On April 15, 2026, we published the post Special Forces Operator Scott Jones: The Truth About Ben Roberts-Smith, with a link to Sam Bamford’s must-watch 2 Worlds Collide podcast in which Special Forces Operator Scott Jones recounts his first-hand experiences near and alongside Ben Roberts-Smith. We have now obtained the transcript and publish (most of) it to help readers to more closely analyse what Scott Jones said and note the references to Andrew Hastie, currently in the news, in the context of his relevance to the Ben Roberts-Smith case.
Sam Bamford:
Hi guys. Welcome back to 2 Worlds Collide podcast. On today’s episode, we have Scott Jones, AKA Scojo. Mate, Scojo, welcome to 2 Worlds Collide podcast. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for coming to Adelaide.
Scott Jones:
It’s a pleasure to be here, mate. It’s not often I meet up with dudes I met on the internet and they fly me to exotic locations for a chat. I feel like I’m on Epstein Island or something. But here we are mate. And I just listened to your podcast that you did with Shane Warren’s son, which was awesome, very wholesome.
Sam Bamford:
A good man, isn’t he? And …
Scott Jones:
I feel like I’m sitting in this chair, so maybe I might get a little bit of his special powers and I can start bowling leg spin again. Well, it’s getting too cold for cricket now.
Sam Bamford:
I know, I know. But yeah, obviously there’s been a lot of things happening over the past week. And what we know about the Ben Robert Smith stuff is pretty much only what’s been put out in the media. And the media have been very heavily one-sided on this to try and prop up their boy Nick McKenzie and to ensure that their news organization and media outlets have a truth teller position, which we all know is absolute horseshit.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Well, if you’re profiting off something that you write a story about, there’s obviously going to be a bit of a bias there to get clicks and put a headline out there that. I’ve had journalists say to me directly like, “Well, that article got a million views, so I got paid.” Okay.
Sam Bamford:
Good for you. Yeah,
Scott Jones:
Good for you.
Sam Bamford:
But not good for the people that have fought for this country and fought for their freedom to be able to write those articles.
Scott Jones:
Absolutely.
Sam Bamford:
So I thought I’d get you in because look, you’ve been through the process of having your house raided
Scott Jones:
And
Sam Bamford:
All this other stuff. I’m going to let you explain that because I don’t want to take your story off you. But maybe just maybe let’s just add a bit of credit to your story and give you a little self, a bit of a brief background of yourself.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, too easy. So I joined the army in 2008 from a beautiful little place in Western Sydney called Campbelltown. You might have heard of it this time of year. Absolutely phenomenal. And yeah, I wanted to be a soldier and I joined as a rifleman initially. Realized that wasn’t maybe for me because I actually want to get out and one day do more of the ASIO ASIS space in the national intelligence community. So I switched to be an electronic warfare operator. So primary role of these boys overseas, depending on what technology the enemy’s using, is to carry equipment that can exploit that technology. So Afghan, for example, listening to and finding out the location of the Taliban when they’re talking on their radios. And then depending if they switch to mobile phone use, then we would have the equipment. It was like a golf bag solution.
See the golf clubs here. What we would take on the job was depending on what we were targeting. Then you had the option back then in the army to do selection and become a special forces qualified commando and you could earn the Green Beret that you see your cousin wore before his passing. I did that. I did the whole selection reinforcement cycle, became a commando, but kept my job because I felt that the best asset I could be might not be the number six in the team carrying the gun or the breaching charge, but the dude carrying the signals equipment to locate enemy signals so that the boys around me could kill the bad guys and also to prevent them getting ambushed. Our role was to take away the situational awareness from the Taliban because they didn’t know we were listening to them and they weren’t aware at the time we knew how to find them.
Every time they transmitted on their radio, it would give us a location to them. As you can imagine for a sniper, when they’re looking across the whole valley looking for someone to shoot, looking for a bad dude to put down, it’s pretty handy having a dude that can tell you, if you look along this bearing, approximately 500 meters away, there’s a dude planning an IED and we got to put on every deployment, every job, every mission. I don’t think there was many missions where they didn’t bring an electronic warfare operator. Pretty handy to have.
Sam Bamford:
Cool, cool. All right. So how many trips have you done?
Scott Jones:
I did one special operations task group deployment to Afghanistan 2013. Two deployments to Iraq combating the Islamic state 2014, 15, 16, 17. I also did two tag rotations, tactical assault group, and I did a couple of little gray role deployments I’m not allowed to talk about.
Sam Bamford:
Right. So you’re well qualified to talk about the current situation that we’re in given that you’ve been in combat in the highest stress environment for any Australian soldier, given that you deployed with Two Commando, the Special Forces Regiment. Now there are allegations against certain Two Commando members, but there’s also the allegations against Ben Roberts-Smith. Now this is all going to tie in together. We’re probably going to talk about the whole thing in regards to the Brereton inquiries and everything. But let’s start off with Ben Roberts-Smith. Let’s also start off with the process that he’s going through now because you’ve sort of been through it. So just explain to us your house getting raided, you’re getting arrested, all this sort of stuff.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. So not just me, obviously there was over 400 fellas that got interviewed and accused of different things varying in nature and severity during that time. A number of the boys, whether you were ever to be charged or not, just to rattle the cage we feel, they went after a lot of the boys and a lot of the houses being raided. As of almost two weeks ago, one of the boys got his house raided.
Sam Bamford:
Didn’t call me.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, exactly. And it’s shattering. At this point in our lives, we’re just dads. We’ve moved on.
Sam Bamford:
House raided in front of his two little girls.
Scott Jones:
His wife …
Sam Bamford:
Was out the back. His wife’s now struggling. His two little girls are thinking, why is the AFP coming to my dad’s house and kicking the door in? What’s he done wrong? He’s a war hero.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, your neighbor’s in your street. You build up a bit of rapport with the 80-year-old neighbor across the street putting his bins out and stuff. And then he’s like, “Hey Scotty, what was that tactical team doing kicking your front door in?” And you got to explain that you’re not a drug dealer or …
Sam Bamford:
And I just want to let everyone know, it’s still happening to today.
Scott Jones:
It’s still happening to today. Yeah. Well, when the head of the OSI is on $800,000 a year, why would you stop?
I don’t know his intentions. He might be the best lawyer in the world, but I can tell you right now, if I was on 800K a year, I’d be working pretty hard to keep things moving along. I wouldn’t be in a rush to shut it down. But my specific circumstances, I eventually went through the court process and was found not guilty, never convicted of anything. And I signed a legal non-disclosure agreement or it’s called a deed of service apparently in legal terms where you are not allowed to talk about it. So I settled the matter with the government and we all move on. But I could definitely talk to all the boys that are going through it because everyone that’s currently going through it, especially RS’s team, some dudes that I actually did a deployment with Two Squadron, with eTroop. So they were there with us in Afghanistan and we did a number of bilateral jobs with them.
We let them fucking hold our pocket here and there because obviously we’re the premier unit in the Australian Defense Force. Shout out to Two Commando.
I do have a bit of knowledge obviously on this subject. Then from there, because of my experience with my own situation, I ended up going down and helping in Ben’s trial in some capacity and also was working overseas at the time. I had a lot of time to watch the trial every single day live stream. I feel like there’s not many people other than the journalists in the room that watched as much and were invested in much of the trial as I was. Now I’m also helping out Oliver Schulz from his case because I’m no longer working for our government and it’s a very niche thing. The electronic warfare operation, you’re cleared to top secret, so you have access to a lot of tools and things. When you get out, you generally work for ASIS, ASIO, DFAT. All of my cohort work for ASIS, ASIO and DFAT and they’re not going to put their neck out and risk the rest of their career by supporting Ben or the other boys that are in trouble.
I’m happy to do so because I’m certainly not going back to ASIO after the Instagram, post some photos of me wearing Speedos in gunfights on the rooftops of foreign lands. They don’t really want to have operators in the field that can be identified.
Sam Bamford:
That’s right. All right. Okay. The first thing I want to break down is 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses. 21 witnesses came out against this and you really get to talk to guys like yourself. I won’t name anyone else on the podcast for reasons that we don’t want to because this is my podcast and I don’t want to put anyone else under scrutiny, but I get this information from all these other people. 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses. Well, no, it wasn’t 21 witnesses. It was more like two or three or four witnesses.
Then there are a whole bunch of witnesses that were on Ben’s side as well.
Scott Jones:
That’s right.
Sam Bamford:
During the defamation trial, that all got just kicked out and none of their
Scott Jones:
Testimonies
Sam Bamford:
Were even –
Scott Jones:
Unreliable witnesses that were referred to as by the judge.
Sam Bamford:
So just explain, and I want you to go through because there’s also, we were talking before, there’s witnesses of Afghan nationals. So an Afghan born and bred person that may have seen something overseas, now they’re living back in Australia.
Scott Jones:
That’s right. They are. So I think we need to go back one step further and say, how do we get to the position where people are accused of war crimes? So in Afghanistan, I was there actually the first week I got to Afghanistan, we were on CSOPs. We weren’t allowed to go out and do any missions because a certain patrol of the SAS had mistakenly misunderstood certain rules and they cut off a whole bunch of people’s hands to borrow and roll to get the fingerprints of the bad dudes that we’d killed. Not we, I wasn’t there. And that was the patrol led by certain Andrew Hastie. So I first got to Afghanistan and I’m not allowed to actually go out and do my job. I thought the president of Afghanistan saying, “Hey, hey, hey. Well, no more jobs Australians. You out there fucking lopping off hands.” So that was my first exposure to the allegations of war crimes.
That meant I didn’t get to go out and do my job. So I was just sitting in the gyms and flirting with cute sig chicks down at the MRTF or whatever. But then fast forward to about 2014, things started to come out. They’re starting to whispers that there were people unhappy with other people’s service and conduct in Afghanistan. So they came around and said to us at platoon points in Two Commando, and they said, “Mate, if anyone has a problem with anything they saw overseas, there’s a certain female called Dr. Samantha Crompvoets and she’s sitting up at the headquarters and she is someone you can sit down and talk to. Her door’s always open. Go over there if you have a problem.” As a young digger, I put my hand up and said, “Is she hot?” And one of the boys said, “It looks like she’s been hit by an IED.
She’s got real bad acne. She’s no good mate.” I was like, “Well, what are we doing? We’re going to the range.” And all the boys just put their body armor on, went to the range. No one that I know spoke to her. And then she was obviously over in the SASR. None of my friends in the SASR know of anyone that ever spoke to her, but clearly there was a couple of little weasels that went and had a sook, and we thought it was about potentially the drinking culture overseas. Maybe Scojo was getting a bit too naked on the back deck and butt chugging a few long necks of VB, and that’s unacceptable.
Sam Bamford:
I drank overseas and I was just a grinding three area. Right?
Scott Jones:
Yeah. It’s normal. We’re human beings and it’s a good way to decompress. I’m not saying become an alcoholic, but it was a good culture. I saw it as like a footy trip. You’re on a footy trip with the boys and when the work’s on, you’re on. When you’re on the field, you’re on, but when you’re back in the clubhouse, have a little good time.
So the drinking culture, we though that’s what it was about. So to Commando, blatantly just like, “This is dumb. We’re not even going to contribute to this.” Then Sokost came out, the head of the special operations said, “There’s something deeper here because some people have come forward with some pretty wild allegations. The biggest allegation, you can Google it, is that the SAS cut a whole bunch of young children’s throats, put them in body bags and threw them in a river.” Now, one, we didn’t carry body bags on jobs. Maybe one dude did for one bag if something bad happened. Secondly, if you’re going to hide a body, you’re not going to put it in a flotation device and throw it in the river. None of this really made sense to us, but this was what was coming out in the media. And that sounds horrific, right?
I even heard that. I was like, “Oh my God, if that’s true, that’s pretty cooked.” But…
Sam Bamford:
None of those allegations have ever been…
Scott Jones:
So we’re in 2026 right now, and not a single person has ever been accused of that. But that was the premise for the next step, which was to launch the Brereton Inquiry, which is an old reservist fellow, Justice of the Supreme Court. He came in and basically compelled over 400 soldiers, predominantly operators and support staff that were in Afghanistan, you were compelled to talk to him.
Sam Bamford:
Is he the one that looks like he should get his hard drive checked?
Scott Jones:
Look, I’m not saying. It’s your comments, not mine. He’s not my biggest fan. Shout out to Buro. But look, what occurred there? Then we started to hear what was happening. So you’re in the mess talking to your mates at lunch and they look all disheveled. They look like cook. They look like they’ve just seen their missus get hit by a car or something. You all right, mate? And maybe it’s a bit of PTSD creeping in or something, but he goes, no, I was just in an interview with the IGADF and they laminated on the table in front of me every person that I’d killed in battle, legitimately, say five, 10 people, they printed them out on laminated sheets of paper and it was literally a zoomed in picture of their half missing head that he’d shot off because they’re in a gunfight in Afghanistan with an insurgent.
And they laminated them and put them all on a table and they forced him for eight hours and sit there and stare at it.
Sam Bamford:
Isn’t that really good for a soldier’s mental health? Yep.
Scott Jones:
And some of my biggest haters, I think even Nick McKenzie, who else? There’s a few people out there that won’t like what I am and what I stand for and that’s fine, but no one will say that that’s good for anyone’s mental health. No. Imagine if someone had been seriously assaulted or hurt in some way, shape or form that was disgraceful and disgusting.
Sam Bamford:
They did this to soldiers…
Scott Jones:
They did this to soldiers like heroes. My mentors, the dudes that I looked up to were looking at me all disheveled.
Sam Bamford:
How many years after it was –
Scott Jones:
This is say 2015, 16, 17, 18. And this is from 10 – So five,
Sam Bamford:
Six,
Scott Jones:
Seven, 10
Sam Bamford:
Years.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, 10 years prior.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. So after that, after they went and fought so hard over in Afghanistan, after they’ve punched well above their weight, after they’ve really done a lot of the heavy hitting over in Afghanistan, they’ve built up such a reputation. They’ve built up such a masculine man environment that the world seems to hate these days, right? Yep.
Scott Jones:
And
Sam Bamford:
They put a whole bunch of photos of dudes that they shot over there
Scott Jones:
In
Sam Bamford:
The protection of our country
Scott Jones:
Saying,
Sam Bamford:
“Do you remember this? Do you remember that?”
Scott Jones:
What the
Sam Bamford:
Fuck who?
Scott Jones:
Cooked, mate. Absolutely cooked. I mean,
Sam Bamford:
That’s a war crime in itself. It
Scott Jones:
Should be. And what happened was – Who the fuck
Sam Bamford:
Did the government think they are?
Scott Jones:
One dude sat back in his chair and he laid on the floor. He literally laid on the floor in the interview for half an hour. He didn’t have a support person or someone there to hold his hand. They just left him there on the floor. They just let him have a full mental breakdown. And then when he was speaking to the boys later on, he said, “One of the photos they showed me, I killed a bad dude. We were shooting at each other and I got the drop on him and it was who was quickest to the trigger. The dude’s half his head was missing because he shot him in the face and his eyeballs had popped out the front of his head and it looked like they were dangling on spaghetti.” And he said to me, and we all laugh about it, but what he said to the boys is, “I spent the last three years of my life going to psych off base, so no one knew about it and trying to forget that image.”
He’s been trying in his own time to wipe that memory from his head. And then these fucking jerks that have never been in a gunfight in their life, I don’t even know if they’ve ever deployed, slap down a picture of that in front of you and say,” You’re going to tell me the lead up to that event, what you had for breakfast that day, why you went there, where you were patrolling, what direction you were facing when you shot him, where exactly were you? Who was there? Who was next to you? “And forced him to relive it. And this happened to over 400 people over about a two or three year period.
Sam Bamford:
Great. No wonder so many ex-veterans now are struggling with what’s or struggling to really grasp the reality of life at the moment. I wonder what happened within that special forces community to say so many fucking diggers that came back from Afghanistan in the special forces community are either mentally unstable, committed suicide, or are living their life in a terrible situation. I wonder what really provoked them to really relapse again.
Scott Jones:
I wonder what
Sam Bamford:
Happened.
Scott Jones:
Why did they turn to drinking and suicide? These
Sam Bamford:
Bags of shit.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolute scumbags. I hate our
Sam Bamford:
Government. And this was done under the liberal government, wasn’t it?
Scott Jones:
It would’ve been probably about that time. Yeah. Scott Morrison
Sam Bamford:
Hearing?
Scott Jones:
Yeah, I dare say. Yep. Screw
Sam Bamford:
Him that fat loser. Yep,
Scott Jones:
Absolutely. And I’ve worked. I was in Afghanistan with Kevin Rudd. I did PT a number of times at the unit with Tony Abbott, shout out to Uncle Tony. I briefed Scott Malcolm Turbo into several capabilities.
Sam Bamford:
Tony Abbott’s come out and spoke very positively
Scott Jones:
For
Sam Bamford:
Ben Robert Smith.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. No, he seemed like a G. I’m not much into politics, definitely not as much as you are, but I was exposed to every government and I served under them and I sat with them in rooms like this telling them about different capabilities and what we were doing down in the two-way range. They looked like deers in headlights. They didn’t want to hear about it. They didn’t want to see it. And it’s important to understand that for that 2001 until 2021 when we left Afghanistan, it wasn’t just one government over there. It wasn’t just one defense minister, one minister for defense, one politician. They were all there.
Sam Bamford:
Now, okay, so we’ve sort of understood the starting of the trial. After they laid out all them photos, what happened after that?
Scott Jones:
After that, there was just silence. You just waited for your turn to be called up. Some people got called up, some didn’t. Some people clearly went in there to defend themselves and they were just absolutely shut down and smacked. They were allowed to take water breaks once every couple of hours while they were absolutely just getting screamed at.
Sam Bamford:
Full interrogation.
Scott Jones:
Full interrogation. So in the paperwork, and I’ll give it to you. By who?
Sam Bamford:
You
Scott Jones:
Can post it. The IGADF, the Inspector General of the Australian Defense Force. It’s like the HR Department of Defense
Sam Bamford:
And
Scott Jones:
- They work for the company, don’t they? They’re not there to help you. That’s right. So everyone’s going through that and then rumors are coming out and I blatantly just said, when I got told I’ve got to show up on this day, I was like, “I got stuff on that day, brother. I’m not coming because I’m not going to risk my mental health and being berated by someone for my service who hasn’t served.” And it’s important to note, I see a lot of people in the comment sections on your videos and other videos, “I’m a veteran and I think Ben Roberts-Smith should be prosecuted.” You’re a veteran of what? I’m proud of everyone that served. I’ve got mates that were cooks, fucking truck drivers, love them all. Good cunts. Sorry for swearing.
Sam Bamford:
Start to say drop the F-bombs and C-bombs as much as you want. I don’t know if the audience will like it, but
Scott Jones:
I’m doing my best, guys. Sorry. But yeah, ultimately, some served, others fought. So think about that on Anzac Day. Many people served our nation and served our country with pride. They deployed. They went away from their families for eight months. They didn’t see their wife and kids. And there’s still …
Sam Bamford:
A huge amount of respect that the Australian population needs to give to those people.
Scott Jones:
Absolutely. And then there’s those that fought. Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
High level of respect you give to them.
Scott Jones:
That’s right. The intensity of their service, they might have only served for four years in special operations, but they did four deployments to Afghanistan. They were in over 200 gunfights. They killed over a hundred insurgents. So you’ve got to think about the intensity of their service, and these dudes are those dudes that they’re grilling in these interviews, high charging performers in the ADF, the tip of the spear, obviously. We’re waiting for things to come out, and the report finally drops in 2021 – ish, I’m guessing. We’ll have to get the dates, fact check that.
I’m getting close. The report drops while we’ve still got diggers in Afghanistan. So my mate is sitting at a patrol base as a grunt in Northern Kabul, and he’s training the Afghan army. Our chief of the defense force comes out and says, “Hey guys, the whole world, live stream, public broadcast. Potentially some of our soldiers were cutting young boys’ throats and put them in body bags and chucking them in a –
Sam Bamford:
That was a lie, wasn’t it?
Scott Jones:
Which was a complete lie, complete fabrication. And he lists all these horrendous crimes and that there’s all these individuals now potentially going to face criminal action for murdering innocent Afghan villagers. And my mates are grunt standing there with all the Afghan villagers listening to this. And the soldiers, the Afghan soldiers are just Afghan villagers that have come over to learn how to be a soldier. And they’re looking at him and going,” Did you do this? “And think about the position that puts … the harm that put the boys had to put extra security, not facing out of the base, but facing in because we had so many insider attacks. So horrible timing. And then a couple of months later, they say,” Fuck it. We’re out of here. “And they withdraw from Afghanistan and a tail between the legs. See you later.
Sam Bamford:
And the Taliban took over Afghanistan in two weeks. They…
Scott Jones:
They sure did. Which says to me that the Taliban were already there the whole time. And we’re trying to say like,” No, these people weren’t innocent civilians. Everyone that we have afforded in Afghanistan was a civilian. “So that’s another point. Look, comment section, Ben was killing innocent civilians. Okay. Well, they were all civilians. The Taliban weren’t a formed army. They weren’t a formed body of troops. They didn’t have a conventional force behind them. They were an insurgency. They were civilians. When they weren’t fighting us, they were just farming their crops
Sam Bamford:
Or
Scott Jones:
Doing whatever they do ….
Sam Bamford:
You can’t prosecute someone when the enemy blends in to the natural population. You can’t prosecute someone when they strap fucking 15 kilos worth explosives to 13-year-old boys. You can’t prosecute someone when they get insiders from the Taliban to join the Afghan National Army that partner with the Australian Defense Force and turn around and shoot three blokes on the 29th of August. That’s right.
Can’t prosecute people for fighting a war like that. No.
These armchair warrior experts out there that think they know a bit about what happens over in Afghanistan because they’ve watched a few movies here and there will think again.
Scott Jones:
And it’s important to now understand that the rules of engagement you employed over there in a conventional army setting are vastly different to those that the special operations use. So you can look this up. ROE 429 Alpha. It’s an offensive ROE. So whereas you had to wait to be shot at to shoot back …
Sam Bamford:
– Yeah, because I was a grunt.
Scott Jones:
A grunt, predominantly. So in general, maybe you had the drop on someone, you could easily justify taking their life if they were about to attack the patrol, right? But one of the main ROEs that special operations use during targeting operations, which is actually going deep into enemy territory to hit an insurgent commander, is that our government and our politicians and our ministers for defense and all the guys on TV with the big pips on their shoulders, all the senior officers came up with this thing, ROE 429 Alpha. And that was that we were allowed to go out and target individuals. And if they were the terrorists that we were there to kill, they could be unarmed. So it was an offensive ROE. So what that means is if you were to name this objective, objective whiskey, and tonight we’re going out to kill objective whiskey. If you see objective whiskey and he’s watering his plants, he’s petting a baby goat, he’s asleep next to his wife, the way that ROE 429 Alpha is written is at all times, that objective is playing a direct part in hostilities.
At all times, the dude that’s asleep causing no threat to anyone is deemed targetable as if he’s shooting at you with an AK-47. So question for you, Sam. Ken, a special operations soldier, if you’re going out to kill the insurgent leader, objective whiskey, and you see him, he’s unarmed? Am I allowed to shoot him in the face?
Sam Bamford:
Under what you just explained, yes.
Scott Jones:
Yes, absolutely. And that will probably rattle a few people, but
Sam Bamford:
We
Scott Jones:
Didn’t write the rules.
Sam Bamford:
That’s the same brass that wrote the rules that are now dodging any sort of allegations to do with any of this stuff. Why isn’t it that anyone above the rank of Heston Russell getting done for this? Yeah,
Scott Jones:
That’s right.
Sam Bamford:
Why is it just all you boys on the ground?
Scott Jones:
It doesn’t make sense.
Sam Bamford:
My biggest thing is what happens when an AFL team is going really shit? They sack the coach.
Scott Jones:
Yes.
Sam Bamford:
No one blames the players. No. They sack the coach. So why is it that in this situation now, it’s just all the players and soldiers getting done? Yeah. Aren’t the upper echelons of the rank getting done here? Yeah. They seem to have just dodged this nicely, haven’t they?
Scott Jones:
Yeah. They didn’t know. They weren’t aware that the people that they were going out and telling us to shoot and kill counts were a metric for success. So it would be a mission failed, and it did happen a lot where you came back and old mate got away. He wasn’t there. It happened to me several times. And it was mission success if you killed that individual, and that could be from your bullet, from your gun, or it could be from a drone dropping a hell fire onto that individual. At all times, he was taking a direct part in hostility, so he was targetable. So can the Australian Defense Force, can special operations soldiers, all the coalition soldiers kill an unarmed person, an unarmed civilian? Yes. Yes, they can, legally. And if you have a problem with that, you need to address that to the government, the government of the day, and that was all governments.
So right now, we didn’t want to talk about this. We didn’t want to spread this to the world, but Ben’s sitting in a jail cell hating life right now, so it’s probably worth bringing it up
Sam Bamford:
For…
Scott Jones:
…context. If you don’t like it, speak to the politicians. Yep. Yep.
Sam Bamford:
Good. All right. Now, should we jump onto the witnesses now? Yeah, sure.
Scott Jones:
My best friends. Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
All right. So because you’ve been very, very close to the entirety of the situation, you’ve helped during the defamation trial
Scott Jones:
On
Sam Bamford:
Ben’s side, and obviously where. I
Scott Jones:
Hope it wasn’t the reason why he lost.
Sam Bamford:
Don’t
Scott Jones:
Put it on me, Ben. No,
Sam Bamford:
The reason why I lost, I think, because it was probability and the judge seemed to be a bit one-sided leaning. Yeah,
Scott Jones:
He’s here too. That comb over, horrendous. Judge Anthony Vasenko, very intelligent man, but gee whiz,
Sam Bamford:
Head
Scott Jones:
To Turkey, brother. Get
Sam Bamford:
That hairstyle straight. Now, so let’s talk about the witnesses. Yeah.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, the biggest comment that we’ve seen in the last few days is, “Well, 21 of his mates showed up and shedded a shit gun.” Okay. Well, let’s break that down because a lot of the people that showed up to say he was a shit cunt have a bit of a bias there, and I’ll go through that. So the main witnesses against Ben, person one. So they’re given pseudonyms. I think that’s the professional word for it. Okay. You’re telling the story,
Sam Bamford:
Mate. Person One…
Scott Jones:
So person one was an SAS member. He went to Afghanistan and one of the first jobs in 2006, 2007, they’re in an OP on a mountaintop, and person one let an insurgent walk through the middle of the SAS OP directly in front of them and didn’t engage. When he was told to engage, he didn’t engage. And on another incident, apparently he couldn’t engage because he forgot to bring the oil for his machine gun, so his gun failed to fire multiple times when he did eventually try to shoot. This allowed the SAS’s flank to be exposed, and ultimately that day, they end up getting in a huge gunfight. So from there, what occurred is the two IC, the patrol, Sergeant Matthew Locke, MG, who was killed in action not long after this occurred, had to climb up a cliff with Ben Roberts Smith to kill this individual so he didn’t come around the other side of the patrol and obviously kill dudes.
When they got back to Australia, Matt Locke grabbed person one by the throat against a pub window in Perth and said, “I’ll fucking kill you and throw you through this window if you ever endanger the lives of our patrol again.” Person one got fucked off. Admittedly, he said Ben was a bit mean to him, used to slap him on the back of the head because he couldn’t drive properly. And he admitted in court, person one, he was a shit bag of a soldier. Every unit has their lemons, even Two Commando, even the SAS. He admitted to it on the stand. He sucked. And he had to be retrained and they took him out of that patrol and fucked him off. Now think about how hard it is to become an SAS operator or a commando and earn that beret.
It’s a big deal. Then to be told you’re a shit cunt and fucked off to another team, would you take that personally?
I would. So does person one have bias against Ben looking for a way to get him back? Yes. Person seven. So during Ben’s VC, so Ben’s Victoria Cross has never been in question. Throughout the whole defamation proceedings, no one ever questioned Ben’s VC. Even his biggest haters said, “It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” So there was three teams. One team’s pinned down on the right flank when they land in this village. There’s a hundred insurgents come out of nowhere. They weren’t aware of this. Ben didn’t even have his body armor on. Ben’s got no chest plate. Big dog. He’s got a big chest. He doesn’t need body armor. One team’s pinned down on the right flank, one’s pinned down in the center, and one’s pinned down on the left. And there’s a small mud wall in front of them and bullets are flying everywhere.
The team on the right is absolutely pinned down. No one can move. They’re absolutely cooked and they’re going to die and they’re looking at each other like we’re probably going to die in this creek bed. The team in the middle said person seven said, “We’ll face the rear. We’ll stay here. You guys go.” And then the team on the left, Ben’s the two IC of this team. And sorry if I’m butchering it, boys. He sees the team leader get up and he steps over that mud wall and he advances to contact. A hundred enemy machine guns pointed at him. And he goes one way around a compound. Ben goes the other way. He gets a star of Gallantry. Ben gets a Victoria cross. Person seven’s at the back saying, “I’ll just face the rear.” And in the trial, he blatantly said, “I wasn’t brave enough to do what Ben did.” And we’ve got the audio file of that.
We made it into a ringtone and turned it into a dance track and everyone sort of uses that these days. So what I’m saying is you’re a fucking coward. And in the game, that’s a big thing, right? So I’m not saying it. This is what I was told and this is what came out in the trial. And obviously Ben expressed that to this individual and that individual was subsequently not in two squadron anymore and put in another squadron that doesn’t do green roll fighting.
Sam Bamford:
I know what squadron you’re talking about.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And during the global war on terror, you wanted to be in a green roll squadron.
Sam Bamford:
Because that’s were the fight happened.
Scott Jones:
That’s where the fight happens. That’s what you signed up for.
And some people found out the hard way when you got to Afghanistan, maybe this isn’t for me. And there’s only one throughout all the training we do and all the simulations we do, at the end of the day, you don’t know how you’re going to perform under gunfire until it happens. You’re either you found that out the hard way or you’ve seen it like your cousin did and thrived and performed at the highest level. So person seven, then two years later on a subsequent deployment, they went back to Tezek. They went back to the same village. And the only thing that was different in the village was there’s a hundred graves there on the southern side of the village now. There’s no one there.
Sam Bamford:
Because Ben and the other dude killed a hundred people.
Scott Jones:
They killed a hundred people. And the weapons cache photos from that day are phenomenal. And no one denies what Ben did was phenomenal, but person seven, instead of pulling security and doing his job in that village that day in 2012 …
Sam Bamford:
two years later – Was he stepping out the meters
Scott Jones:
Ben had to run? He was stepping out the meters. Why would
Sam Bamford:
He step out the meters
Scott Jones:
That
Sam Bamford:
Ben had to run from open fire?
Scott Jones:
He’s still upset that two years prior, Ben called him a coward for not assaulting with him. He was stepping out. He was saying, “The machine gun, you said in your VC citation, you ran 50 meters through open fire.” Well, it was actually 42. I paced it out.
Sam Bamford:
Really?
Scott Jones:
And everyone’s like, “Mate, is this why your wife left you?”
Sam Bamford:
This Soldier seven.
Scott Jones:
Soldier seven, yeah. The one
Sam Bamford:
That was on last night.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. That’s the dude that he admitted in Ben’s trial, he was the one that went on 60 Minutes and he was on 60 Minutes allegedly again last night. He said he was the dude from last time and there was only two from last time, person seven and person 14. So it’s fifty fifty. I dare say it’s person seven.
Sam Bamford:
Yeah, because he didn’t seem last night when I watched it or the parts that I watched, he didn’t seem sad. He didn’t seem like he’d suffered PTSD. He looked disgruntled and he looked very jealous based driven. That’s the observation that I took out of it.
Scott Jones:
A good friend of mine, Hamish McLaughlin did a podcast recently and he said the barrels hadn’t even cooled down yet from that gunfight and they were back at base and some of these individuals were squabbling over who should get a medal and who shouldn’t. And that’s not why we do it.
No. Most of us anyway. Obviously some did. So then you had another great individual, person 14, the other dude who went on 60 Minutes, great operator, absolute legend, had a hard drive full of every person that they’d killed up to that point in time on a hard drive. So the photo of the dead photos that we’re talking about earlier, like facial shots, because you had to take a photo of everyone you killed for evidence and whatever the cops do, chain of custody and evidence and AARs and whatnot. He kept all that on a personal drive and kept it at home and not judging, soldiers, some people into some weird shit. Some people got some weird kinks, man, but that’s a bit okay. So his missus left him and she took all this stuff, including the hard drive. Then she tried to extort $50,000 out of the CO and RSM of the SASR in order for them to buy the hard drive back so she could go and buy whatever she wanted, some Lorna Jane or some –
Sam Bamford:
Oh, so she got the hard drive, tried to sell it back to the unit.
Scott Jones:
She sure did. And this came out in the trial and they said, “So what happened after that?” Person 14, I was removed from Ben’s patrol and fucked off to that other squadron.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. So the three witnesses that claim they said he did something have all been removed from Ben’s unit?
Scott Jones:
Or not Ben’s unit, but Ben’s team, Ben’s patrol troop and put somewhere else. Some just one or two troops away for another senior operator to assess them if they were suitable or not, and they were not suitable. So ultimately they all ended up not in a green role somewhere else. And again, they’re upset about it. You would be upset about it because you’re upset at yourself, you let yourself down, but you’re more upset that you let your team down. And if there’s any way that I could get back at RS one day, I’m going to take it. And then you’ve got other individuals that just, there was no shortage of people that showed up in the trial that were just didn’t see anything. So predominantly people didn’t see anything. I actually think in total there was about 81 witnesses
Because person 81 showed up and I know who that is and we’ll talk about him later. But for the most part, in amongst all these numbers are Ben’s friends are random like ex-lovers and mistresses and people that literally got on the stand for five minutes. I don’t know why I’m here. I wasn’t there. Some people like Andrew Hastie, they were there on the stand and they were publicly there, but he was never in Two squadron. Why is he on the stand? He’s never seen Ben operate. He’s never been on a job with Ben and these boys. So why –
Sam Bamford:
So Andrew Hastie has stood in court against Ben Roberts Smith.
Scott Jones:
If you read the testimony from Andrew Hastie, he’s talking about a friend of a friend was having a sad day. And I said, “What’s going on, buddy?” So a third
Sam Bamford:
Or fourth witness
Scott Jones:
Account. Yeah. And
Sam Bamford:
He testified against Ben on basis of a third or fourth witness account.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, which was strange to me.
Sam Bamford:
Not even firsthand. No,
Scott Jones:
Not firsthand. Hastie
Sam Bamford:
didn’t see anything firsthand?
Scott Jones:
No, I’m pretty sure you’ll have to… Words to the effect of he saw the dude in the hallway and was like, “Hey man, you look a bit disheveled.” And old mate’s like, “Yeah, but Ben’s given me a bloody hard time.” And that was Hastie’s whole thing. So yeah, Hasty’s being attacked in the media right now for testifying against Ben,
Sam Bamford:
And he
Scott Jones:
Was subpoenaed.
Sam Bamford:
He’s not getting attacked in the media. He’s getting attacked on social media.
Scott Jones:
Correct. But
Sam Bamford:
All the media –
Scott Jones:
The best media.
Sam Bamford:
All the media outlets out there, they seem to be loving and frothing over this for
Scott Jones:
Some
Sam Bamford:
Reason.
Scott Jones:
Well, he did go on 60 Minutes with Nick McKenzie and told him about how the time he accidentally killed two kids. And that’s horrible. Honestly, that’s horrible. Mistakes happen … I’m not judging the man. He obviously took it very rough. He was crying on national TV, but to then chip someone for war crimes after you killed two kids with a hell fire, a bit rich, that’d be like me coming out and saying, “Oh, you swear too much, brother, after me dropping the C-bomb for an hour on your podcast.”
Because I believe accidentally killing two children is maybe a war crime. But anyways, so then this was going on and on and on. So I think it’s probably then important. So now everyone’s realized that after I did another podcast that maybe these witnesses are not as reliable as what everyone thinks they are.
Sam Bamford:
Because that was the biggest pushback last week when everyone kept saying to me, “But 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses.” And I didn’t even think it needed to be addressed, but it did because there’s a lot of people out there that really want to see Ben Roberts-Smith go away. These Australia hating left wing commentators. They hate us and they want to see the destruction of our national pride and they want to get Ben. They want to see Ben behind bars for life.
Scott Jones:
Yeah,
Sam Bamford:
Lock him up. All these people that have never seen a day in action in their life, they’ve probably never been in a fight, to be honest. Let’s be honest with you. They’ve probably never been in a fight and they want to see him behind bars. But the biggest case that they came out and said, “There’s 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses.” And it’s like, “Well, no, it’s not what you think it is.”
Scott Jones:
No.
Sam Bamford:
It’s not.
Scott Jones:
And every one of those witnesses saw a different piece of the puzzle. So the judge is trying to put it all together. No one was there on every single job, every single allegation. That’s just not how it works. One dude was there in 2009 and another dude saw something in 2012. Hastie, you heard something in a hallway about the 2009 incident. It was all just pieced together, but ultimately the judge decided that there was enough evidence there for Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters to be able to write an article about it. To be honest, I don’t know much about legal system, but that makes sense to me. There wasn’t enough to say he committed war crimes and he did all these things and he should be prosecuted. It was like, this is my understanding of it, that the journalists had enough to write an article about it because all these sooks in the SAS came forward that hated Ben and colluded together and got together and went to see their RSM.
Why didn’t these allegations come out in 2009 when this first allegedly happened? Why the day of the race? Instead of doing the AAR, they should have been in the RSM’s office. Why didn’t this happen in 2012 on the next deployment when allegedly all these other things happened and allegedly Ben kicked a handcuffed person off the cliff? Where were all these boys then? This only came out 10 years later once Ben had left the unit and once person four, who was the person that was following Ben up the main drag of Tezak when he won his VC, holding his pocket, brave as fuck, don’t get me wrong, I never did it, but he’s gripe the whole time during his testimony, he’s just basically asking the crowd, “Can I have a VC too?” Really? Yeah. So have a look into that. And all these notes, everything I’m saying is documented in federal court.
It has to be kept now. During the
Sam Bamford:
Defamation trial.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, for a hundred years. They have to keep it in a box somewhere. I was just listening to this cooked unit talk about the fact that he deserves a VC. The dude that goes over the trenches second in Gallipoli to bayonet some Turks, he doesn’t get the VC. The guy that went first did because he’s willing to lay down his life for the dudes behind him. It’s very rare that the dude that came over the trenches second gets the VC.
Sam Bamford:
Well, no one cares about the second man on the moon, do they?
Scott Jones:
No. No. Who is he? Do we even go there? No. Stop it.
Sam Bamford:
But that’s reality of the situation. Yes, the second man was very, very brave also, but
Scott Jones:
The first
Sam Bamford:
man was Ben. And the second man, he was doing his job.
Scott Jones:
They gave him a medal of Gallantry. He’s got post nominals. You’re a fucking hero, dude. Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
If you rock around with one of those at Anzac Day, everyone knows.
Scott Jones:
Everyone knows. Yeah. And for all the lady listeners out there, you see a jacked up dude in a suit wearing an orange colored medal. That’s the one you want to take home.
Sam Bamford:
Are you just going to wear one now?
Scott Jones:
Yeah, I’m going to buy one. Stolen valour. Yeah, maybe you could make some merch, just like medals of gallantry for the boys. I’m actually
Sam Bamford:
Waiting for my Ben Robert Smith merch to come in from zero limits.
Scott Jones:
Oh, I should have brought it for you. Oh
Sam Bamford:
No.
Scott Jones:
Hand delivered. It’s fine. Yeah,
Sam Bamford:
That would have
Scott Jones:
Been nice. But yeah, look, so it was an absolute dump. The trial was an absolute dumpster fire, but many of his mates, dudes that I respect and look up to, got on the stand and said, “That’s not how it bloody happened. It happened like this.” And there was a lot of pushback, but because these dudes are a bit looser, had a few piss related incidents and maybe wore a fancy dress costume at the fat lady’s arms or whatever, they were discredited for that. And the judge said, “Well, they’re unreliable witnesses. I’m not going to listen to them.” But I’ll tell you who to me sounded like a reliable witness. A dude called, I think it was Person 81, which again, you can Google, “Do your homework, ladies and gents.” He was the current serving CO of the SASR regiment, a colonel. During the main allegation where Ben machine gunned allegedly a dude with a prosthetic leg, he was standing in the middle of the compound, which is no bigger than probably half a basketball court.
I’ll give you the photos, you can have a good look at them and do what you will with them. You can see all the operators going through the rubble and this officer is there in the middle of the compound having a meeting with all the seniors about what we do next. He said he didn’t see a fucking thing. This is a colonel. This is the CEO of the SAS is saying, “I did not see a thing. It blatantly did not happen.” The incident where Ben machine gunned a detainee did not happen, but they believed the digger because he said, “No, out of the corner of my eye, I heard some gunshots turned around and I saw something and that’s what it was.” And everyone’s like, “We’re just going to pay off the CO’s view on this.” A very senior individual in defense, a colonel is saying this blatantly didn’t happen.
Sam Bamford:
And running the SAS.
Scott Jones:
And running the SAS and implementing all these changes and the new changes after the report dropped about war crimes and accountability. And he’s there saying none of this happened. So let’s talk about Whiskey 108. So Whiskey 108 is the cover term for that job where Ben’s allegedly shot a dude with an old gimp leg.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. So this is one of the incidents that
Scott Jones:
He’s been
Sam Bamford:
Charged for murder with?
Scott Jones:
The main incident. So we’ll talk about this one and then we’ll talk about Darwan, the cliff incident.
Sam Bamford:
Darwan was 2012, wasn’t It?
Scott Jones:
- Yeah, that’s when
Sam Bamford:
I was over in Afghan.
Scott Jones:
Hell yeah. I was still learning my trade in Holdsworthy. Thanks for your service, Sam. Appreciate what you did.
Sam Bamford:
You’re welcome. Thank you also.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, you made my life a lot easier taking out all those bad dudes so I could walk around taking selfies on all the features, but Whiskey 108, so let’s get into it. I think it was Easter Sunday 2009 actually, so very timely around now. So the SAS are coming back from a mission and they get a frantic call from seven RAR, the battle group, I think Task Force Tusk. They’re sitting up on a feature with ASLABS and they’re laying into this compound that’s shooting at them, machinegun fire, RPGs, small arms. They’re trying to kill the seven RAR diggers up on the top of the hill. And this is a couple of weeks after I think they lost Hopkins, one of the soldiers. I think it might’ve been around that time.
Sam Bamford:
Apologies if we got that wrong
Scott Jones:
Yeah, apologies. It’s 41 years and I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. Love yous. So the boys are hooking in. There’s a proper good old fashioned gunfight. Task force Tusk come over the radio and say, “Please SAS, help us. They might overrun us.” We’re tactically withdrawing with SLABs while firing and the SAS are rolling past in Bushmasters just coming home. They’ve already got their multi-cam dressing gowns on and multi-cam slippers and they get the call over the radio, “Can you help these diggers? They’re in trouble.” No dramas. That’s what they’re there for. They hop out, they dust off their multi-cam slippers, they push their strippers off them. “Tanya Zoyda, get out. Got a job to do.
Sam Bamford:
That’s a joke, by the way.
Scott Jones:
Allegedly. And then they start advancing to this compound called Whiskey 108. They get to almost Whiskey 108 and there’s still a lot of machine gun fire coming from Whiskey 108. So the JTAC drops a J-Dam, a bomb into the middle of that compound, and that kept everyone pretty quiet in that compound. So no matter what happens next, 7RAI have said that whatever’s happening in that compound, those individuals in that compound are so dangerous, we need to beg the SAS for help. Seven RAI don’t like hearing that story because they’re going to go, “Oh, go on. We’re brave too.”
And you were brave, but for whatever reason, that’s the reality of what happened. The SAS came in, they dropped a bomb. They took out that compound and now it’s just rubble inside. Then as they’re approaching the compound, I think it’s person 18 in the trial, sees a dude walking, limping out of the compound, limping, and he shoots him dead. He would later go on to testify against Ben Roberts-Smith and say, “He shot an unarmed person. My brother in Christ, you shot someone for limping. He didn’t have a weapon.” But both legal teams, Ben and Nick McKenzie’s legal teams, just like whatever, that killed. We’re not here to talk about that one.
Sam Bamford:
We won’t talk about that one.
Scott Jones:
We won’t talk about that
Sam Bamford:
One. Don’t worry about that one …
Scott Jones:
The old mate literally said in his testimony like, “Oh yeah, he was walking with a limp, so I shot him because he might’ve been carrying something heavy.” I’m like, “Man, I got a bad knee. I walk with a limp. Don’t shoot me, brother.
I’m not going to Perth if you’re on the range.” But anyway, so that takes place. Eventually they go into the compound and according to person 81, the then CEO of the SASR, he says there was no one inside there. People were clearing tunnels and whatnot, and there’s speculation about who was doing what and what was found in the compound. But at the end of the day, there was an engagement outside of the compound and a colonel said, “No, that was legit. Nothing happened inside the compound. There’s no insurgents in there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Sam Bamford:
So the fabrication of the story that you’re telling us right now is a lie.
Scott Jones:
Well, yeah, according to many people that were there. And I’m just a journalist. I’m just an investigative journalist listening to the trial, listening to the testimony. And I was like, “Well, there’s definitely conflict here.” One dude saying he saw Ben machine gun a dude to death, the CO of that unit is like, “No, that did not happen at all.” And everyone else is saying, “No, that didn’t happen.” The dude was running away from the compound and the boys in the cordon saw him and shot him, and he ended up being an elderly male with a….Obviously he couldn’t run very fast. He had a prosthetic leg.
Sam Bamford:
But also at the end of the day, there was that fierce of a gunfire happening that seven RAI had to call in the SAS. The SAS dropped a bomb. So whoever is in that compound, they were dangerous.
Scott Jones:
No, they were innocent civilians. Everyone in that compound was an innocent civilian.
Sam Bamford:
You can’t tell me after sitting there for a couple hours, I don’t want to downgrade it seven hour at all, but they were fighting back pretty intensively. So they had to call the SAS. SAS came in, dropped the bomb, and whoever was down there was a bad guy. It’s like, “Okay, people. So now the story’s changed, right?” And then this witness 19, you say?
Scott Jones:
18, I believe.
Sam Bamford:
Yeah. So witness 18 said that supposedly he dropped someone with a limp.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
But then he was saying that he or someone else was saying that Ben dropped someone with a limp.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s all very confusing. It’s all – And then the CO
Sam Bamford:
Of the unit or the OC, whatever it is, came out
Scott Jones:
And said,
Sam Bamford:
“No, no. Well, that didn’t happen. Not that way.”
Scott Jones:
Yeah, very odd. And then they extracted and the AAR, this is 2009. No one’s – So
Sam Bamford:
This
Scott Jones:
Is
Sam Bamford:
One of the murder incidents
Scott Jones:
That – This is one of the murders why Ben’s in jail right now in Silverwater.
Sam Bamford:
To me, it sounds like a fabricated lie.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, to me it does too. And I know people that were there and they’re highly regarded and the real. When you picture an SAS dude, these are the dude on Ben’s side. When you listen to them talk, you’ll hear the difference between the dude on 60 Minutes and some of the boys when they’re having a yarn at the pub. You can tell the difference. You can tell who were the haters and who weren’t, and that’s just the reality. So that’s one allegation. So now let’s fast forward to 2012.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. Well, just before we start, so that first allegation, beyond reasonable doubt, there’s a lot of doubt there for me.
Scott Jones:
Oh yeah.
Sam Bamford:
So to me, that gets thrown out.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Well, the JTAC and pilot –
Sam Bamford:
Especially with no body, no name. There’s no forensics. There’s no bullet casings. There’s nothing. There is nothing. And you had the CEO of the unit saying it never happened.
Scott Jones:
And when they extracted, they put five more bombs, five more J-dams into the middle of the compound to wipe it out. So one of the boys said the only thing that was left in that. What evidence? What crime scene analysis are they going to get? All that was left was burnt dirt.
Sam Bamford:
It’s probably 10 foot under rubble right now.
Scott Jones:
It is, yeah. With a couple of bad dudes, with AK – 47s, RPGs and whatever else they were shooting at seven (indistinct) with. So there were bad dudes. They weren’t innocent people.
Sam Bamford:
Congratulations, folks. We’re at war. There are bad guys. I heard last night, and I forgot to mention on my rule this morning that they were saying, “Oh no, once the battle space has calmed down, you’re not in a war zone anymore. Hey, dip shit. Every single time you go outside the wire, you are at war. Doesn’t matter if it’s at the end of the battle, the start of the battle, or you didn’t even get in the battle. When you go outside the wire, you’re in war. When you are inside the wire, matter of fact, you are still at war. There are still elements that are trying to kill you that have infiltrated the Afghan National Army that are Taliban soldiers. So when you are over in Afghanistan, you are at war. So these bags of shit last night that tried to tell me that we are not at war when the gunfire has settled down.
Fuck you.
Scott Jones:
It’s not a police situation where there’s a containment line.
Sam Bamford:
It’s like we’re not in the middle of Australia. We’re over in Afghanistan.
Scott Jones:
I know definitely of two times where I left the enemy compound after we though it’s all over for extraction and I got absolutely blasted by the Taliban machine gunfire, accurate lead wasps zipping by my head, my butt puckering. Almost got killed multiple times, but two of them was certainly from coming out of a compound thinking, okay, that’s it. Let’s knock off, head back to the gym, get the Uber in, the Hilo to pick us up. And that’s when we got blasted on extraction many times.
Sam Bamford:
And that’s why you would’ve put the five JTAC bombs into the compound after they’re done.
Scott Jones:
Absolutely.
Sam Bamford:
Because it happens to you once and
Scott Jones:
You
Sam Bamford:
Learn from it, right? You never let it
Scott Jones:
Happen
Sam Bamford:
Again.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. And one of the dudes actually there on the day in Whiskey 108, one of the guys told me last night that he was actually shot in that compound years prior. So say in 2008 on their first deployment, he’s like, “I actually remember this compound. The boys in this compound shot me last time.”
Sam Bamford:
Yeah, right.
Scott Jones:
And that is insane. I don’t think that’s come out yet because he just told me and I was even like,
Sam Bamford:
“Wow.” There’s just so many. I was on the phone a lot last week.
Scott Jones:
There’s
Sam Bamford:
So many stories that come out from this and it’s like, “Oh wow, that wasn’t told during the defamation trial, was it? Oh, okay.”
Scott Jones:
And it is buried in some of the articles. You might look over these articles of Whiskey 108 and down in the fine prints. And also person 81 said none of these happen, but tomorrow’s a new day.
It’s like, okay, I get it. You journalists and you get paid off clickbait and a headline and that grabs people and that means you get employed and you get a Walkley award and you’re an esteemed journalist. But there’s obviously two sides to every story. I wouldn’t be defending these boys if I though they were doing the whole village and murdering innocent women and children and innocent people, but I’ve just told the story of what actually happened according to federal court documents happened at Whiskey 108 and why Ben’s in jail for one of the murders. Yeah, so there’s a bit of speculation there. So let’s go to Darwan.
Sam Bamford:
Darwan was the …
Scott Jones:
… cliff incident.
And I know a little bit more about this one because I was there probably not long after the cliff incident. I was standing at the cliff and I can tell you right now, I’ll send you the photos, might do a little cheeky post on the gram. It wasn’t a cliff. It was like a small hill. When I first read the article headlines, I was like, “Okay, here we go.”
Sam Bamford:
So it’s lie straight away.
Scott Jones:
It’s sensationalism. I’ve got photos of the hill. They just on 60 Minutes last night showed the hill. It’s not a cliff. And the videographer that went there is like, “It was a sheer cliff and I was standing there picturing. Imagine someone getting kicked and flying down this cliff. Have you never been to the Gap in Sydney? Do you know what a cliff looks like?” So it’s not a cliff. It was like, imagine your front yard has a big slope out the front of it. This is where allegedly that incident took place. I was probably a hundred meters off that overlooking the compound in 2013. So we got sent back there, no reports of any cliff kicking incidents. We got two commanders got sent back to the exact same house to do a job in 2013, and I got the photos of it. When I saw it on the news, I was like, “I remember that compound.” And it’s in a place called Darwan, which is at the top of a valley called Shahidia Sas.
I know you’re an Afghan linguist, but that means Valley of the Martyrs, where their best fighters live in Afghanistan. Imagine if we had a place here where we are in Sydney called Valley of the VC winners, where all our military members retired to, and you wanted to go assault that, you’d have a hard time, right? These are where their best fighters are. I believe many engagements happen in that valley, and we were there a lot. So first of all, everyone in that village in the Valley of the Martyrs is a bad dude, is a bad dude.
Sam Bamford:
Just like I said, dude, you go outside the wire, you are assuming everyone’s a bad guy.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
Especially when they strap 15 kilos worth to 13 year olds and blow them sky high.
Scott Jones:
That’s right. They’re all bad
Sam Bamford:
Guys.
Scott Jones:
I wasn’t there for the cliff incident, and I’m not SAS. We’re the tier one unit. They’re the tier two.
Sam Bamford:
You going to have a lot of people angry at you after this,
Scott Jones:
Mate. Why are you defending these boys and ripping them? But I was there in an OP above the compound, the cliff compound where it happened, and I’m looking down, and the photo of it, I’m in the shade. I’m in a shadow, and that’s because there’s a rocky outcrop there, and I was literally hiding behind a rock. It was the first time I pretty much bitched out. It was towards the end of our deployment, and we’re in that same village, and all the intelligence coming through, my interpreter is hiding in a ball next to me, and he took a photo of me and he said, “They’re going to kill us. They’re looking at you. They’re talking about you. They can see your mullet.” I was like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, they’re talking about you above the compound in the rocks. I’m on the ground. They’re looking at you right now.
They’re about to kill you.” I start slowly just casually, not trying to show the boys I was scared, but scooching in behind a rock. When he took the photo, I’m in a shadow, and I got my finger on the trigger looking back at him. It’s the scaredest I’ve probably ever been in my life, honestly. And then we’ve jumped out nighttime Diesel, 10,000 feet at night, MVG jumps, and that’s confronting sometimes. But it was the first time I think I actually thought above Allie Jan’s compound, I was about to die. I was about to get hit with a machine gun. I was like, “Well, fuck, we better stay here.” Everyone went to ground, and eventually the partner force was so scared that we fled down. We didn’t even go into the green belt to commando, called for the helos back, and we got the fuck out of there. And this is the alleged incident site where they’re just Afghan villages, innocent Afghan villagers.
Sam Bamford:
So they pretty much got the Afghan’s greatest soldiers?
Scott Jones:
Yeah. So I don’t know – In this village, but they’re
Sam Bamford:
Just innocent villages.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. So one of the villages that testified against Ben –
Sam Bamford:
I want to talk about these guys
Scott Jones:
Heavily. So he saw this incident happen in Darwan. He was watching it from across the creek bed. And then in his cross-examination, he’s like, “Well, to be honest, I’m 80 years old.” Or he’s probably 35 in Afghan years, which is kind of like dog years. You got to fucking time seven or whatever a dog is. And this dude’s like, “I can’t even see my own dick when I piss. I can’t see that well, yet he could spot RS fly kicking someone off a cliff 300 meters away across a creek bed.” And that was his testimony.
Sam Bamford:
So he got cross-examined for
Scott Jones:
Bad
Sam Bamford:
Eyesight, but
Scott Jones:
You’ve
Sam Bamford:
Seen him 300 meters
Scott Jones:
Away. Oh, okay. And
Sam Bamford:
I’m pretty sure
Scott Jones:
The judge, I’m pretty sure was like, “Okay, buddy. Yeah. Okay, buddy.” And so a few of these witnesses are back here now living in Australia.
Sam Bamford:
Afghan nationals?
Scott Jones:
Afghan nationals from the Valley of the Martyrs.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. So pretty much
Scott Jones:
The
Sam Bamford:
Place where they house all their greatest fighters.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
Afghan Taliban fighters.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. One’s an Uber driver in Adelaide. We’re tracking him. When the extraction happened from Kabul and a lot of our service personnel bravely went over there when bombs are going off, killing all these Marines. On the fence and we had a number of our Air Force, SAS dudes, commanders, conventional forces, AGIs, all there extracting all these poor innocent Afghan people that were going to be beheaded by the Taliban. I guarantee you a few of the people on that plane were the witnesses. And the reason why I know is, is because allegedly, one of the major networks paid for a year’s accommodation in Kabul for these families.
Sam Bamford:
Wonder which network that is.
Scott Jones:
Look, I don’t know, mate. I’m not a journalist. So these individuals were staying at a nice safe hotel, so the Taliban didn’t come in and kill them because they’re cooperating now with white-faced Western Christians or Jews, whatever denomination you believe in. The Taliban weren’t happy with that. Even though they’re actually coming to Australia to allegedly prosecute Australian soldiers, the Taliban weren’t too happy with that. So they needed bodyguards. And that network allegedly approached a company that does private security over in Afghanistan. And a lot of the dudes that run the private security teams for the embassies are ex-Australian soldiers, Aussies, Aussie diggers that are chasing the big bucks on the embassy contract gigs.
Sam Bamford:
And obviously we know them because we’re good friends with them.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. So a few of them reached out and said, “Hey, I was one of the guys bodyguarding those guys at their hotel before we extracted them back to Australia.”
Sam Bamford:
So there was a media outlet in Australia that paid a lot of money to get these guys protected to bring them back Australia to then prosecute against Ben Robert Smith.
Scott Jones:
That’s what people are saying. And then one of the guys said, “Well, these Afghans were, they didn’t have much money, so every now and then we’d buy them a can of Fanta or buy them whatever they needed, smokes out the front of the hotel while they were there for a year.” And they started to develop a bit of Stockholm syndrome and they start hanging out with the bodyguards more and some of them conversing. Eventually they were told how much money they’re going to be given and all the things that they’ve been promised in Australia. And the boys –
Sam Bamford:
To prosecute against Ben.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. And the boys, the diggers that are now bodyguards recorded it all. They got video footage. They got audio files of it.
Sam Bamford:
No, really?
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
So there’s video footage out there that. I’ll be careful with this. There’s video footage out there – Allegedly. Allegedly recorded of these guys, allegedly, saying that they are going to be given money and a great life if they talk up against Ben.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Oh,
Sam Bamford:
That is a big curve ball in the
Scott Jones:
Case. Yeah, big curve ball. So no, these are the witnesses. These are the 21 witnesses in this trial that everyone keeps talking about in the comments. And I don’t know, who knows if it’s true and how much money it was, but I know I accidentally broke an Afghan man’s window once on a job, actually put my barrel through it and he ended up being a good guy and we gave him 20 bucks, 20 US dollars. I’ve never seen a man cry that much, like he just saw his first son get born or whatever. $20 went a long way in his valley and I can only imagine what – 20
Sam Bamford:
US? 20
Scott Jones:
- Well,
Sam Bamford:
US goes a long way in Australian now, mate, as well.
Scott Jones:
True. Yeah, true. So yeah, man, a lot of people, before I got canceled the first time, I was getting a lot of these messages coming through from the boys like, “Hey, we’re watching the trial. Just so you know, I was bodyguarding these guys. Come forward boys. Ben’s in jail.”
Sam Bamford:
I mean there is massive holes in that story and there’s very contradicting points as well. The second one that you just told sounds like a guy that seems to be 80 years old that can’t see past his dick has somehow seen Ben kick someone off a cliff from 300 meters away.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. And one of his teammates did testify that I think he saw it as well. However, that dude is a raging alcoholic and it’s well known. He’s not well in the head and it’s not, I don’t think, as you’ve said it before, you’ve done it on your reels. CTE is a real thing. PTSD is a real thing. I’m not a big mental health advocate. Men have muscles, not feelings, but hey, other people will agree that people aren’t doing too well from everything that’s come out.
Sam Bamford:
But when you run this through court and the defamation trial was probability, now it’s beyond reasonable doubt. So you can’t sit there and cross examine that and then go to the jury and say, “Okay, what’s going on here?”
Scott Jones:
And on top of that, that’s in the jury. Then they push everyone out of the room that’s not required and they go into a closed courtroom where the top secret stuff happens. And the jury’s going to have to go in there and listen to like they did in the defamation case. And in the top secret room, there’s actually evidence in the top secret trial, especially for the village of Darwan that acquits Ben, I feel. There’s clear evidence that I read that I don’t think the prosecution understands the reporting, the signals intelligence reporting. There’s several key things in that that actually almost exonerate all the other 19 dudes that are accused of war crimes. There’s like, oh, well this incident here clearly says unanimously from an external source, a drone that potentially he was telling the truth because this happened over here at this time when he alleges it did and the judge is saying it probably didn’t happen.
I don’t think that, that’s why I was a little bit involved because lawyers, even if they’re a QC, they’re not expected to understand signals intelligence reporting from Afghanistan 10 years ago. So it gets a little bit murky and tricky, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that, well, there was a bad dude in the creek line shooting at the boys and looking at them at the time that they were there at that compound and it’s murky. It’s very murky. It’s not clear cut.
Sam Bamford:
No. Well, this is the thing beyond, like I keep saying beyond reasonable doubt. There’s just so much doubt here. Even if you were a left wing commentator, you listen to this podcast.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. So you’ve only heard the Nick McKenzie side.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
The 60 Minutes, these poor people. Really?
Scott Jones:
And why were the SAS in DarwAn? Ask yourself that. Do Ben Roberts-Smith wake up in the morning, crack his fingers, do some pushups and get in his laptop and go, “All right, where are we going today, boys? Let me look at the map.” No, you get intelligence from back in Canberra, which potentially comes from the NSA in America and they developed the target packages. You go where you’re told. The SAS and Two Commando, we don’t go and hit a house that there’s no intelligence on. Why were the SAS there at that house surrounding that house and why did they get into these gunfights? Why were they at that specific house? Ask yourself that. Ask to see the report. What was the reporting on that house? Will that come out in trial? Probably not because it’s at the top secret level. It’s in closed court.
If people knew what the individuals in that house were saying and doing and planning, then again, they’re not innocent people. Whatever happened, happened. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Whether he was engaged by gunfire or kicked down a cliff or whatever, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the evidence that suggests that that house, everyone in that house was harboring the individual, it’s almost clear as day, that shot the three soldiers, Hek Matula.
Sam Bamford:
I remember that bag of shit.
Scott Jones:
Objective jungle effect. I
Sam Bamford:
Remember that bag of shit. We went out looking for him for like three months.
Scott Jones:
That’s right. And if you see him and you’re a member of the SAS and he’s on the JPEL, he’s the objective jungle effect. If he is seen, does he need to be armed, Sam? No. No. What if he doesn’t have a weapon?
Sam Bamford:
He still murdered three of my mates.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. And he’s prosecutable because at all times, ROE 429 permits that he is taking a direct part in hostilities.
Sam Bamford:
That’s the legal part of it. The moral part of it was he murdered three of my mates.
Scott Jones:
Yeah,
Sam Bamford:
He did. And that bag of shit, Hek Matula, is still roaming free in Afghanistan now being a hero over there.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
Apparently a hero.
Slaughtered three of my mates.
Scott Jones:
But with the addition of the drone technology, some of the Aussie diggers are fighting over in Ukraine right now, and they’re bringing those technologies now to other nations. And some of these drones that we’ve got, they can fly a few thousand kilometers. Look at the shahids that are flying around hitting Amab from Iran. They’ve got that technology in Iran. And wouldn’t it be a shame if some of these boys coming home, instead of getting thrown in jail for helping the Ukrainians fight, send a couple of drones up from the seat Afghanistan. Yeah. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
Sam Bamford:
I still think to myself most days that that guy’s still walking around.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
It still bugs me.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, it would.
Sam Bamford:
I think I’ve said this on a podcast before. If I didn’t have my wife and my kids and the life I live now, I’d probably go over and.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
He doesn’t deserve to be breathing.
Scott Jones:
No. And it’s who we are and we back our mates. Some people dog their mates, but the majority of Australian soldiers back their mates.
Sam Bamford:
Have you heard the story of Ben Roberts-Smith on that night, the 29th of August? I’ll quickly talk for you anyway, just for everyone. So what happened the 29th of August was Hek Matula was a Taliban soldier infiltrated the Afghan National Army, which partnered with the Australian Defense Force. And he was only in there for about three weeks, but got sent out to patrol base Wahid, and after a patrol one day, all the Australian soldiers were getting ready for bed. A few of them were playing cards. He walked up from his Afghan National Army position because we used to share the same base because you do partner patrols. And it was lucky because he went to go grab a PKM, a machine gun, but the machine gun said, “No, I’m not going to give it to you.” So he only walked up with his AK-47 and that machine gun had something like 200 rounds clipped to it or 150 rounds with 762.
So if he got ahold of that, it wouldn’t have been three. It would have been more like 15 blokes killed.
But he emptied his AK47 clip, shot three of my mates, injured two more, brutal scene. Guys on my podcast have told the story from a firsthand account a lot of times. I don’t want to steal the story from them, but if you want to go back and listen to Jay Toop, Matthew French or Corey Neal. Any of those podcasts, they’re brilliant. Sorry, firsthand account of it. It is brutal. But anyway, the first team to fly out was IRS and his team. He came in, got the whole scene under control. Imagine just 15, first time Diggy’s going over to Afghanistan, leads, and we’re all young. Martin was 20 years old when he died. Pody was 23. Milosovic was older, late 30s, but he had two kids at home.
Scott Jones:
No one kills a man named Milo and gets away with it.
Sam Bamford:
That’s it. Oh no.
Scott Jones:
Love my Milo.
Sam Bamford:
Thanks for putting a bit of laughter into my story.
Scott Jones:
Sorry
Sam Bamford:
Man. Yeah, the first team to fly out was Ben and his team. He took the whole scene under control because everyone was rattled, rattled. And after the scene got under control, IRS turned to one of the boys and said, “Which way did he run?” And he said he ran that way. And there’s a village down there with a green belt. And in the middle of the night, BRS grabbed his stuff, ran down into the village by himself and did an assault by himself on the village to try and find the guy in the middle of the night
With no team around him. I’m telling you right now, for any digger out there, you know that you don’t go outside the wire or anyone playing at home. You do not go outside the wire if you are just a normal military personnel, a normal grunt, a normal Australian soldier, a normal infantryman, you don’t go outside the wire in anything less than 15 to 20 blokes. You don’t. And then you go in the middle of the night when you knew this incident happened and when there were potentially people waiting down there to get you an ambush. But Ben Roberts-Smith grabbed his shit, ran down there and tried to find the guy for half an hour to an hour, for what it sounds. Ran back up, couldn’t find him, told the boys, gave them some very reassuring messages and lifted the spirits. And then we got the boys, flew them out of the chopper, and then they came back to TK where I was.
And that’s the incident that started a man hunt in Afghanistan for Hek Matula.
Scott Jones:
That’s why he was in Darwan.
Sam Bamford:
That’s why Ben Robert-Smith was in Darwan.
Scott Jones:
Yep, exactly.
Sam Bamford:
So when people say he murdered this, he murdered that, let’s start to talk about Hek Matula. Who murdered who?
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
And who’s walking freely now?
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
Who murdered who? Who started the murdering?
Scott Jones:
Hek Matula’s living large with five Chai boys in Kabul doing horrendous things to what they do to young boys over there and Iris is in maximum security. Make it make sense.
Sam Bamford:
Fuck you.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. And Iris was one of those dudes, I met him a lot of times and he provided a lot of guidance and sort of maybe some mentorship in the early days when I was a young buck thinking I was killing it because I’m big dog commando mate, 23 years old, whatever. But having dudes like him, like the dudes that I looked up to and mentors were like BRS. And we had plenty of dudes like BRS. I’m sure you’ve met him and heard about him through your cousin in the second commander regiment. And having a dude like BRS on the Hilo, when you look around the Hilo and you’re on a job, it was like hopping in a warm sleeping bag knowing that you had these dudes with you. You’d look some dudes on the Hilo, you’re like, maybe not that guy. But the majority of dudes that had that same persona as RS, you felt very comfortable.
Oh, if it goes loud, shit gets a bit real out there. I’m glad he’s there. If he wasn’t there, I’d probably be a little bit more scared. I’d probably have an extra couple of mags, but because I know this dude’s there, I feel genuinely pretty good about what’s going to happen on target. Yeah. And dudes like Ben, there’s plenty of people in his troop and patrol, but dudes like Ben are what brought all the other boys home. There’s plenty of dudes out there doing their job, but there’s one dude that will bring everyone home and that’s a dude like Ben.
Sam Bamford:
Yeah. And after the 29th of August incident and then to hear the Darwan incident, but what it stemmed from, but it seems to me like there was no incident.
Scott Jones:
No. And so there’s one more incident. There’s one more that Ben, one of the five murder charges or directing someone else to murder was that they’re in a house, whatever happens happens and the occupant of that compound is killed, enemy killed in action, another innocent civilian. Well, what happened was one of Ben’s biggest haters testified on the stand that they were searching the compound and he could see on the mud compound wall that’s been there for 2000 years, it’s rock solid, it looks like concrete. There’s a wet patch and he walked up to it and kicked the wet patch with his boot. The wall crumbled and all these weapons fell out of it. So they heard the helos coming and after shooting at the boys, they stuck their guns in the wall and IEDs in the wall and put mud over it to cover it.
But we went to high school, maybe year nine, was good enough to understand. You can see the difference between a 2000 year old mud wall and a muddy thing drooping off the side of a wall. And the individual that was in that compound was subsequently killed and that’s one of the points of contention. Was he killed as a prisoner or was he killed in a gunfight? But I’ll tell you what, he wasn’t, an innocent person. You know what I mean? So yeah, the witnesses are shit guns. They’re not good people. They’re not good soldiers. They never were piss off, not credible. The people that are saying BRS was just out there murdering innocent civilians is just not true because yes, they were civilians. All the Taliban are civilians, but they were certainly not innocent and that’s pretty important. Whatever happened, happened and that will play out in court, I’d imagine.
And it’s not my fight. It’s up to all these SF influences, especially if you’re SAS. Why are you so quiet right now? Maybe you’re selling something, you’re selling a CrossFit program or a service or a supplement or a book or something and you would rather do that than actually join the fight and actually stick up for one of your bros. But yeah, a lot of people were brave on the stand testifying against BRS, but very few were brave in combat.
Sam Bamford:
I think they’ll find it’s a bit different these days in regards to, I mean definitely brave in coming out and speaking out against him, not brave in combat. But I think the narrative has shifted. There’s a lot more appetite out there now to stand behind Ben. A lot more appetite out there now.
Scott Jones:
The
Sam Bamford:
Average Aussie is not liking the way the country is heading and we are not liking the way the attack is happening on our veteran community, even Heston Russell.
Scott Jones:
Shout out to Hesto. Great guy.
Sam Bamford:
Editing eight extra gunshots into his footage by the ABC. This is now starting to come to surface. It’s like, okay, so there is a clear attack on our veteran community. Why
Scott Jones:
Are
Sam Bamford:
You coming after our veteran community? It seems to me all bit coordinated, doesn’t it?
Scott Jones:
And they’ve given him, I don’t know, $400,000 for clearly lying about his allegations in Afghanistan, yet I don’t think they’ve come out and said sorry.
Sam Bamford:
No, they just said it was an editing error.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
Okay. I’m telling you right now, I edit every single day. That’s a big editing error. That’s like you can’t happen. Whoops. I’m sorry. It’s not happening. You did that on purpose.
Scott Jones:
And those guys are still under. So one of Hesto’s platoon members got his house raided a couple of weeks ago and they’re still copying it. So you think Hesto’s won, Hesto’s cleared the platoon’s name. He’s done an honorable thing by taking the fight to the ABC and winning. I think it’s all over. And if you’ve got mental health issues from 10 years ago when you served in Afghanistan and the things you saw, and you’re just a dad now, you’re trying to get over it, you’re working or not working, whatever you’re doing, you’re trying to move on with your life. Then they come and raid your house and they want you to talk to them. And by now we’ve got good legal advice and we say, “No comment. Take what you want. We don’t care.”
Sam Bamford:
I do not recall.
Scott Jones:
I do not recall. I’m not even going to. They know my name. You know my name. If you want to take me to jail, take me to jail. But we’ve learned now the hard way of good legal advice. And through all of this, no psychologist or psychiatrist or reiki or Buddhism, whatever you want to say is going to help you. The only thing that’s going to help you is having a good lawyer. And the defense lawyers that they give you when you’re told to go and sit down and look at these photos of dead people, the defense lawyers, a lot of them are reservists and in their full-time job as a lawyer in civilian street, I found out in my case, his specialty isn’t murder investigations. He does wills and family law court. So they’re
Sam Bamford:
Getting the best of the best of defendant.
Scott Jones:
Best of the best. And I always assume that if there’s ever anything wrongdoing or investigations, you’re going to get a good defense lawyer to come and help you. I met my lawyer appointed by defense one time and I said, “Huru, mate, I’m going to go.” And so dudes have lost their house deposits over this. Dudes have lost their houses. Dudes have sold properties to fund their legal advice to make sure that they’re covered and they’re still going through it to this day. Defense aren’t helping. The OSI are cooperating with defense, with the AFP and allegedly with the journalists to continue this fight against these dudes that would have gladly laid down their life for this country, and a lot of them did. Your cousin’s right there, his photo, he laid down his life for this country. And if he was still here, he probably would have got his house raided by now, right? 400 dudes. There’s not that many dudes in the regiment and yeah, vibes are off.
Sam Bamford:
And no one from the top brass seems to be getting done for this.
Scott Jones:
No.
Sam Bamford:
Why isn’t Angus Campbell?
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Well, who wrote the policy ROE 429 Alpha? Who told us as an organization we’re allowed to shoot unarmed people at all times? Questionable.
Sam Bamford:
So even going back off that, if that’s the ROE, rules of engagement for him planning at home, that’s your doctrine piece of law that you need to read before you go out and fight anyone over in Afghanistan.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. In a targeting operation in an offensive term. For
Sam Bamford:
You guys, for special forces.
Scott Jones:
Correct. And
Sam Bamford:
It says that.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, it does say that. So there’s another individual who’s in a little bit of hot water, Oliver Schulz.
Sam Bamford:
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Let’s talk about him because look, is that everything that we want to cover with Ben?
Scott Jones:
Oh, there’s obviously a lot more, but I don’t want to –
Sam Bamford:
You don’t want to
Scott Jones:
Say – I don’t want to contempt of court. I want to have a fair trial.
Sam Bamford:
Yeah, because everything’s going to come out in court. A fair trial. You know why they arrested him in Sydney? Because in Sydney, there’s a base of 7% Muslim people over there. In Queensland, there’s a base of 1.3% Muslim people over there.
Scott Jones:
Yeah.
Sam Bamford:
You know the diversity change from Sydney to Brisbane? I wonder why. I wonder why they arrested him in Sydney, not Brisbane. I wonder why after months of Ben Robert-Smith saying, “I will hand myself in,”
Scott Jones:
They
Sam Bamford:
Arrested him in Sydney. Maybe go look at the diversity. God willing.
Scott Jones:
And we won’t get too much into this one because the murder trial is set for next year and we don’t want to jeopardize the case. That’s a throwaway line for a lot of people that just don’t want to say anything because they’re working as a contractor back to defense, right? But what came out in his pretrial that there’s articles on which you can Google, which everyone kind of ignored, is that everyone’s seen a video of an Australian SAS soldier shooting a dude in a wheat field, right? I think worldwide, everyone saw it. And the blatant comment is another innocent civilian shot by Australian soldiers. Well, in the pretrial, it came out that they were there to kill an objective under ROE 429 alpha, code name, Young Akira. And Young Akira was sitting there having a meeting about who they’re going to kill next with three of his mates.
So there’s four dudes sitting in a circle. This is all publicly available. It came out in the pretrial. The helos start roaring up the valley with a bunch of big dick SAS operators. By the time they’re two minutes out, we say audible, they’re audible to the Taliban. The Taliban start legging it. And this individual in a white dress splits off from his three mates. So who do you go after? Do you go after the three mates or do you go after the one dude by himself?
Sam Bamford:
You after one.
Scott Jones:
Yeah, it’s fifty fifty.
And the helo lands, the dog goes and grabs him. They’re getting constant updates from everywhere. The two Black Hawks are throwing purple smoke grenades at this dude running tactically bounding through the fields aqueducts to try and hide from the Australian SAS operators who are encroaching on him with a dog called Quake, R-I-P Quake. They catch him in the field, a known suicide bomber, that they’re there under 429 alpha to kill. Kill capture the role of the infantry. It says kill first because it’s easier to kill a suicide bomber than it is to catch a suicide bomber. Go and catch me a suicide bomber. That’s why the word kill comes first in the role of the infantry for everyone and under RRE 429 alpha. It’s a kill capture mission because it’s easier to kill a suicide bomber that you’re told to go and get. I’m not going to capture the suicide bomber.
How am I going to do that? I’m going to die. I’ll catch his body parts when he blows up and I can try and catch a limb from a tree or something. Really? And people don’t understand that. So whatever happens in trial happens, but a lot’s come out in pretrial to suggest that this individual, it was perfectly legal to do what the team did. And that’s what was reported that way at the time. And the video came out years later, allegedly, because a fallen soldier had all these videos on his laptop and a SIG was asked to clear his laptop. The SIG was told, “Hey bro, this dude has just been killed in action. We’ve got to send his laptop in his coffin back to his wife. Make sure there’s nothing bad on it. Do a quick cleanup, right? It was my laptop. There might be some tranny porn or some midgets fucking doing some unspeakable things, but this dude was a hitter and I’m sure he just had workout videos or whatever.
But he had all the, allegedly, this is what I heard, he had all the footage from all the different patrols and the sig, instead of wiping the laptop, plugged his hard drive in, pulled all those files off and gave it to a journalist.
So you’re wondering why this footage is being shown on ABC News? Man, disgusting act.
Sam Bamford:
But it was of a dude that was a known suicide bomber.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. I mean – The context wasn’t really there with that one. And a lot more will come out and I don’t want to jeopardize anything because personally, I honestly believe he will be found not guilty and acquitted knowing what I know and what I’ve seen and what all the boys talk about. But that video obviously looks brutal. That’s unfortunately war. And there was 12,000 of those situations. We allegedly killed 12,000 Taliban fighters during that war. And if you like eating sausages, don’t watch them get made. It’s not pretty. You want to send us to war, that’s what war looks like. And you’ll have a veteran in the comment section saying, “Oh, I’m a veteran and I’m disgusted by saying that.” You’re a veteran of what, champion? Dubai. You’re on a ship. You were back in Australia. You’re a photographer. What were you? Weigh in. Weigh in. If you’ve got some fucking shit to say and you understand what’s going on, but if you don’t understand what’s going on, shut the fuck up.
Sam Bamford:
Well said.
Scott Jones:
Respectfully.
Sam Bamford:
Of course, respectfully. Shut the fuck up. No, but it’s just so true. So true. And I was out over the weekend, a lot of people pulled me up over this. “Oh yeah, but he did X, Y, and Z. “It’s like,” Well, you’re just listening to the mainstream media. “Behind every mainstream media, there’s a dude with a puppet fixing the script, telling them what they want you to hear. It’s like when you get someone like yourself on, it’s like, well, the first incident, I mean, that sounds absolutely false. The second incident seems to be like a dude with one eye looking from 300 meters away that’s old as hell saying he did this and he did that. But in reality, they’ve been told that they’re going to be given maybe a cushy life in Australia if they say X, Y, and Z at this trial and there’s some certain news outlet out there which facilitated the whole process.
Scott Jones:
Yeah. Yep. And then a few jaded operators mixed in there that got removed from their dream job and put somewhere else and you’ve got yourself a war crimes trial. Pretty crazy.
Sam Bamford:
Good luck proving that beyond reasonable doubt.
But mate, Scojo, thank you very much for coming on 2 Worlds Collide Podcast. I’ll definitely have you back on again, maybe when this whole thing starts to push its way through court, but let’s hope the best. Screw 60 Minutes, screw the government, and screw all you pussies out there thinking that the right thing to do is to throw Ben in jail when you don’t even know the stories of what’s happened.
Scott Jones:
Free BRS.
Sam Bamford:
Free BRS.