Andy White: Former SAS soldier unleashes on military leadership over war crimes investigations

An ex-Special Air Service Regiment sergeant who watched a colleague killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan has launched a blistering attack on former Defence Force Chief Angus Campbell for overseeing war crimes investigations that split the regiment, the army and the nation.

Andy White, a 14-year veteran of the elite unit, blamed former General Campbell for the Brereton inquiry, which he says used “rumours” to conclude that Australian soldiers murdered 39 civilians and prisoners during the war, leading to the criminal prosecution of former SAS corporal Ben Roberts-Smith and colleague Oliver Schulz.

Mr Campbell, an ex-SAS officer, was Chief of the Army in 2016 when NSW judge Paul Brereton was hired to investigate claims that emerged from the SAS about war crimes in Afghanistan. By 2020, when Justice Brereton’s report was completed, Mr Campbell was Chief of the Defence Force and responsible for the decision to abolish SAS’s 2 Squadron, which was at the centre of many of the allegations.

“Campbell occupied the highest levels of command,” Mr White writes in a memoir, Outside The Wire, published next week. “In my view, he bears direct and personal responsibility for the allegations arising on his watch, and for the disgraceful course of events that followed — events that ruined lives, shattered families, tainted the service of thousands and weakened Defence’s capability.

“I believe the inquiry was never about accountability. It was about shielding the senior brass and five successive governments — those who led during the Afghanistan war — from ever facing the International Criminal Court in the The Hague.”

‘Ask the tough questions’

Mr White’s memoir contains one of the most detailed published critiques of the Brereton inquiry and related investigations into the SAS’s conduct in Afghanistan by a member of the regiment at the time.

Mr White, who was never in Afghanistan with Mr Roberts-Smith, said the allegations should be “rigorously investigated and punished if proven.”

“What we reject is the way the Inquiry was conducted — how it reached its conclusions, how rumour was treated as evidence, and how sections of the media weaponised those claims,” he writes.

“Together, these failures represent a profound collapse of institutional leadership, across both Defence and government, with enduring consequences for the ADF, serving members and an entire generation of Australian veterans.”

Mr Campbell is now the ambassador to Belgium. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not respond to a question to comment on his behalf.

Mr Campbell’s government biography does not include his Distinguished Service Cross medal, which was awarded in 2012 for his command of Australian forces in the Middle East during the period when most of the war crimes took place, according to Justice Brereton’s findings.

Other former members of the regiment, including psychologist Harry Moffitt and Federal MP Andrew Hastie, have complained that potential witnesses are being intimidated by supporters of Mr Roberts-Smith, who has said he intends to plead not guilty to five charges of the war crime of murder.

Prosecutors in Mr Roberts-Smith’s case are likely to rely on evidence from four SAS soldiers who admitted to executing prisoners and have agreed to testify to avoid being charged. Other veterans not implicated in war crimes, including Mr Hastie, could be called as witnesses.

“Good leaders ask the tough questions and hold people to account,” Mr Moffitt wrote on social media in May. “That is all they are guilty of.”

Neil James, the executive director of the Australian Defence Association, a lobby group, defended Mr Brereton’s integrity and complained of “decades of unhealthy and unprofessional elitism with SASR culture”.

“This book appears to present yet another denialist, apologetic and simplistic conspiracy-theory view,” he said.

Dan Fortune, a former SAS commander, accused leaders in the army, whom he did not name, of failing to take responsibility for mistakes made by Australian forces during the nation’s longest war.

“Our martial war-fighting DNA codex is compromised when senior leaders fail in the ultimate test of command accountability,” he said.

Das Boot

Mr White was in a team ambushed by Taliban insurgents in the Shah Wali Kot region in August, 2010. Trooper Jason Brown died in the fight. Mr White complains the Defence Force publicly disclosed the death before the team returned from the field, potentially risking another Taliban attack on the surviving members of the team.

“The ADF senior leadership’s decision to release information so negligently was a blatant breach of operational security and caused tremendous stress for our families,” he writes.

The Defence Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr White also suggests that “Das Boot”, the prosthetic leg of an Afghan man allegedly executed by Mr Roberts-Smith in 2009, should be displayed in the Australian War Memorial. Mr Roberts-Smith has denied executing prisoners.

“Like it or not, Das Boot is part of the Anzac story,” Mr White writes. “Unless of course, we continue to whitewash history so the squeamish can feel better about war.”

The War Memorial recently opened a new wing with extensive exhibits from Australia’s longest war, including a public version of the Brereton Report.