place.
And you know when you're talking about an enemy that
is not organized in the world way that a traditional
enemy is organized too, So you're not fighting on a front. Essentially,

(23:10):
it could be around any corner. Tell me what that's
like to step into that for the first time.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, surreal, very surreal, is the best explanation I can give.
You do so much training and preparation, and particularly in
the role of special forces over there, you know, we
went out hunting bad people. We were watching them with
assets in the sky and working with all sorts of
three letter agencies to track them from mobile phones, through

(23:36):
the satellites, through all the rest. So you really had
a great picture of who you were going after and
why you're going after them, and what they're likely reactions
or actions may be. But in particular, Claire, there was
you know that threat of IED's improvised explosive devices about
you know, the enemy beneath the ground that could you know,
be activated by a child, you know, that could be

(23:57):
detonated by someone's phone. That we couldn't detect them all
because they were moving metal from the press switches. And yeah,
it's living with this sense of paranoia wherever you step, like,
wherever you step, you know, could be an explosion. And
in particular, I guess our mindset was not wanting to
harm others and making sure you're.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Doing right by your own skills and drills.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
And then at the same time, you know, going after
these targets that were also happily putting themselves right in
the middle of villages filled with women and children and
all the rest, and you just have to be so
on the ball. You know, even shooting your personal weapon system,
you would only shoot in those close proximities when you
literally had the site on someone and you if the

(24:41):
bullet went through them, where it would hit behind, to
make sure it didn't injure someone else, as civilian or whatnot.
It just brought on this hyper sense of vigilance. You know,
we talk about hypervigilance as a military thing, but it
was pretty incredible, particularly from a mental health perspective with
hindsight looking back, living in the moment. I've never lived

(25:03):
so much in the moment in my life, and it's
a pretty incredible place to be from your own mental
capabilities and physical capabilities, to be so physically, mentally and
emotionally focused into that moment and on such a rapid
repetition through all the missions that we conducted. And while
those first missions were extremely surreal, you kind of warm

(25:26):
up into it pretty quickly because you're also there. You're
not there alone, You're there with a lot of people,
and I particularly remember that first mission again, just so
afraid that I was going to stumble over and look
like an idiot in front of my guys or whatever.
You kind of draw strength from that team. You just
know that you've trained and prepared together so well, and

(25:47):
you truly trust.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
These people with your life.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
It's again, I have great conversations as my psychologists these days.
Some of the biggest struggles in transitioning. I've realizing that
there's not a lot of people out there who are
willing to have your back as much as someone like
me is willing to have theirs, and the extreme comfort
and confidence that comes from having that trust that these
people you're with will just have your back to the
point of giving up their life if they need to

(26:12):
renew the same, just allowing you to then bring all
that presence forward into what you need to do. And
being so well skilled, drilled, equipped, and supported in what
we were doing. I talk about Maslow's hierarc of needs
being that self actualization, and I call it that state
of flow. I've never felt so aligned in what I've
been doing and so present, brought on by the stresses

(26:33):
of those and unique circumstances of those situations.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
You talk quite a bit about mental health these days,
and not just of your own, bit of your fellow
members who have served. But I'd really like to just
touch on a couple of points that I wonder what
your mental health is like in the aftermath of And
the first is losing a colleague while you're serving. So
you've spoken about one of your men who stepped on

(27:00):
an ied in a doorway in a village, and you
go into like a fair bit of detail about how
he essentially exploded into a thousand pieces in front of you,
and it's like, what, like, how do you how do
you even compartmentalize or even process that.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, it's a really great question because, like I said,
did before this, I've been writing my own book the
last four years, and one of those chapters I go
into great detail about the death of Scott James Smith,
who died on the twenty first October twenty twelve. And
it was in writing that chapter where I go into
just such granular detail about you know, he was killed,

(27:42):
he was blown up into a thousand pieces over three
hundred meters, and you know, at that same time the
enemy attacked, because this giant plume of dust went up
and you know, there were the burliest alpha male commandos
up there fighting to keep the enemy back, while the
other half were on their hands and knees with the
most tender hands picking up every little piece of Scott,

(28:02):
from you know, a limb to a little five cent
piece of coin size. And I gave that chapter to
his mother, Katrina and asked her permission to publish it.
And she got back to me and she said, thank you.
This has helped me to heal. They told me, you
know that Scott died instantly, and you know he didn't
feel anything. But I've always wanted to ask more, but

(28:22):
I've always been too afraid to ask any of you
that were there, because they never wanted to retraumatize you.
And she's like, this has helped me to heal. And
so many other Australians need to read this because we
too easily not glorify, but perhaps romanticize or gloss over
the loss of life.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
But it's devastating.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
It's incredible to just see what can be done to
a person that does not deserve to die that way.
But at the same time, it's so incredible to also
be so inspired by someone that it has happened to
in the line of service, doing what they wanted to
do with the people they wanted to do, for a
purpose they so believed in. And also just reflecting on

(29:04):
the incredible emotions I remember when Scott died. I felt angry,
and then immediately I felt failure because I was his commander,
you know, I was meant to bring him home, even
if we were around the.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Same age and all the rest, you know. And I
carry that.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
For me such a long time, and it's only through
friends and family and again staying close to and linking
in the Scott's family that I've been able to heal
that myself.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Well, then, of course there's the flip side to that too,
because whilst you are all putting your lives on the line,
there are Afghanistani people who were doing exactly the same.
First of all, like, how do you, in that moment,
especially the first time, make that decision to take somebody's life.
And then secondly, I'd really like to know, and this

(29:49):
is something I think a lot of US civilians don't understand,
is the accountability of that.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
I guess you know one thing about going up against people,
and like you said, the Afghans, you know, feeling like
that they're defending their lands as well. I mean very specifically,
we were targeting insurgents and terrorists networks there as the
special forces, but you would definitely encounter perhaps some locals
who are trying to defend themselves. But in particular we
go into places where taliban or insurgents had gone in

(30:17):
and were actually kind of not holding the locals hostage,
but pretty much you know, dictating to them what could
or couldn't be done. And particularly when we would go
on target, we'd always go on target with our Afghan
partner force, so we had to go on every mission
with a group of Afghan special police, and straight away
they were the incredible ones who could speak to the locals,
and the locals straight away would be giving up who's

(30:39):
not meant to.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Be here, and where they are and where all their
equipment is.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
So it's really so much of this narrative that the
public doesn't get to hear about that part of this
storytelling is part of that process.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
And then it's this battle of wills.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Like you said, we're there to do a job, and
even the insurgents and terrorists and all that they are
fully ideological into that they are doing the right thing.
At the end of the day, it's a contest of
wills and you just have to be so focused on
your mission. And when it comes to the taking of life,
nine times out of ten, the focus wasn't to go
in there and kill them, unless unless it was a
specific job, but it was to achieve the mission. And

(31:14):
the taking of life came from a circumstance of protecting life,
protecting each other, protecting your own. You know, we were
really restricted to be honest in our rules of engagement
to the point of I remember the first time I
had to kill someone, I probably let it go a
bit for longer, to a point where he started pointing
his weapon at some of our friendly forces, and so

(31:35):
as I was fully legally justified and pulling the trigger
and taking his life.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
And again that was just part of the mission.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
So it's really fascinating because there are so many elements
to doubt and hesitate throughout combat. It's not while you
think you're out there, you know, it's so easy to
potentially take everyone's life. There are assets and drones and
satellites all overhead filming everything that we're doing. Through to
helmet cameras and everything else in between. Then there's just

(32:02):
a whole moral and ethical part of the training and
preparation that goes into us before we deploy. Probably quite
different for me, but I got to see it very
viscerally on the ground where most of my soldiers had family.
Let's say at least half, if not two thirds, of
my soldiers were married, most of the half of them
had kids of their own, and really felt and attached

(32:26):
themselves to the fact that these were other human beings,
other families as well. I remember, in particular, there was
one engagement we had where an American tank went through
this building and knocked down all the rubble, and this
mother was screaming because her child was under there. And
straight away I just watched my guys drop their equipment,
completely lose their own safety posture, and get in there

(32:48):
and dig out this child. And so fortunately he was
just sitting there under this gap in the rubble, smiling up,
no worries at all. But I just really got to
see and straight away I'm like, no, what you're doing
with a job to do, but straight away like they
were dads and just seeing this, you know, seeing this
human side of them cut through all all this super
hard conditioning, special Forces training.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
You know, it could have been a trap.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
You know, there were all sorts of things that people
had played on us beforehand.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
The building could have had an ID in it.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Who knows. They didn't care. They cared more about that
child than they did for their own safety. And that's
the sort of people you deployed with.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
You spent sixteen years serving and you've served in Afghanistan
and in Iraq, but you do decide in twenty nineteen
to retire, Like what brought you to that decision and
what was that like for you to transition back to
civilian life for sure?

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Well, twenty sixteen, seventeen, I deployed to Iraq. That was
my last deployment in our fight against ISIS, and most
of the public doesn't even know we deployed Special Forces
personnel to that, But that was incredible. We were fighting
evil people who were doing terrible things to children and
just evil. I never felt so justified in war against

(33:59):
a group of people in my life. At the same time,
I was over there with someone who was going to
come back and be the future leader of Special Forces,
who I just saw as being narcissistic, arrogant, and an
absolutely toxic leader, and I got to work very closely
with him, and on that deployment, I was actually dating,
and I was actually I had a boyfriend, Blake, back
in LA and unlike every other deployment I'd been on,

(34:22):
I was in love with someone back home. And while
I felt very accomplished in what we were doing, I
became disillusioned in my senior leadership. I became very disillusioned
in the Australian leadership because I was primarily operating under
the US leadership and got to see just how much
more confident they were in backing their people on the
ground and removing politics from what needed to be done.

(34:44):
And I decided to come back and take my long
service leave, spend time with Blake, and really wanted to
instead pivot my life to focus on love and focus
on building us a life outside of the uncertainty of
the military.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
I love that as much as it's like a big
transition for you. I love that love was the catalyst.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
That's cool, But it was an interesting transition that identity
and failing to understand identity. And we touched on this
at the start, going from being a lost teenager to
having my identity and doctrinated into the military where put
service and team before yourself. So then accepting my sexuality

(35:25):
and then jumping into my first ever public relationship, and
then bringing a brand called Barry's Bootcam and being very
public in the media, and that to Sydney. I immediately
traded this secret identity of being a special Forces officer
in commando and military service and the values of selflessness, responsibility,

(35:47):
courage for a society which rapidly became about selfishness and entitlement.
And you know, you've got to represent yourself first or
people you know will pass you over. Through to defining
myself by the job that I did and the relationship
I was with and not appreciating that while I was
emotionally intelligent, I wasn't emotionally mature. I never had to

(36:10):
deal with emotions like jealousy. I never had to deal
with having to have vulnerable conversations about emotions that I
saw as weakness as opposed to growth opportunities.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
You know, now you just had to be like one
of us.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Ah Well, I was so used to being the master
of my universe in life or death, combat situations and
everything else in between, and so used to being seen
as being an inspirational leader and being seen you know
as being you know, a leader, and all the rest
by my soldiers, and I put myself on a pedestal,
and I wasn't ready to remove myself from that and

(36:46):
face the realities of life that do not comply with
the extremes of life and death.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
After the break, I asked Kestin what he was doing
on the day the ABC article about his alleged war
crimes was published, and what the impact was. It's twenty twenty.
Pandemic is upon us. But you wake up one morning
and your phone is blowing up. Yeah, talk me through

(37:16):
the day the ABC story dropped.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, Well, so it was the exact day, the eighth
anniversary of the day we lost Scott, the twenty first
of October twenty twenty. Now, when we got back from overseas,
we as a group met with Scott's mum. Scott's sister
went down and spread his ashes downwary at the lake
croister Ski as a kid. But we hadn't really seen

(37:40):
Scott's family since then, and on that day we'd all
planned to meet up again with his mum, Katrina at
the North Bond BRSL to all have dinner that night,
and it was that exact morning that I woke up to, Yeah,
my phone just buzzing off the table, and it was
messages from all my guys sending me this link to
this article where this journalist Mark Willison his mates had

(38:01):
published that this whole story that this essentially this marine
had heard a pop, which meant that we had and
it literally said November Platoon and I had executed this
bound prisoner that we had because it wouldn't fit on
a helicopter. And it was just incredible because you might
hear about a generic story about a unit or someone

(38:22):
in the military whatnot, but this had specifically, for the
first time in our nation's history, named a platoon November Platoon,
and that could only be thirty or forty people that
specific platoon in twenty twelve, and that was us and
I was the commander.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
There was no one above me. I was November Alpha.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
So it was so surreal and on that day you
just could imagine the emotions.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
That flew through.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
So I just said about I called the APC, left
two messages with them, and I just started reaching out
to some of my former commanders and waiting to hear
from someone from the Defense Public Affairs or someone to
jump onto this, but no.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
One got back to me.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
And that night, yeah, when I went and met with
the guys and met with Katrina Scott's mum, there so
many emotions, so many tears, so many people just like
what do we do about this? By this time, the
Burton report and inquiry had been dragging on, and it
really caused a lot of damage, bringing some of us
who had been out back in to show us some
pretty graphic stuff and try and interrogate us. And yeah,

(39:23):
a lot of people really emotionally bruised and damaged.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
And that was kind of when I got given my
new mission.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
You know, by this time, I'd broken up with Blake
at the very start of the pandemic, and I was
a bit isolated and alone. And next thing, this fight
came about. They were targeting my guys. And if there's
one thing you can't do, it's target them without dealing
with me.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
So that set me off on the next five years.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
So this unnamed marine who claims to have heard the
pop because the way it's supposedly unfolded. So, yeah, there's
a radio conversation where your guys on the ground say,
we've got seven prisoners who require transport. This unnamed person
said there was only room for six on the helicopter,
and then he he claims that he heard a pop,

(40:08):
and then the next radio transmission was, now we have
six prisoners to transport. And so his summation was that
Australian soldiers had just murdered a prisoner in order for
that to happen. But I'm really interested to know did you,
first of all, did you recognize this unnamed marine? Because
he eventually would do interviews with his face on show,

(40:29):
and I presume that you would have maybe got into
that helicopter with him. Did you know who this person was?

Speaker 3 (40:34):
It was so incredible.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Shortly afterwards, the guys and I got together and we
wrote this ten page letter to the ABC that just
went line by line how impossible this is and if
everyone wants to see it heston russell dot com slash ABC.
I've literally made a page where I've kept a running
blog of this whole thing, just.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
To give some idea. It's basically like, in order for
that to happen, someone's radio had to have been on
at the exact moment for it to be transmitted, and
that just wouldn't have happened that way, and the prisoners
wouldn't have been near the radio. Like there's a lot
of reasoning as to why that would have happened.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
The only people who talked to the helicopters to come
in are either me, my signaler, or my jatach.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
We all stay together.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
We are never anywhere near prisoners because you don't want
them hearing what you're saying. Right the way through to
this guy said that he just watched us tackle and
hog tie them. It was a nighttime operation Hellman Province.
He said he was in a gunship, which means they
never land, so he's flying around at a couple of
thousand feet. How did he physically see that you can't
carry someone once you've hog tied them, like they're just

(41:32):
all these impracticalities to it. And then the kicker for
me was, you know, this was now twenty twenty when
the article was being published, so some eight years later
he had decided that that pop was us executing someone
and then he's decided to come forward. And the crazy
part for me was that the media was allowed to
publish this as one person's ear witness account ear witness

(41:54):
without having it met any form of criminal level of
evidence or investigation, like it should have been something there
was literally this Inspector General inquiry underway. It's something that
should have been turned over investigated. It's all just so
freely naming an entire platoon right there on that day.
And if they'd even done their research, like Scott Smith

(42:16):
was a member of a novemb platoon, you know, if
they'd done any of their research, they would realize, hey,
we're publishing this once in a lifetime accusation on the
anniversary of the death of the one guy from that
platoon during that deployment. It was just absolutely mind boggling
and as far as like my brain snapping, you could
just imagine the internal conflict I was going through.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Tell me about that trauma of having that story go live.
Because we are very aware about the sometimes fragile mental
health of veterans who observed, and that the suicide rate
for veterans is abysmally high. What does that do to
your team, to your men when allegations like that are printed, Like,

(42:59):
what's the immediate aftermath of that? For them?

Speaker 3 (43:02):
It was? It was devastating.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
It was like a bomb went off within our group,
where our entire career, that entire deployment is all done
outside of public knowledge. You know, you're not even allowed
to have a social media account in your name. We
have protected identity status. We do all these things in
the silence because it needs to be done. And part
of what we do is also saving people from knowing
some of the bad things that need to be done

(43:25):
in order to keep the world that we enjoy safe.
And all of a sudden for the only public record
about your platoon and your service to be the allegation
that you're a war criminal, you know, And as it
gained more and more media attraction, you know, I had
soldiers saying to me, Hey, my daughters came home from
school where this was discussed by her teacher and others,

(43:45):
and she said that that's my daddy's platoon, and little
kids were calling her dad a war criminal. You know,
children were having these conversations in schools. That's the slow
on effect right the way through to you know, even
some of my guys are applying for jobs in the
unstable life that often is the transition of a veteran,
and you know, they chose to remove their military service

(44:06):
and special Forces from being on their resume. They've never
been charged alone convictor's war criminals. But in the court
of public opinion, some journalists has callously published an earwitness
account of one person's fact without even interviewing a single
one of us who were there on the mission. You know,
it just sent these shockwaves where some people just did
not want to be associated with our service because the

(44:28):
only public record was that we were war criminals.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
You've mentioned that you wrote to the ABC. You also
reached out to the ABC, but they weren't the only people,
you know. You reached out to your Department of Veteran Affairs,
the Defense Department. You wrote to Peter Dutton, who was
the Defense Minister at the time, So you've reached out
to lots of people in the aftermath of this. Did
anyone step up and support you in that moment.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
No.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
I submitted two complaints through their proper processes. We stepped
up a petition. They got twenty seven thousand signatures through
the Parliament. As far as anyone stepping up, Ben Fordham
in the media step for me massively, and some other
members in the media, but none quite like Ben did,
and it wasn't until finally I decided to take the

(45:13):
ABC to court for defamation, where I received some affidavits
from a few people, but unfortunately others, including the likes
of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, who I'd had on
my podcast beforehand, through to my former military commanders who
won Distinguished Service Medals for those same deployments, when none
of them were there when I asked for help going

(45:36):
into that fight, and I was to rapidly learn a
really heavy lesson that in Australia, to take on the
media is a fight too far for so many, just
given how much of a strong platform they have. You know,
if they decide to turn on you, they can so
easily destroy your life, which was so fascinating for me

(45:56):
because you know, I'd lived through combat, I lived through
real life and death. And even particularly for me, it
was my old military commanders who I turned to and
to see them worried more about their careers and their
families back home feel afraid to enter into this fight.
It was just so fascinating for me how it was
actually more dangerous for the life I wanted to live

(46:18):
back home to take up this fight than it was
to fight in actual combat, as they accused us of doing. Yeah,
it was just imagine just imagine that from if you can,
from what you've heard from me beforehand. The just incredible juxtaposition,
and you know, brain crack of these circumstances with.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
Fighting for your life in such a different way.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
And in combat.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
I was so supported and so aligned and had such
a team, and you know, and then all of a sudden,
you know, to have none of those support anywhere when
you need it the most.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
It was really, you know, sense of abandonment.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Talk to my psychologists about my sense of abandonments.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
It's pretty big.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
That is not something to laugh at, but that is funny.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
If you can't laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?
But it's all very true. I really had to work through.
And look, it's incredible. Were situations like this kind of
decloud your life as well, potentially to help you be
more efficient in your energy. But yeah, wow, it was
a very demoralizing, humbling and lonely time.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
The reason you actually reached out to Peter Dutton was
really quite significant because you had realized that in some
of the reporting about this alleged war crime that the
facts were actually quite incorrect, and you could prove that
if you could get some documents released by the Defense
Department about your diploma. He took me through. When you
realize that things were not adding.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Up, Yeah, I pushed.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Every time the ABC released something, we got into this
bit of a back and forward, and every time they
released something trying to double down on their story, I
was able to pick it apart. And this one time
they overstepped. They overstepped so far, and they said that
they had put a request into the Defense Force for
a freedom of information request for the dates between June
and July twenty twelve quote when this incident occurred.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
And straight away I'd dug up my old deployment.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Record, which showed that I didn't deploy with my platoon
until July, we didn't commence operations until August, and we
didn't go into Hellman Province where it was said this
incident occurred until September. And straight away I jumped on
this and I wrote to Peter Dutton and all I
just said, you know, can you please make my deployment
order public for once and for all we can prove

(48:29):
you know how wrong they are. And yeah, thirty days later,
as per the ministry or requirement. He wrote back to
me with a lovely hands salutator late letter saying, you know,
I've always thought our veterans deserve more respect and if
you need help, including mental health or welfare support, here's
the welfare hotline. So instead I took to my social
media and very quickly the ABC changed their article and

(48:52):
said during twenty twelve and wrote a little footnote that
was a complete lie to the public. And that was
a point where I was like, Wow, this isn't about facts,
This isn't about truth. This is about winning this now
public art. And the person who is a minister responsible
for me and my soldiers, who could have helped end

(49:12):
this in a single stroke of a pen, is not
even willing.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
To enter into this.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Fray taught me through some of the other allegations that
were put up against you, one which was very easily
refuted after you showed extra footage from a helmet cam,
and another which included men under your charge who supposedly
murdered prisoners. Can you just set me through those allegations

(49:37):
and why you were able to show that they were
not true?

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Absolutely so, during my court case, the ABC quickly published
this follow on story that said they had footage of
a commando shooting at armed civilians out of a helicopter,
and it was from fifteen seconds worth of footage they
received from an end of trip video. Now, because it
was during my court case, I had to sit on it.
But my legal team wrote to them and said, hey, One,
well they said it was me, So they said, one,

(50:03):
it's not our client. Two, they're not to unarmed civilians.
Three why have you edited this footage to add extra
gunshot noises at this time and this time where they
went beforehand? And the ABC never got back to us,
but they decided to drop their truth defense, which relied
on that piece of evidence. So then two years later,
Channel seven Spotlight worked with me to do a whole
episode breaking down how they had professionally added this extra noise.

(50:29):
And I had actually given the ABC the full five
minutes worth of helmet cam footage that I had from
that deployment that showed the entire sequence of US following
these enemies, the guy turning and there's me in the camera,
us me ordering him to shoot because over the radio
we'd heard this person had picked up a weapon and
we were flying in a helicopter above very vulnerable, and

(50:52):
then at the very end of the video, it showed
me ordering the helicopter to land, the two of us
getting out, and the two of us going after these
enemy only to get into an ambush. And in the
footage you see us getting shot at, you hear the
bullet zipping pass us to fire back, and all of
that has never been produced by the ABC. All of
that went under the carpet, and instead they took down

(51:14):
the video once we publicly exposed that they've added extra gunshots,
and the whole narrative has been about that. So we
provided them with all the real footage and I sat
there and offered to do an interview and talk through
it all with them. But again it's just been doubling down,
doubling down, and no matter how many times it would
bring real evidence from those on the ground, the narrative
has been to try and defend the story and to

(51:35):
attack me for being for daring to step up and
take it on.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Well, what is so interesting is by the time this
actually reaches court, like the drama continues because there's like
a pre trial hearing where we decide whether it's going
to go to trial or not, and that all seems
to go well and good, and then the ABC has
a truth defense in place. But then because you've refuted
so many of these claims, they have to drop the
truth defense and go with public interest. And then eventually

(52:04):
they also dropped that one, and so we think, oh, okay,
the trials now not going to go ahead. They're going
to have to apologize to you and potentially pay you
out for defamation. But then ben Fordham finds this unnamed marine.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
Josh, talk to me about what happening.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Josh, the unnamed marine, talk to me about what happened
after that.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
So, when the ABC originally published this article, this marine
who heard a pop, they gave him the pseudonym Josh,
but they still publish his name, his unit, and all
these details about him.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
And for a long time we face.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Two like we saw his face unobstructed. Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
When it came to the part where after they dropped
their tooth defense and the ABC said, hey, we're going
to drop our public interest defense and drop it completely
because we don't want to break the ethical line of
journalism and have to reveal our source. That's when you know,
ben Fordham and my legal theme come out like, hey,
we actually know who Josh is and we've tracked him
down just based off the information you've made public and

(53:03):
he's actually his name's Dean and he's a salesper here
and I won't say anything more.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
But then we got to the part with ABC's like, well, okay,
if you already know who he is, then let's have
this defense out and see what happens.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
It was just I remember the judge Justice Lee said
this is turning into an absolute face and it really
was all at taxpayers expense.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
So eventually it does land in your favor and you
do get a payout from this. But then in all
of the correspondence I have seen in the public since then,
is the ABC saying that they have apologized to you
several times, and that they have made it very clear
on articles that they're misleading or incorrect, and again they've

(53:45):
apologized to you. Have you received an apology or at
least one that you feel is significant enough to cover
you for the fact that you've been fighting this for
so long.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Well, this is the issue.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
And this is where Brian does a great job in
the podcast the ABC's of Heston Russell to really break
down this gas lighting campaign of THEIRS about the apology.
So when I won my defamation case, the defamation case
found the ABC and the two journalists Josh Robertson and
Mark Willersy liable for defamation and to pay damages. But
the ABC pays for all their personal damages. And then

(54:17):
because we originally entered into the case just asking for
them to apologize and to take the stories down, they
then had to pay all of my legal costs, so
it was a multi million dollar.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
Bill they had to pay on top.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
They then went on to one refused to apologize to
me post the defamation case. And then only after we
expose they're adding of gunshots to the footage did they
release apology that was generic to all the members of
the second Commander Regiment. And then when I took it
even further and they had to conduct this internal review
by one of their own staff members, former staff members,

(54:50):
they did an apology saying, hey, while Heston Russell wasn't
named in this, he has taken offense to it, and
we apologize to.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Him for that.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Because you've taken offense to it.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Isn't that you can apologize for the action or you
can apologize for the effect, and as opposed to apologizing
for their actions, they're apologizing that I took a events,
which is pretty insulting to be honest.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
I'm sorry that you're offended.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Yeah, is it incredible?

Speaker 2 (55:13):
And this is the incredible part for me, Claire, Like
we're in twenty twenty five with the National Broadcaster that
every taxpayer funds over a billion dollars a year asking
for adults to apologize whether they were errors or otherwise,
but have since been proven in the federal court to
have been wrong. And for me, where does that stand
as far as the morals and ethics we accept in

(55:35):
society where we're not even willing to apologize, even like
the head of the ABC who wasn't personally responsible for
publishing the article. And I've written to them when particularly
with the new managing director and saying, hey, let me
spell this out for you. In the federal court proceedings,
you submitted on record that you had footage of me
shooting from a helicopter at unarmed civilians and that I

(55:57):
could be liable to be breaking the rules of war,
committing a war crime. You need to apologize for that
because that is still on the public record. The Guardian
published it as a front page piece and is still
online if you search the Heston Ross shooting and unarmed civilians,
and they still refuse to They're say no, we have
apologized of like mate to have them. So we're in
twenty twenty five arguing over and apology.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
What I do want to land on here, finally, though,
Heston is that we have seen other Australian soldiers who,
whilst have not been criminally charged with war crimes, they
have been in other cases where they have been found
to have committed war crimes. So we as the Australian people,

(56:39):
are concerned that there's kind of this two arguments here.
We need journalists to tell us the truth about what
our soldiers are doing on the ground, to make sure
that they are accountable for what happens, you know, on
the field of war. On the other hand, we don't
want our defense force to be unfairly accused of things
that they have not done. How do we find the

(57:00):
line here, because we're being told that yes, these things
are happening, But at the same time we hear your
story and we're like, we don't want that to happen
to anyone ever.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Again absolutely, it's called due process and the actual court system.
So the issue is that people like myself have had
to go through civil defamation proceedings. And the issue here
that most people don't understand. It's the difference between civil
and criminal prosecution. You know, if journalists were truly focused
on justice, then they would take such accusations like a

(57:28):
marine hearing a pop and saying that we'd killed someone
to the authorities there there specifically, you know, the Office
of the Special Investigator that is costing the taxpayer fifty
eight million dollars a year that's been set up by
the government to investigate any accusations of war crimes from Afghanistan,
to take it to them and have them gather evidence

(57:48):
to meet the thresholds of charging someone criminally to then
be tested beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal court by
a jury. What is happening is we're caught up in
this place where journalists can publish whatever they want as
long as they can justify in civil proceedings that it
meets the balance of probabilities for public interest. Because it

(58:09):
is now such a public interest case, and this has
been my frustrations. We developed this Veterans Protection Act and
tried to get both parties to agree to it before
this election. Is that as a society we absolutely need
to hold our veterans accountable for all of our actions,
particularly in combat. We've now had a Royal Commission of
events and veterans suicide, all the rest and the examples

(58:31):
from my story and the impact this has. Can we
not simply agree to afford those who've been in combat
the presumption of innocence and due process, to have any
evidence brought before a criminal court and not be played
out in civil proceedings, To be allowed to defend ourselves
in a court and not have to pay out of
our own pockets to launch a defamation case to clear

(58:53):
our names. That's the simple ask, and it's just simply
reinforcing the legal process, not the media process, not chasing
stories that under the provisor of public interest. But public
interest is about, you know, true justice, about truly determining
if there were war crimes, into truly holding people accountable,

(59:14):
not a lot of the circus that's been played out publicly.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
So that's that's my answer to your question.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Thank you to Heston for sharing his story with us.
You can listen to all seven episodes of the ABC's
of Heston Russell podcast. Now you'll find a link to
that in our show notes. True Crime Conversations is a
Muma mea podcast hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced
by Tarlie Blackman, with audio designed by Jacob Brown. Thank
you so much for listening. I'll be back next week

(59:43):
with another true Crime Conversation.