137 Heston Russell The Truth Behind Modern Warfare His Legal Battle With The Abc

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I'm Mike Borris, and this is Straight Talk.

I've killed people, seen one of my best guys killed, all these things. But again, you're in such a

mindset that you expected that. That was war, you know, one plus one equal two.

Heston Russell, welcome to Straight Talk, mate. Special Forces Combat Veteran,

Public Speaker, leading campaigning for veterans in Australia.

We were taking the fight to ISIS, Daesh, some of the most evil people I've ever seen in the world.

If you want a higher performance, you need a higher purpose. When we were overseas in Afghanistan

and say the enemy pressed their advantage, I could call in the finger of God from the sky. Drones and

gunships, and I would have every asset within that area of operations dedicated to me and whatever I

needed. And then there I was at home in my Sydney apartment, having the entire legacy of my guys

being labelled as war criminals on the day of my soldier's death. Abandonment? Absolute abandonment.

So the ABC took it upon themselves to effectively attack your integrity by virtual

allegations. Take us through what happened. Heston Russell, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Hey, Mark. Thanks for having me.

So essentially, you're Special Forces Combat Veteran, Public Speaker. I'm sure you've got

lots of things to talk about. Podcast host and leading campaigning for veterans in Australia.

That covers a lot of ground. Okay, let's talk about Special Forces Veteran.

Yeah, right.

You look a bit young to be a veteran.

This is part of it.

But you have been to war, I guess, and that makes, now you're not at war,

although you have been at war, a different sort of war. What are the Special Forces? I mean,

what does that mean? Are we talking about SAS? Are we talking about Commandos? I mean,

please educate us.

No, no, good question. I mean, I get called an SAS Commander all the time. There are pretty

much two separate major units, one the Commandos and the 2nd Commando Regiment here out at

Holdsworthy in Sydney. And then you've got the SAS in Perth. And both of them have their

genesis.

They have their genesis from different forces within the British military.

But what's the difference between the two? There's one sort of sneaking around and sort

of jumping over fences and stuff like that. But what's the difference between the two?

Was one dropping out of airplanes?

These are great questions. Look, I got out four years ago and it's changed since then.

But the SAS's role is traditionally clandestine, out of uniform, smaller teams, special reconnaissance

type stuff. And the Commandos is more larger teams, direct action, raids, offensive support,

we also do the domestic counter-terrorism role within Australia. So very unique, but

particularly in Afghanistan, we overlapped a lot in our sort of mission sets. These days

it's much more well-defined.

So they're not the same thing though. So you're a Special Forces person?

I was a Commando.

You were a Commando. So you're in uniform, or whatever, yeah, I guess the uniform. And

then we've got to hit that spot down there and there's 20, 30, whatever the number of

us are. And you've got to go and get it.

You've got to take control of it.

Lots of different roles. One year I was here in Sydney doing the domestic counter-terrorism.

So when Link Cafe siege happened, we were ready to roll if the police allowed it to

be handed over to us. Another year I was working in Solomon Islands out of uniform with the

embassy when they had their elections in case there were riots and Australian citizens got

endangered. And then another year, we're in Afghanistan in uniforms flying in helicopters

to kill or capture bad guys. So the biggest difference is you have the units like that

are in the American army.

Yeah.

America, you know, they're all their different Special Forces units that are so niche in

what they specifically do. Australia has two units, less than 1,000 operators to cover

off on the whole spectrum of operations. But particularly, I guess, to delineate between

the two, Commandos is much more sort of high visibility, but still operates outside of,

you know, the public awareness. SAS is pushing more and more into what we call the special

reconnaissance role, clandestine out of uniform stuff.

I had a mate, and he's my age, but he's a long time ago. I haven't seen him for a while.

I haven't seen him for a while. I haven't seen him for a while. I haven't seen him for

a while. But he was, well, we all got told he was a Commando, but we're going back nearly

50 years. And he was like, did some weird shit. Like, he was a, like, he was just a

normal looking dude, architect by profession, post his army years. But when it, like, let's

say we had a massive storm, massive storm, okay, where rain, and it rained for a couple

of days.

Yeah.

Right.

And he used to get his canoe.

Yeah.

And he'd drop his canoe in some really narrow canal. And he used to get a thrill out of

jumping in there and, you know, working his way back out to the harbour.

Got it.

And I said, you fucking nutcase.

Yeah.

But if you saw him normally, you'd just think he's a mild-mannered architect. You wouldn't

know.

Yeah.

Some weird shit. Like, what actually got you into becoming, were you a weirdo, like, you

You know, young kid, like, you know, like want to get a bare knuckle,

everyone, what was your deal?

No, no, no.

I mean, I grew up in a military family.

So my dad was in the military.

My grandfather was in the Korean War and Vietnam War.

Grandfather, great-grandfather, World War II

and great-great-grandfather, World War I.

Wow.

And particularly as, you know, a young kid growing up,

the aspirational men I saw around me were all in the military.

And then as it goes, I was sort of fat, unpopular kid at high school

and I sort of saw the best version of me being that challenged

and going through the process I'd seen these other aspirational men go through.

So for me it was a lot about trying to discover myself,

having a sense of service that came from my family

and also just the adventure.

Yeah, I definitely wasn't bare knuckling anyone.

So that's really important.

Quite interesting things you just said.

Adventure and service.

Yeah.

And that sense of service you're saying,

you know, I wonder how a person gets a sense of service.

Not many people could say that.

Not many people could say, I want to serve my country.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe some politicians might say it.

I don't know if I'm going to believe them or not.

They might start like that.

Correct.

But if you're in the army or if you're in one of these special units,

you must have a sense of service which has to override your sense of fear

and your sense of lack of control.

And I think that's part of the situation because at any one stage

something could happen to you.

It's quite bad.

Absolutely.

So that sense of service you're saying came from your family.

How do you look at that?

Yeah, I think one of my favorite quotes is,

if you want a higher performance, you need a higher purpose.

And particularly during my high school years,

I was very poor at representing myself, standing up for myself,

but I was excellent when I was empowered with a purpose

that was to support others or achieve a mission.

And that is really that sense of service before self,

that the military indoctrinates you into.

It breaks you down and indoctrinates you into the mission

and the team being more important than yourself.

And people love talking about resilience.

And they talk about resilience as how you get up when you fall down.

But the best thing I learned from a military career,

and particularly combat, is that I always had two proactive layers of resilience.

One was the mission and one was the team.

Before my head was inside any of my own problems worrying about my own,

situations, mentally.

In danger.

Particularly, well, particularly like even just mentally and emotionally.

You know, physically, sure.

But as far as mental and emotional health goes,

never ever had any issues because my mindset is always,

what does the mission need?

What does the team need?

And when you're outside of your own head,

you're not fighting those sort of demons ricocheting inside.

So it really was that empowering purpose,

and particularly in such a communal environment

where you're constantly living with people.

And I was an officer, so I always had 30 to 50 guys

keeping me accountable,

requiring me to demonstrate leadership.

It really projected you to perform to the very best version of you

with all forms of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Apart from what happened more recently,

which we'll talk about in a moment,

did you ever start to question yourself about the,

or did you ever have to question yourself about the sense of service

or more importantly the purpose?

You know, like did you say,

what the hell am I doing this for?

And if that happens,

because we have people in business do this stuff all the time.

Yeah.

How do you redeem yourself?

Well, fix yourself.

Yeah.

I never really experienced that till the very end of my career.

I was fortunate to go into the military at a time

where we were just so busy on combat operations.

And then particularly, so I joined the regular army

and then go through a six-week selection

and a full year's worth of training just to become a qualified commando.

And then during that time, I deployed Afghanistan four times

and everything was just relevant.

There weren't conversations about political opinions.

There was me justifying I need this helicopter,

I need this extra.

I need this extra team because this is the risk to mission

or this is the risk to force.

And it was all so very one plus one equals two.

I was going to say, it sounds very binary.

It was.

And there was so much.

The non-binary part was the strategy and the tactics,

particularly as the platoon commander.

My job was to be a specialist leader and a specialist planner.

And you're operating with so much incredible technology,

intelligence, satellites in the sky, people on the ground.

And you're basically spending weeks planning missions

on how you're going to orchestrate the battle space

and cause reactions.

And it was brilliant, especially when we got to a point

where you were literally doing things to force them

to do other things.

And then you could imagine, and this is the whole conversation

we talk about with the charity work I do now,

transitioning from that life of clear purpose,

sort of binary, non-political explanations of what you need

to a world that is self before service, profit before purpose

and nothing but political agendas and labels

that don't actually mean anything.

It's really quite a challenge.

It's a juxtaposition and a difficulty to adapt.

It's really interesting.

I never ever considered the army in my life.

I mean, I remember when I was at school, someone said,

if you go to Duntroon, you get a free education.

That was something that went through my mind.

I thought, well, maybe I could become an engineer or something like that

and the government will pay for me.

But there's only ever time I really thought about it.

The thing that turned me off was I had to go to Canberra.

So I decided not to do it.

I agree.

I don't want to go to the mothership and hang out down there.

But I really didn't understand.

This sense of service to our nation.

I certainly didn't understand.

I never really thought about it, the sense of purpose.

Do you ever or did you ever get caught up in a logical sense,

the futility of war?

In other words, is war futile?

Because the dude on the other side is thinking exactly the same as you

but for a different reason.

And maybe you're going to kill him or he's going to kill you.

But you both believe in something quite passionately.

Yeah.

Great question.

During my time in the military, no.

Since, absolutely.

My reflections on my time, particularly during my time on operations,

doing combat, we are getting intelligence feeds and tracking people

who we have fingerprints from explosive devices that kill kids in a marketplace.

We absolutely know what we're doing.

And it was so satisfying being able to take the fight to evil people,

who were targeting others, you know, fighting against the bullies in the playground since then

and realizing that at the end of the day, war is ultimately what happens when diplomacy fails,

when politicians don't do their job properly.

And at the same time, you have the sides, which definitely are different ideologies.

And it's so easy to get trapped in our own echo chamber of what we're fed as far as, you know,

media information through to what some of the most unqualified people in the world,

our politicians and our media, tell us other justifications for it.

But then looking back and seeing how much, you know,

mineral resources grabs through to just political agendas have played part.

And also, I do so much work since leaving the military, helping to get Afghans who we fought with back here to Australia.

Just getting that other side of the narrative that you're otherwise deprived of.

It really makes you question that.

And I would be the last person in the world to ever commit young Australians to any war unless it was absolutely defending our own soil.

It's a bit like, is there ever a...

Some of us sort of jumped in the boxing room and had a lot of fights.

You know, you carry on a little bit before the thing.

You've got to steel yourself and think, I don't care whether I like you or not.

I'm going to knock your head off.

But footballers do the same thing.

But at the end of it, you give each other a hug, say, mate, well done.

Like, you know, it doesn't matter who won, well fought.

And you're besties all of a sudden.

You're mates.

Same rugby league, same thing.

Have you ever gone through a process where you feel as though,

you'd like to reach out to those other soldiers that you were up against?

Yeah.

And invite them out for a cup of tea or something like that, you know what I mean?

No, I mean, especially very different in the special forces world.

We were fighting against sort of insurgents and terrorists.

We weren't, it wasn't sort of uniform versus uniform conflict.

It wasn't two ideologies pressed against each other.

I mean, my last deployment was to Iraq in 2016, 17.

And we were taking the fight to ISIS, Daesh, some of the most evil people I've ever seen in the world.

And some of the most evil people I've ever seen in the world.

And some of the stories that I could tell you would make your toes curl.

But you always felt so justified, felt, what's the word I'm looking for?

Yeah, you just felt so justified in what you were doing.

And these were properly evil people.

And particularly, Mark, most of us, once we sort of finish that world,

just want to move on from it.

You know, it's a phase and a stage and it's a young person's game for sure.

And if you sit here and, you know, try and remember all those bits and pieces,

it can become far too overwhelming.

It can become overwhelming for too many.

Do you think you ever get traumatized from it all?

I mean, we hear about PTSD for vets.

Yeah.

And I've had a lot of conversations with various ministers or previous ministers for Veteran Affairs.

They talk to me about it.

A lot of the guys, you know, older guys are suffering.

Yeah.

You see a lot of suffering.

Yeah.

Is the PTSD a function of, not suggesting you are a psychologist, but let's dig in a little bit.

Is the PTSD a function of having seen?

Trauma in front of you or people injured or kids injured or just destruction?

Or is the PTSD more a function of the futility of my ideology versus his or her ideology?

No, look, I've been diagnosed with PTSD of which I don't have any acute PTSD.

I've killed people, seen one of my best guys killed, all these things.

But again, you're in such a mindset that you expected that.

That was war.

You know, one plus one equal two.

It was terrible and emotional and still is.

It is what it is.

Most of us have such a pragmatic mindset to be able to do that.

Particularly veterans from the Vietnam era, you know, jungle close combat warfare is some of the most, you know, crazy and gruesome that you can come across.

It sounds so hectic.

That's it.

And that generation has a lot of acute PTSD from just those conditions, that inhumanity, that mass scale of civilian casualties as well.

Yeah.

There is a small minority that will have acute PTSD and that comes from, you know, their own mental preparations and just everyone has a psychological threshold.

So many veterans like myself actually have PTSD that comes from a physiological reaction to being exposed to combat and danger.

Our nervous system is basically rewired to perform at its optimal levels when we are in a fight or flight state.

My body loves to dump cortisol, feed off dopamine and endorphins.

And I find it so hard to naturally produce oxytocin and serotonin, often without some

of the new therapies that have now become legal.

And it's just realizing that, realizing what brain clutter and memory loss you get when

you're in that state, when your body's filled with cortisol, when your testosterone levels

are low and actually needing to adapt your nutrition, deregulate your exercise, low intensity

instead of high intensity, get off alcohol, get off caffeine, all those bits and pieces.

We're learning so much just in the last few years of how we need to put mental and physical

health back together and stop treating them like separate entities.

That's really interesting that maybe we just, if I could just ask you to pause, I just want

to talk about that cortisol thing.

Yeah.

So I guess what you're saying is that when you're in that fight or flight situation,

in other words, something's going to happen to your bad, you recognize it, your senses

see it, hear it, smell it, whatever, you sense it.

Yeah.

Your various parts of your body start to produce cortisol, which actually dumps in everything

in your body.

So put you in a position, no real decision making is going to happen.

I'm either going to run or fight.

Yeah.

Adrenaline sort of starts surging through your system.

Yeah.

But your testosterone, if you're in a constant state of that, your test is reduced, reduced

to a low level, which by the way happens outside of water.

Absolutely.

Some people are in a constant state of this.

Yeah.

And they are pretty fucked up.

Yeah.

How did you know, were you trained as to saying, okay, I've got to recognize the situation,

that's the position I'm in right now.

I've just come back from a day's work in the, you know, shooting whoever I'm shooting

ISIS or whatever it is and they're shooting me.

So I'm feeling pretty fucked.

Yeah.

And I've spent the last five days doing it, I'm going to have to do it again tomorrow.

Is that something that Heston knew about and that Heston then went into a program, programatized

to make sure that he did the sort of things you just said, low weight, light weights,

maybe many reps.

Good nutrition, good sleep.

Are you programatized for this or just did you understand it?

No, this is the fascinating part.

So many of the stuff that I've actually just verbalized, we kind of knew as an assumed

knowledge but without the scientific factors.

So in particular, the routine that was established already aided that.

So we'd go away on deployments for three, four, five months and then we'd come back

to a good four to six weeks worth of hand your weapons in, stand down, go home, be with

your family.

Come back to Australia.

Oh, really?

You go through a two-week decompression period, have all your psych screening and all that

but then you'd go and have four to six weeks of oxytocin and serotonin hits, connecting

with your family, connecting with your loved ones, going out and socializing with your

mates.

And you can imagine the job, you can't answer emails, you can't log in, you literally cut

and we'd have these full decompression moments and then we'd go hard and then we'd force

people to take leave and the routine we had every morning was physical training.

Meals were allocated.

Like in, for example, in Iraq or when you come back?

Back at base.

Right.

But even overseas, because you have that routine from back here in base, overseas, every day

everyone's out there exercising.

You live in communal lines so you're achieving that communal connection piece.

The Aussie larrikinism and you're having all this fun while you're off work and at the

same time, we had no social media.

We weren't allowed to have social media accounts.

There's one landline phone to call your family back home so you're not dealing with these

everyday stresses.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the most self-actualized individual I ever have been, was on operations.

And that stay, you talk about fight or flight, that was my flow.

I've never had more head, heart and body alignment than actually being in combat because as per

Mental Health 101, the best remedy is whatever can bring you into the moment, not thinking

back or worrying about the future.

In combat, you're in the moment, you're with your people and you're being tested at the

ultimate level of performance for something that we were at the ultimate level of our

sort of industry.

And it's just brilliant.

And particularly as a commander, getting to see my soldiers who we spend two years with

training and the junior commanders take over, lead, fight tactics, kill enemy who are trying

to kill us.

It is just so hard to explain, but it's one of the most inspiring times seeing what level

people can perform at.

Yeah.

The hardest part is actually then achieving that level of inspiration and then coming

back to a world or a job outside of that where you'll probably never experience that again.

And you've sort of had that drug.

You've had that feeling of being in such an amazing head, body and heart alignment.

And then like I tell people, you know, come back to my biggest responsibility, taking

my sausage jog for a walk each day.

It's such a, you know, massive deceleration and such a really hard adjustment.

That's why most of us develop ADHD.

Most of us, you know, start to develop physical issues because we haven't appreciated how

our nervous system has literally evolved due to stress.

And that's a lot of the work we do now is to help actually educate people on what's

going on and what they need to do to adapt their own lives.

Which one do you prefer?

If I had my old team and that purpose, again, I'd go back in a heartbeat.

But again, I've learned so much about, again, like I said, fighting wars.

If there was something, a mission to fly around the world and take the fight.

To people who were harming animals or human trafficking, absolutely, you know, straight

away on the dot.

No drama.

But as far as getting involved with Ukraine, getting involved with Israel, getting involved

with Taiwan, that's not for young Australian sons and daughters.

That's for politicians to do their bloody job and to look after our own people.

Do you ever sit back and reflect on that though?

Because that's a really interesting one.

Do you ever sit back and reflect on that?

I mean, we're looking at, I mean, I look at Israel, Gaza, Israel, Palestine at the moment.

And I mean, we never...

No one ever talks about it, but really it's a war between, you know, one prime minister

and a number of other leaders of the other territory who basically order their soldiers

out to fight each other.

But these two individuals aren't fighting anybody.

They're just sort of getting on the megaphone and making a lot of noise, making sure they

can save their sorry asses from either being kicked out of their current political role

or alternatively trying to get into a new political role.

Do you ever think about, like, did you ever think about, maybe I would like you to reflect

on that?

Yeah.

That's not how our politicians really act, but they sort of do, but not really.

But how do you see it?

I'm with you 100%.

You know, most people see people coming from the military to be much more aligned to the

conservative side of the government.

You know, a lot of that side is big defense industry and whatnot.

Whereas particularly the last few years working in and around politicians, bureaucrats and

big industry, I realized that war is a business.

And in particular, my biggest fear is particularly for those leaders who are failing in their

own leadership.

It's very easy to provide a higher purpose.

It's very easy to provide.

What's too seductive.

Provide a combat.

It's very seductive.

Provide war.

Something that all of a sudden brings people out of their everyday issues and gives them

something shiny and bright to focus on.

And it's dangerous.

It's a dangerous tactic.

I see too many failing or failed or toxic leaders default to, you hear people back here

in Australia beat this war drum.

All they do is drive up the stress and cortisol levels in Australian society.

Like, and it's for political purpose.

It's not generally for the betterment of humanity.

In my opinion.

Yeah, no, no, no.

And they're funded by defence industry.

Have a look at the political donations.

Like, it's just such a quagmire.

It's sort of business.

And business always pervades everything at the end of the day.

Everything we do.

All the moralities and ethics.

Everything.

And this is this trading purpose for profit.

And particularly when we look at a lot of the senior defence generals these days who

have become bureaucrats.

And I come from three years at the Defence Force Academy, one year at RMC.

We're always taught, you know, mission.

Team before self, you know, purpose, priority, you know, leadership.

By example, you are the last person to eat the troops eat first to what we see in exactly

as you're saying, how it's turned into a business.

It's turned into self-promotion.

It's turned into profit.

It's this complete moral dislocation from what we've been indoctrinated with.

And that's why actually so many young veterans of my generation, there's this new thing

called moral injury or moral trauma that a lot of our sort of acute trauma comes from.

When your belief system.

What you.

You've been indoctrinated and programmed with is completely undermined by either someone

else doing something to you or abandoning you, which is the transition process from

defence or by you all of a sudden realising what you've been taught is actually not what

is valued on the outside.

And you have this fracture of your identity.

You need to sort of rediscover who you want to be and how you're going to navigate life

outside of this, you know, self-actualised, all inclusive Maslow provided environment

you're within the defence community.

And just for a very quick.

You know, lightning rod to that, the suicide rate of current serving veterans, current serving

people in the Defence Force is less than half the Australian community average.

But veterans who have transitioned and particularly the demographic under the age of 40, it more

than doubles.

So, so just to get that right.

So people who are still in the army.

Currently serving in the army, Air Force or Navy.

Less than half.

But once they've left the army and they're say like in your position.

Yeah.

They double the stats.

More than double.

Double the stats.

So we lost 41 soldiers during our, you know, over a decade in Afghanistan.

During the same time, we lost 1600 veterans to suicide.

But is that because they missed the thrill?

Is there a bit of that going on?

Well, a lot of it.

And look, I work hand in glove with campaigning for winning the Royal Commission and still

speak to the current Royal Commissions into Defence and Veteran Suicide.

And the highest demographic mark in particular are young men who, like myself, joined straight

out of school.

Never achieved an identity outside of an institution.

Prior to going into a giant, not-for-profit, service-for-force self-institution, and then

either have their performance compromised, they're forced to leave, or they become injured.

And they've had what they envisage themselves as being their self-actualized identity removed

and haven't been re-indoctrinated into who they are and what their value set is outside

of defence.

And go down this, you know, line of broken down relationship, losing their job, getting

on substances, and ending up taking their own life.

And the highest-risk demographic is young men.

They're the age of 35.

Wow.

And would you say that's the reason why we are now operating on reduced numbers of people

joining the armed forces?

I think that whole other different kettle of fish, in particular the last three to four

years, from the collapse of Afghanistan through to the handling of war crime allegations and

how defence senior leadership has just turned their back on so many soldiers, that really

has carried through.

I mean, I...

I mean, I speak with so many current serving military members every day who send me messages.

And knowing that the defence hierarchy no longer has their back the way in which we

experienced overseas, you know, if you made a tactical decision on the ground, you would

brief it up to your higher commander and they would trust you because you're the man on

the ground.

Now, because it becomes political and because there's media who are out there looking to

attack, those in those higher positions who want to progress are more than willing to

adapt to the public perspective.

Yeah.

Public perception, as opposed to stand their ground and demonstrate actual leadership.

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And then, of course, you experience that yourself.

First hand, yeah.

So the ABC took it upon themselves to effectively attack your integrity by virtual allegations.

Take me through that now.

And probably maybe just tell us what happened.

Yeah.

I want to importantly understand how you felt about that, like as someone who just was in

service of his country, was fighting for a greater purpose, was there for a greater purpose.

How did you feel about that?

So but first take us through what happened.

Gotcha.

And this is this moral injury that I spoke about.

So 20th of October, 2020, the ABC published an article that named my platoon November

platoon.

And there are 30 to 40 people in a platoon, and there's only one November platoon, and

the entire Australian Special Forces.

They didn't name names in there.

No, they just named the platoon.

The platoon, right.

First time that's ever happened in Australia's history.

Usually it's like the larger unit or the Defence Force, but they labelled 40 guys saying that

they had this story from a US Marine helicopter door gunner who was flying a mission one night

and said that he heard over the radio that commandos had six, sorry, seven detainees,

were told there was only room for six, said that he heard a pop over the radio, and then

that the commando group said that they had six.

Of course, he changed his version of that down the track.

Yeah.

But so to keep going.

Yeah.

And so then, and he wasn't landing at time.

This was at night time in Helmand, thousands of feet above, in 2012.

And all of a sudden, eight years later, I'd spoken with an ABC journalist and said, yep,

that meant the commando said kill someone.

But he didn't see the ABC journalist.

The ABC sought him.

He didn't go out there and offer this up.

No, he did.

So he contacted an ABC journalist.

Really?

Yeah, he did.

Why?

Because he'd seen some.

He'd seen other reporting on, for instance, the Ben Roberts Smith stuff.

Yeah.

And look, I'll leave it up to people if they want to research it, but this guy obviously

has his own life that he's going through.

And as came out during my trial, what was published by the ABC journalist is not what

he actually said.

He never named commandos.

He never named November Platoon.

He thought they were Australians.

And he never actually saw anything that happened.

Because he wasn't there.

Well, because he was flying up in the sky and so he heard a pop on the radio.

Heard a pop on the radio.

So the kicker to this is that exact day, 20th of October, was the anniversary of the

death of Corporal Scott Smith, who was the one soldier that I lost in Afghanistan.

In 20th of October, 2012, 21st of October, sorry, 2012, he stood on an IED and was blown

into a million pieces over 300 meters.

We were then attacked by the enemy straight away, as you could imagine, a big plume.

And we spent the next three hours picking up Scott, fighting off the enemy and sending

him home to his family.

And the day that the ABC journalist was killed, he was killed.

He was killed.

And the day that the ABC chose to do that was the eighth year anniversary of his death.

And that evening, I met with his mother and sister at North Bondi RSL, as we did have

a reunion for him.

And I'd recently transitioned from the military, 2019.

I contacted the ABC and asked for them to clarify and call me back and never got any

response.

I reset.

A poster story.

Yeah, the next day, the same day.

And then I was waiting for-

Were you angry?

I was just, I was confused.

I was like, someone's got this wrong.

Like, how could they have done this?

They've never even spoken to me.

They've never even spoken to any of us.

And then I waited for the Department of Defense to speak out.

You know, we were never allowed to speak in special forces.

And there's a whole public affairs department within defense.

Surely they're going to be on it.

Days went by and nothing happened.

So I ended up taking to my social media and just saying, you know, this is an absolute

lie.

I had my soldiers calling me saying, what do we do about it?

It was all quite despairing.

And the next thing, some media picked up and over the course of the next two years, I submitted,

a number of editorial complaints to the ABC, wrote them a 10-page letter from the guys

talking about how impossible their entire story was.

And all that ended up bringing was them doubling down and then end up publishing a new article

that put my face and my name within that whole allegation, which I subsequently learned meant

that I could take them to the federal court and sue for defamation.

Did they put you there though as the platoon leader?

As the platoon commander, yep.

Commander, yeah.

Yeah.

And so, and was your reason why you took to the-

Took to social media and more importantly, just took to writing the record or correcting

the record.

Was that sort of out of a leadership sense, still a remaining sense of leadership for

your platoon, even though you're not there anymore?

Yeah, absolutely.

I was the platoon commander in the platoon at the time when they said this happened.

And per all of my officer training 101, that's my job.

To protect your platoon.

Absolutely.

To protect your men.

To protect my men and protect the legacy of the one guy that we'd also lost.

Why?

I mean, did ABC not respond or did they say, look, when you say they doubled down,

they went and named you, but what did they name you as?

And what was the outcome of that?

Like, they just said you're the platoon leader?

So they, ABC submitted a freedom of information request to the defense.

Defense replied and said, hey, we can't respond to this because there's an ongoing

investigation to all of Afghanistan.

And ABC just jumped on that and said, defense confirms criminal investigation into November

platoon.

But no, no, but no confirmation.

Zero confirmation.

And then republish this whole article with my picture.

I'm the only named person.

So straight away in the public eye.

And as was found in the federal court, I'm being identified as the commander being involved

with a war crime.

So I can't imagine how angry I would feel if that was me, but, um, and you know, like

it's not a good idea to get a, uh, you know, former commander, commando angry, um, but

sometimes, especially someone who's used to, or has killed people.

Um, how did you feel?

It was, it was the first time I'd ever witnessed such injustice.

I've never felt so helpless and hopeless in a situation.

I've said this before, when we were overseas in Afghanistan and say the enemy, like when

we lost Scott and the enemy pressed their advantage, I could call in the finger of God

from the sky.

What's that mean?

The finger of God.

I could call in drones and gunships and I could call in a quick reaction force of fellow

commanders from back in base.

A square up.

Yeah.

If I, if I yelled out, you know, troops in contact over the radio, then I would have

every asset within that area of operations dedicated to me.

And whatever I needed.

And then there I was at home in my Sydney apartment, having the entire legacy of my

guys being labeled as war criminals on the day of my soldier's death.

Abandonment?

Absolute abandonment.

And this is this moral injury.

Abandonment is the absolute word that keeps coming up in the Royal commission because

I reported to another officer and he reported to another officer and you know, you knew

them like a family and I reached out to them and I got nothing.

I reached out to the department of defense and I got nothing.

Why though?

Because.

Because at this point in time, I, I will assume these people have also left the military.

They have families, they have careers and they have had to trade purpose for self-preservation,

particularly with an adversarial media like the ABC that has all of our taxpayer resources

to attack and whatever else is going on in their life.

And I have deep resentment at that abandonment, but I can also in reflection, understand seeing

how hard the ABC tried to silence me, how I've only had to worry about me.

And my extended family and my sausage dog, whereas I haven't had to have those very real

world everyday concerns.

I mean, it really broke me over the last three years and I've definitely had a mental crash,

particularly the last year.

And I feel very fortunate that I was the one able to do that because I know I have been

able to do that.

I've always been a very high performer, but yeah, for others to have to go through that,

I can now completely appreciate how, if I had the choice, I might've preferred to avoid

it.

It's funny, you know, you should say that because when I was looking at the program

that we got this month and I saw you there and I actually thought to myself, wow, I could

do this interview and if I look too sympathetic towards what Heston's got to say, the ABC

could come after me or my show.

I mean, I'm serious.

And then I thought to myself, yeah, but I'm not at war with the ABC, but I thought to

myself, yeah, but like, this is a story that needs to be told.

Yeah.

And, and for me, I'm not really a commercial business.

This is more a, I won't say a fun thing because it's very serious, but it's more something

I want to do.

And I also want to know about this.

And I, because I think this is really important to me as an Australian to know about how,

how our return soldiers are being dealt with and how they feel.

And also the fact that you won is really important too.

You won your case.

And that's incredibly important because I am somewhere, I don't like bullies.

A bit like you said, you don't like bullies, but I like fairness and justice.

Absolutely.

And a sense of justice in this environment.

I like to know Australia still has a sense of justice, that we still have justice in

our, in our country.

Yeah.

And, and it's, it's the system that manages it and it's not one organization that makes

a decision who gets justice and who doesn't get justice.

Yeah.

I don't know how you didn't, I don't know how you resisted from just getting in an Uber,

going to the ABC.

And I'm serious.

And just standing at the reception saying, I want to see the managing director.

You have no idea how many times it's played.

I wanted to get in my car and drive it through the front door of the ABC.

Yeah, yeah.

Particularly when all of a sudden I just encountered bureaucratic walls of resistance, a lack of

any form of empathy or care.

I offered so many times to personally have a live interview with the ABC journalist.

I wrote to the managing director.

I wrote to the board of the ABC.

Responses?

Zero.

Nothing?

Nothing.

Cowards.

Or do you think it's?

Commercially, they're just locked down.

Oh, shit, we might have a bit of drama here.

We just say nothing.

But this is it.

Like, if it was any other commercial news outlet, I could understand that.

But it's our ABC, mate.

And if you're not willing to hear the other side of a conversation and educate the public

and instead try and double down on your own version, like, where are we at as a society?

So they never asked you prior to any of this?

They never mentioned your name?

They never contacted you?

Oh, it came out through the court case.

Just like literally hours before they went to publish the next article that we sued on,

they called me up and asked, you know, do you know about this?

Do you know about this?

No.

Never mentioned what they were going to do.

Never asked me the actual questions or information they put in their article.

The whole thing, I've never, I'm not a rabbit hole conspiracy person, but I've sat in the

middle of a conspiracy the last few years and going through the last year of a federal

court case, it was just incredible to see all of the strings get pulled and everything

be laid out to bear.

Is it the individual journalists or is it some sort of group above them trying to have

a crack at Australian?

You know, army personnel, you know, is it this part of this Ben Robbins Smith game that

there's...

Great question.

What are we talking about?

Is it anti-war?

What are we talking about here?

Great question.

It comes down to individual journalists.

And this is the biggest issue where I am such a stickler for accountability.

In the military, Mark, you have a Defence Force Disciplinary Act.

There's a whole new set of standards where if I turn up five minutes late to a meeting,

I can be put on 24 hours worth of extra duties.

I can have two weeks worth of my pay taken away from me.

The level you are held to.

It's so massively because you know there will be accountability if you don't have

personal integrity to hold yourself to those standards.

And then what I've seen throughout this entire process, there's been individual journalists

and one journalist in particular who has won Walkley Awards.

And all of a sudden, that is the mark of his measure.

You know, that's his complacency because he has done something good.

And, you know, for me, the day you rest on your laurels is the day you become irrelevant.

Every day when we got our commando beret, it was this comes with a daily renewable contract.

Your actions and attitude each day define you.

And so what happens?

What happened was particularly when I started to question their story and put in complaints,

the whole editorial process was going back to the original journalist and saying,

hey, this question's come in.

Do you still stand by your work?

Yes, I do.

There was never any individual checking of this person's work.

And then when the ABC accepted my complaint and launched an internal investigation,

this guy was even allowed to draft the media response to the investigation.

Again, in the military, if you're being investigated,

you step aside and an investigation officer comes in and you're not allowed to touch that work again.

And instead, what has happened and what has just recently come out this last month is

this person even went to the lengths of publishing a whole new online television program

saying that I was the person sitting in a helicopter shooting at unarmed civilians

from 15 seconds worth of footage that his team even decided to superimpose extra gunshots

to make it look like that's what's happening.

Wow.

And during the court case,

Mark, because their entire truth defense was off.

So one of the defense to defamation is truth.

Yes.

So they lodged a defense of truth.

A truth, contextual truth and public interest.

Yep.

And their whole schedule alpha, schedule one against Heston Russell.

We have footage of Heston Russell shooting from a Blackhawk helicopter at unarmed civilians,

which demonstrate he has this propensity to do this, this and this like we've accused him to do.

Didn't know he was going to get tested.

Well, when you're in your own echo chamber and no one else is checking your work,

that's where we get down to these.

Surely the barrister must, their barrister or their legal representative might have said,

let us check this bit of evidence that you're about to give,

that you have this footage and that's independently obtained, et cetera, and verified, et cetera.

This is a massive question.

And I hope the New South Wales Law Society looks into this because at the end of the day,

they carried on three iterations of submitted truth defenses that were based on entirely false

and fabricated information and evidence provided by these ABC journalists.

So where did you go?

So you won the case?

So I won the case, but during the case, because they had 15 seconds worth of footage saying that this was me

and I have the whole 25 minutes worth of helmet cam footage and we provided that to them.

And then they ended up withdrawing their truth defense for something completely different

and have never corrected the public record.

Their story with the added gunshots was still on the internet as of this last month.

And that is the public record of me and my service in Afghanistan.

From 15 seconds worth of helmet cam footage.

Surely the judge must order them to remove it.

Well, the judge didn't.

Because they dropped that defense, the judge never focused on that.

Ah, yeah.

And because they were cunning enough to do it while proceedings had already occurred,

I was unable to sue on that individually.

And this is where we're at in our country.

Someone can go out there in the media and accuse me of being a war criminal

without even being charged, let alone having a day in court.

The only recourse I have as a private citizen is to, if I can afford, sue them for defamation.

That's it.

And my legal team took me on at no end, no fee, because I couldn't even afford to do that.

Otherwise, you can.

There are no mechanisms to challenge this in the public arena.

Where the government will pay for you and them at the same time, for example.

The Department of Defense, the last three years, never stepped up.

Never stepped up once.

Even the ABC published that it occurred during a period where my platoon wasn't even in Afghanistan.

And I wrote to the minister and I wrote to the department and asked,

please just release our deployment records.

And they wouldn't even do that.

Why is that?

I mean, why wouldn't the government stand up?

Why wouldn't the Minister for Defense or whether, it doesn't matter which color,

which particular party, they didn't do it?

Why wouldn't they?

What do you think it is?

Just not get involved?

Your guess is as good as mine.

And look, one of the great insights I had from going to and meeting with some of these people

was when one of them turned to me and said, look, for us to take on the ABC is career suicide.

Yeah.

And for me, that was just incredible.

They cared more about their career than to support a group of 40 guys who went overseas,

lost one of our own, and put our lives on the line for the democracy that they apparently represent.

And that's where I just realized I have to, with my team, fight this ourselves

and not expect anyone to bring the finger from God or bring a quick reaction force in.

We're on our own.

And it's been a very, very lonely place.

So how are you feeling now?

Because you won?

Yeah.

You got an award for damages?

Yeah, that's it.

And this is the sad part.

At the very start of it, I wrote to the ABC and said, hey,

just please take the articles down and apologize.

Never once been about the money.

When we started the trial, we offered to settle it for like 90 grand or something.

Never been about the money.

They never even entered into a single round of any form of mediation.

We had to go all the way through to judgment.

And this court case has probably cost the Australian taxpayer over $5 million.

And as a taxpayer, I'm disgusted by that because all we ever wanted was the record corrected.

However, since my federal court win, the only public statement the ABC has made is that the two journalists,

who were also found individually at fault, would keep their jobs.

And they're still out there publishing articles the very next day.

So you might have a federal court rule in your favor against a media outlet for defamation,

but there is no accountability within the system.

There's no integrity within the system.

And these people are still out there doing what they're doing.

And there's been no changes to any federal regulations that protect veterans into the future.

This could happen again tomorrow.

Wow.

And where to from here?

Because, I mean, I would.

I would have thought that in itself would give you PTSD.

I mean, mental effect.

No, this is it.

June, July last year, I crashed.

My nervous system reset.

I had about two weeks, you know, where I didn't leave the house.

My body lost about eight kilos worth of fluid and my nervous system just literally shut down and restart.

And what is so incredible for me, having been at the highest levels of fighting for your life performance

on over a year's worth of combat that I've been in the Middle East,

to then reach my mental and emotional limit, fighting a court case outside of actual, you know,

real life-threatening danger is just such a testament to how much this has impacted me without me even realizing

and how much I've had to sort of reset and refocus my life from that.

And where to from here?

This is the saddest part, Mark.

It actually requires just greater public awareness and public support.

Like politicians have to remember they work for the Australian people

and the ABC needs to remember that they're paid for.

They're paid for by our taxpayer funds.

And unless there is more noise and action from the wider Australian community,

then nothing's going to happen.

We have to be the people to hold them accountable.

We need another media outlet to sort of say something about it.

I mean, I've personally taken to launching a new petition to call for a Veterans Protection Act

that just basically means that media isn't allowed to name any individual or unit

prior to there being a decision through court.

So what that means is they can report to say there's been an allegation

of a war crime within the Department of Defence

to force the Department of Defence to step up and do it,

but leaving a platoon and a platoon commander to fight for their men

against a multi-billion dollar sort of company can't happen again.

And hestonrussell.com slash veterans is where I've launched that petition.

And have you sort of put it to one of the parliamentarians

to introduce it into parliament?

I've put it to both sides.

Both sides.

And again, a lot of people are very resistant to put through a bill

that in any way hamstrings any media,

given that's the outlet they need to provide themselves with that relevance to the public.

But I did this before when we campaigned to retain the unit citations.

We get 100,000 signatures on that.

We take it to a parliamentarian.

They say no.

We have a look at all the postcodes of, you know, what electorate they're in

and tell them that this elected representative is not supporting them.

And that's the way in which we start pulling the threads on the democracy

to make these people do their job.

So the way it seems.

The way it seems to me then is that if politicians don't sort of step up,

then hestonrussell's going to actually apply all the training

and all the cunning that he's achieved over all these years to, as you say,

pull the strings, but probably more importantly start to bring them undone

and make sure that they do step up.

I like the idea of that.

Absolutely.

I mean this is guerrilla insurgency one on one.

There are nearly 600,000 veterans in this country as per the census in 21.

And they all vote.

They all vote and they all have families.

Yep.

And if there is one thing that the solemn majority in Australia will step up for

when given the right purpose and outlet to do it,

it is those who are willing and have gone to sacrifice our lives and comforts for theirs.

And that's all we ask for.

We all just simply ask for it to be treated normally and to be given justice and to be heard.

Yeah.

Well, this is a country where fair enough and fair go has just like always been in our language.

Yeah.

And I for one would be someone who would definitely,

I would definitely sign up for that and support that with my local politician once this gets kicked off.

You know, for me, and I think I speak for perhaps a lot of people in my cohort, age group, et cetera.

Yeah.

Mate, you guys have done what we never had got asked to do.

I was one year out of having to go to Vietnam, conscription.

You're right.

And I voted for Gough Whitlam, the only time I've ever voted for a party in my life.

But I voted for Gough Whitlam just because Gough was at our university saying,

I'm going to get rid of conscription.

You're right.

I was like, I was just 17 when I first started university, 18.

I was just turned 18, just old enough to vote.

And so I was lucky.

I had mates who went to Vietnam who had come back completely fucked up.

Yeah, absolutely.

Or became fucked up over time.

Yeah.

And I often think to myself, wow, I'm so glad I wasn't one of those people who had to go

and have to do what you do and what they did.

And from my point of view, Heston, this stuff is so un-Australian for us to ignore.

All of those outcomes.

And by the way, you're not asking for much.

You're just asking for legislation that gives everyone a fair go.

Absolutely.

And for truth.

Absolutely.

And my whole piece is, Mark, I just don't want anyone to go through what I've had to

been through.

Yeah.

It is taking me to the darkest places.

It has taken my family to have to drop everything to support me.

It's taken, you know, my mother's just this beautiful lady.

She's a registered nurse up in Brizzy.

You know, she's had people in the hospital.

Soul of the earth.

Yeah.

She's had people in the hospital ask her.

You know, when this article was published accusing me of shooting at civilians.

And mum just isn't ready for that.

You know, mum to this day, even doing this interview, she's like, Heston, I've just

compartmentalised.

I don't want to remember it.

It brings me so much trauma to feel like I nearly lost you at home after watching you

go and come back from so many conflicts.

And, you know, to put my mum through that, yeah, it's been a lot.

Yeah.

Heston, I'll tell you what, sitting here right here, when you first walked into the

studio, mate, you look fucking awesome.

You don't look like someone who's been through all that shit.

You've got a remarkable resilience.

Real resilience, what we talk about all the time.

Real resilience.

Yeah.

Real recovery.

And you project, for me anyway, you project strength and a sense of doing good.

So from the moment I talked to you outside the studio, like, I get that sense.

Yeah.

So well done, mate.

I mean, it's a big fucking deal to recover from.

Massive.

And this is where I am so privileged to have gone through so much training and

experience all paid for by the taxpayer.

And this is where I've realised so much about myself.

You know, diamonds are forming under pressure.

Like, our human race has evolved under stress and pressure.

And I feel like I have evolved so much through this.

But the cost of it has been massive.

And I'm just so lucky that, you know, I am single.

I don't have a lot of things that really I had to put on the line to do this.

Outside of, you know, I had a legal team who came and offered to do this.

No win, no fee.

I've been very blessed with that small community who supported me.

But if this happens, you know, in the next conflict, when there's a soldier,

or a group who have to go out there and expose themselves to this, you know.

Mark, when the ABC published this article, my grandfather called me and just

simply said, don't let them do to your soldiers what they did to mine when we

came back from Vietnam.

And he died two months later after the ABC published his first article.

And that has just provided me such a massive higher purpose to know that even

though I might want to drop this because it's better for me and my family, what

happens in 30 or 40 times if I'm sitting there?

And watching this happening again on TV, I know I could have stepped up and done

something.

Well, Heston, I want to say thank you on behalf of all those Australians who are

not part of this process, but all of us who are sitting back here observing these

things, which, you know, may have listened to this podcast or may have just

followed the whole process.

There's probably more people in your camp than you think.

Yeah.

Just that we are the silent majority.

I'm with you.

Heston Russell, thanks very much, mate.

My pleasure.

Thanks, mate.

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