Special Forces Operator Scott Jones: The Truth About Ben Roberts-Smith – the transcript

Special Forces Operator Scott Jones: The Truth About Ben Roberts-Smith – the transcript

Hosted by Sam Bamford, a former Australian Army infantry paratrooper and combat veteran with a deployment to Afghanistan in 2012, the 2 Worlds Collide Podcast has evolved into one of Australia’s most outspoken independent platforms. In this must-see episode, Special Forces Operator Scott Jones recounts his first-hand experiences near and alongside Ben Roberts-Smith. This is the edited transcript. 

Please note: this version (almost 11,000 words) represents about 50% of the AI generated transcript of the interview on the podcast, manually edited to focus strictly on matters relevant to Ben Roberts-Smith. Sections have been left out and sentences, passages compressed. It is intended as a resource for reference and research. All care has been taken to accurately edit the transcript and I apologise for any errors I may have missed. Also please bear in mind, the transcript doesn’t fully reflect the dynamics of the live interview, with its interactions, facial expressions, nuances and occasional sarcasm.

Sam Bamford:

Hi guys. Welcome back to 2 Worlds Collide Podcast. On today’s episode, we have Scott Jones, AKA Scojo.

Scojo, welcome to 2 Worlds Collide Podcast, a very, very important episode to combat the lies and the audacity and the disgustiveness and how the Channel Nine news organization with Nick McKenzie have ran this story and thank you for coming to Adelaide.

Scott Jones:

It’s a pleasure to be here, mate.

Sam Bamford:

…  there’s been a lot of things happening over the past week. And what we know about the Ben Roberts-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 horse shit.

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:

So I thought I’d get you in, because look, you’ve been through the process of having your house raided. 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 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. And 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 wear before he’s passing. And I did that. So 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. So 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. And 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:

All right. So how many trips have you done?

Scott Jones:

So 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:

All 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 2 commando, the Special Forces Regiment. Now, there are allegations against certain 2 commando members, but there’s also the allegations against Ben Robert Smith. Now, this is all going to tie in together. We’re probably going to talk about the whole thing in regards to the Brenton inquiries and everything. But let’s start off with Ben Robert 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 getting arrested, all this sort of stuff.

Scott Jones:

Yeah. Yeah. So not just me, obviously there was over 400 fellows that got interviewed and accused of different things varying in nature and severity during that time. And 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…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. His…

Scott Jones:

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 door and kicking his house in? What’s he done wrong? He’s a war hero.

Scott Jones:

Yeah. Your neighbor’s in your street. You built 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- And I

Sam Bamford:

Just want to let everyone know it’s still happening to today.

Scott Jones:

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 … I actually did a deployment with two squadron with E-Troop. 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. So obviously we’re the premier unit in the Australian Defense Force. Shout out to 2 commando. And yeah, I do have a bit of knowledge obviously on this subject. And 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 I also was working overseas at the time, so I had a lot of time to watch the trial every single day live stream. So I feel like there’s not many people other than the journalists in the room that watched as much and were invested in much as a trial as I was. And now I’m also helping out Oliver Shulz on his case because I’m no longer working for our government. And it’s a very niche thing. The electronic warfare operators, you’re cleared to top secret, so you have access to a lot of tools and things.

And 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. So I’m happy to do so because I’m certainly not going back 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.

21 witnesses

Sam Bamford:

That’s right. All right. Okay. So the first thing I want to break down is 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses. You talk to guys like yourself, you talk to … I won’t name anyone else on the podcast for reasons that we don’t want to, because this is my podcast. I don’t want to point anyone else under scrutiny, but I get this information from these other people, 21 witnesses, 21 witnesses. Well, no, it wasn’t 21 witnesses. It was more like two or three or four witnesses,

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, they 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 to 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 (dead) people’s hands to bio and roll to get the fingerprints of the bad dudes that we’d killed, not me, 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 heard the president of Afghanistan saying, “Hey, yeah, well, no more jobs. Australians, you’re 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 gym and smack and brews and flirting with cute sig chicks down at the MRTF or whatever. But then fast forward to about 2014, things started to come out. There’s 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 commander 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.” And as a young digger,

And 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.

And then Socost 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.” And 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. And 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? Yeah. I even heard that. I was like, “Oh my God, if that’s true, that’s pretty cooked.”

Sam Bamford:

But 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, 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.

 

picture of their half missing head

 

He’s not my biggest fan. 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 cooked. 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 … 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 and put them all on a table and they forced him for eight hours to sit there and stare at it.

Sam Bamford:

Isn’t that really good for a soldier’s mental health?

Scott Jones:

Yep. 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:

So 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 like all disheveled and-

Sam Bamford:

How many years after it was-

Scott Jones:

This is say 2015, 16, 17, 18. And this is from- So

Sam Bamford:

Five, six,

Scott Jones:

Seven, 10 years. 10 years prior.

One dude 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 of the trigger.” The dude, 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, slapped 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:

Ah, 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. Crazy. So many fucking diggers that came back from Afghanistan and 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 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 on Malcolm Turnbull into several capabilities.

Sam Bamford:

Tony Abbott’s come out and spoke very positively for Ben Robert Smith.

Scott Jones:

Yeah. 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. And 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:

Okay. So after they laid out all them photos, what happened after that?

Scott Jones:

So after that, there was just silence. You just waited for your turn to be called up. And some people got called, 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:

So full interrogation. By who?

Scott Jones:

The IGADF, the Inspector General of the Australian Defense Force. It’s like the HR Department of Defense.

And HR, 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 from my service who hasn’t served.” And it’s important to note. I see a lot of people in the comments 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.

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.

 

a higher level of respect

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.

Sam Bamford:

There’s a higher level of respect you give to them.

Scott Jones:

That’s right. The intensity of their service, they might’ve only served for four years in special operations, but they did four deployments to Afghanistan. They’re 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. And then, so we’re waiting, we’re waiting for things to come out and the report finally drops in 2021-ish, I’m guessing.

And 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 and our chief of the defense force comes out and says, “Hey guys, the whole world, livestream, public broadcast.” Potentially some of our soldiers were cutting young boys’ throats and put them in body bags and chucking them in a room.

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 villages. And my mates are grunts standing there with all the Afghan villages listening to this like the soldiers, 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,  tail between the legs. See you later.

the Taliban were already there

Sam Bamford:

The Taliban took over Afghanistan in two weeks.

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 offed in Afghanistan was a civilian. So that’s another point. Look, common sense, Ben wasn’t killing innocent civilians. Okay? Well, they were all civilians. The Taliban weren’t a formal army. They didn’t have a conventional force behind them. They’re an insurgency. They were civilians. When they weren’t fighting us, they were just farming their crops or doing whatever they do.

Sam Bamford:

See, 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.

Scott Jones:

That’s right. You can’t

Sam Bamford:

For all these armchair warrior experts out there,whoI think they know a bit about what happens over in Afghanistan because they’ve watched a few movies here and there. Well think again.

Scott Jones:

Yep. 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 in general, maybe you had to drop on someone, you could easily justify taking their life they were about to attack the patrol, right? But one of the main ROEs that special operations used 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 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 as targetable as if he’s shooting at you with an AK-47.

So question for you, Sam: 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 we didn’t write the rules, right? Can you picture Scojo fucking doing some legal documents?

Sam Bamford:

No, no, 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?

Scott Jones:

Yeah, that’s right.

Sam Bamford:

Good. All right. Now, should we jump onto the witnesses now?

Scott Jones:

Yeah, sure.

Sam Bamford:

Yep. All right. So because you’ve been very, very close to the entirety of this charge, you’ve helped during the defamation trial on Ben’s side. Now, so let’s talk about the witnesses.

 

a shitbag of a soldier

Scott Jones:

Yeah. So let’s go. So yeah, the biggest comment that we’ve seen in the last few days is, well, 21 of his mates showed up … 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 1. So they’re given pseudonyms. I think that’s the professional word for it.

So Person 1 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 1 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 ended up getting in a huge gunfight. So from there, what occurred is the 2IC, 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. So 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 1 got fucked off. And 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 1, he was a shitbag of a soldier. Every unit has their lemons, even 2 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 gun and fucked off to another team,

Would you take that personally?

I would. So does Person 1 have bias against Ben looking for a way to get him back? Yes. Person 7. 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 7 said, “Ah, 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. 100 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 7’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.

Yeah.

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 where the fight happened.

Scott Jones:

That’s where the fighting 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 7, then two years later, on a subsequent deployment, they went back to Tizak. 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, phenomenal. And no one denies what Ben did was phenomenal. But Person 7, instead of pulling security and doing his job in that village that day in 2012, two years later- Was …

Sam Bamford:

…stepping out the meters, Ben

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.

Scott Jones:

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:

One that was on last night.

Scott Jones:

Yeah, that’s the dude that he admitted in bench 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 7 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 . . .

Scott Jones:

Yeah. Well I think-

Sam Bamford:

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 Mrs. 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- Oh,

Sam Bamford:

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 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 roll 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 didn’t see anything. So predominantly people didn’t see anything. So there was, 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, a random like ex- lovers and mistresses and people that literally got on the stand for five minutes like, “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 2 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.

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 CEO of the SASR regimen, a Colonel. And during the main allegation where Ben machine gunned allegedly a due with a prosthetic leg, he was standing in the middle of the compound, which is no bigger than probably half a basketball court. And 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 gun 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.

And 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.

So we’ll talk about this one and then we’ll talk about Dahwan and the Cliff incident. So Whiskey One…. So I think it was Easter Sunday actually, so very timely around now, 2009. So the SAS are coming back from a mission and they get a frantic call from 7R, the battle group, I think Task Force Tusk, they’re sitting up on a feature with [unclear] and they’re laying into this compound that’s shooting at them. Machine gun 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 Saltons. I think it might’ve been around that time. And then-

Sam Bamford:

Apologies if we got that wrong

Scott Jones:

So the boys are hooking in. There’s a proper good old fashioned gunfight. Task force tusks come over the radio and say, “Please SAS, help us.” They might overrun us. We’re tactically withdrawing with [unclear] while firing and the SAS are rolling past in Bushmasters just coming home. They’ve already got their multicam [military gear] dressing gowns on and multicam 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 multicam slippers, they push their strippers off them. Tanya, Zayta, 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 gunfire coming from Whiskey 108. So the JTAC drops a JDAM, a bomb into the middle of that compound, and that kept everyone pretty quiet in that compound. So no matter what happens next, 7RA 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. 7RA 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. And he would later go on to testify against Ben Robert 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 were just like, whatever that killed. We’re not here to talk about that one.

Sam Bamford:

Oh, we won’t talk about that one.

Scott Jones:

We won’t talk about that. 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’ve 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,

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 gunning to death. The CEO 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.

the cliff incident

So let’s go to Dahwan. The 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 posts on the ground. It wasn’t a cliff. It was like a small hill and that’s where the sense … When I first read the article headlines, I was like, “Okay, here we go. ”

Sam Bamford:

So it’s a lie straight away.

Scott Jones:

It’s a lie straight. 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. I 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.

And when I saw it on the news, I was like, I remember that compound and it’s in a place called Dahwan, which is at the top of a valley called Shahidiasas. And I know you’re an Afghan linguist, but that means Valley of the Martyrs where their best fighters live in Afghanistan, Valley of the Martas, Shahidiasas. And imagine if we had a place here where we are in Sydney called Valley of the VC winners where all our military members retired too, 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 of to 13 year olds and blow them sky high.

Scott Jones:

That’s right. They’re all bad guys. And I wasn’t there for the cliff incident and I’m not SAS. We’re the tier one unit, they’re the tier two. 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 him and he said, “They’re going to kill us. They’re looking at you. They’re talking about you. They can see your mullet.” And 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. ” And I start slowly just casually not trying to show the boys I was scared, but scooching in behind a rock. And when he took the photo, I’m in a shadow and I got my finger on the trigger looking back at him. And it’s the scaredest I’ve probably ever been in my life, honestly. And then we’ve jumped out, nighttime

DJ, 10,000 feet at night, MVG jumps and that’s confronting sometimes. But it was the first time I think I actually thought above Ali Jan’s compound, I was about to die. I was about to get hit with a machine gun. And I was like, “Well, fuck, we better stay here.” And everyone went to ground and eventually the partner force were so scared that we fled … We didn’t even go into the green belt 2 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 villages.

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- I

Sam Bamford:

Want to talk about these guys.

Scott Jones:

Yeah. Heavily. So he saw this incident happen in Dahwan. He was watching it from across the creek bed. And then in his cross examination, he’s like, “Well, to be honest, I’m like 80 years old … 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.

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 the place where they house all their greats as fighters, Afghan Taliban fighters.

Scott Jones:

Yeah. One’s an Uber driver in Adelaide. We’re tracking him. And 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, commandos, 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, but 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 chasing the big bucks on the embassy contract gigs.

Sam Bamford:

And obviously we know them because we’re good friends with them.

money and a great life if they talk up against Ben

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 Roberts-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 candle 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 a 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 in our bodyguards recorded it all. They got video footage. They got audio files of it.

Sam Bamford:

So there’s video footage out there that’s … I’ll be careful with this. There’s video footage out there. Allegedly. Allegedly. Recorded of these guys, allegedly, saying that they are being 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 …

Scott Jones:

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. I actually put my barrel through it and he ended up being a good guy. And we gave him 20 bucks, 20 US dollars. And I’ve never seen a man cry that much. It was like he just saw his first son get born or whatever. $20 went a long way in his valley.

***

target packages

Scott Jones:

And why were the SAS in Dahwan? Ask yourself that. Did the SAS, does Ben Robert 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 develop the target packages. You go where you’re told. The SAS and 2 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 Hekmatula.

Sam Bamford:

I 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 JPL, he’s the objective, objective jungle effect. If he’s 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 ROE429 permits that he is taking a direct part in hostilities.

Scott Jones:

But with the addition of the drone technology, some of the Aussie diggers are finding over in our 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 sea.

Sam Bamford:

I didn’t have my wife and my kids and the life I live now, I’d probably go ….

Scott Jones:

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. He

Sam Bamford:

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:

You heard the story of Ben Robert Smith on that night? The 29th of August? Do you want me to … I’ll quickly tell it for you anyway, just for everyone. So what happened the 29th of August was Hekmatula 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. He got sent out to patrol base Wahid. And after a patrol one day, all the Australian soldiers were getting ready for bed, few of them were playing cards. He walked up from his Afghan National Army position because we used to share the same base because we do partner patrols. And it was lucky, right, 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 AK-47 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, and I don’t want to steal the story from them, but if you want to go back and listen to Jay Toup, Matthew French, or Corey Neal, any of those podcasts, they’re brilliant. And sorry, firsthand account of it. It is brutal. But anyway, the first team to fly out was RS and his team. He came in, got the whole scene under control. Imagine just 15 first time Diggy’s going over to Afghanistan, lids and we’re all young. Martin was 20 years old when he died. Podi was 23. Milosovich was older, late 30s, but he had two kids at home.

an assault by himself on the village

Sam Bamford:

But 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, RS 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…. And in the middle of the night, IRS 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’re 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 or 20 blocks. 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, ran back up, couldn’t find him, told the boys, gave him some very reassuring messages and lifted the spirits.

And that’s the incident that started a man hunt in Afghanistan for Hekmatula.

Scott Jones:

That’s why I was in Dahwan.

Sam Bamford:

That’s why Ben Roberts-Smith was in Dahwan.

Scott Jones:

Yeah. And RS 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 a 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 RS. And we had plenty of dudes like RS. I’m sure you’ve met him and heard about them through your cousin in the second commando regiment. And having a dude like RS on the hero, when you look around the hero and you’re on a job, it was like hopping in a warm sleeping bag knowing that you had these dudes with you. Some dudes on the helo, you’re like, “Maybe not that guy.” But the majority of dudes that had that same persona as RS, you felt very comfortable like, “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. 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 like one dude that will bring everyone home and that’s a dude like Ben.

Sam Bamford:

Yeah. And yeah, after the 29th of August incident and then to hear the Dahwan 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 it, 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 like 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 cunts. They’re not good people. They’re not good soldiers. They never were credible. The people that are saying RS 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 influencers, especially if you’re SAS. Why are you so quiet right now? Yeah, 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 IRS, but very few were brave in combat.