Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie is back with Stan Original Series Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith Truth on Trial, delving into the quest to uncover the truth behind rumours that Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, committed war crimes in Afghanistan and is a war criminal.
Over five harrowing years, McKenzie — alongside Chris Masters — was determined to pursue the real story of what occurred in Afghanistan between 2006-2013, running parallel with military and police inquiries. Not only did they uncover a toxic warrior culture within the regiment but they also discovered that Roberts-Smith was not who the public thought he was.
Speaking to Mediaweek ahead of its Monday, December 11 launch, McKenzie said that it was “an amazing inside story that’s not been told”.
“It’s about how this whole scandal had occurred from the inside and the way that story’s been told is really through snippets in the news media, like a news story here and a TV story there,” he said. “It’s been very incremental. This captures the whole journey and gives the Australian public a pretty rare inside look at the way this whole scandal has bubbled along for all these years. The way investigative journalism works, the way the core processes work and some of the characters involved.”
McKenzie on the “struggles” to get the story told
According to McKenzie, there was an “ocean of struggles” to get the story told.
“From the struggle to expose somebody who was so popular and so lionised by many people in the public, a national icon, and then from Robert-Smith, someone I think the public just didn’t want to believe could have engaged in war crimes.”
In addition to this, Robert-Smith was backed by the political establishment, some parts of the media and many people in the veteran’s community, and as McKenzie pointed out, to “challenge someone like him was extremely difficult.”
“We had SAS soldiers themselves, who had fought with him, who were saying, ‘No, this is the truth’ and saying the ‘public deserves to know the truth about what went on’.”
Ben Roberts-Smith. Stan
McKenzie had “moments of doubt”
For McKenzie, during the lengthy process, he had “moments of doubt”, wondering if it was worth pursuing the story.
“It’s not just about a war hero,” he said. “He’s executed civilians, he brutalised and executed detainees. Just challenging somebody like him was difficult. And then, of course, the litigation just went on forever. It was an immensely draining process for all our witnesses and ourselves as well. And there are many times you thought jeez, are we going to lose this is the truth going to be defeated.”
When dealing with a lengthy court process — which ultimately was won by McKenzie and his team — “dealing with the blowback” was challenging.
“From fighting people who just wished the truth was concealed, from death threats to another blowback that you cop and at some point, it takes over your life. And at some point, you say, ‘Geez, do I wish I did this story? Maybe it’s better if I just walked away? There were certainly moments of doubt.”
He added: “It was an absolute hard slog. It was all about trying to corroborate information to make sure that what we reported was the truth. And ultimately, years later, the Federal Court said it was the truth. But at the time, we didn’t have that court judgment.
“All we had were these disparate strands of information that were picked from Australia from the SAS itself, from people in Afghanistan, from people elsewhere across the globe, we fought with the SAS, but all these stories were overlapping and corroborating themselves. How could it be that people on three different continents were saying the same thing about Ben Roberts-Smith kicking an Afghan man off a cliff? How could it be that the story of their soldiers who knew about that or witnessed that matched the stories of Afghan villagers in a tiny village in southern Afghanistan unless it was true?”
“I think you get to the bottom of it by just sheer determination and persistence,” he added. “But ultimately, it’s about the persistence of Australian soldiers who wanted the truth out. Guys in the SAS did not want a war criminal to be a war hero.”
The Stan Original Documentary Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith Truth On Trial is now streaming only on Stan.