a hand grip my shoulder and a voice whisper into my ear as I sat in the Federal Court.The whisperer was Dean Levitan, a 30-year-old media lawyer who, through a combination of timing and circumstance, had come to lead the small legal team representing me and journalist Chris Masters in what the press had dubbed the defamation trial of the century.
The decision to carefully publish stories throughout 2018 that, at first, didn’t even name Roberts-Smith had led to Masters and I being pilloried by politicians and radio shock jocks. Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, the journalists at the heart of the case. Both had received threats of violence from veterans who saw their reporting as a treasonous attack on the Anzac legend.I had reacted to this growing list of problems with despondency and countless exasperated calls to Levitan. He would respond with a calm assurance belying his age. I’d come to appreciate Levitan in a more profound way.
But while they might have been willing, or in some cases compelled, to disclose this to authorities, the traumatic prospect of taking to the stand to testify against a brother soldier was hardly enticing. Roberts-Smith’s decision to sue Masters and me was our fight, not theirs. That morning, I headed out at 5am. My story about Roberts-Smith was short, fewer than 1000 words, carefully penned and even more carefully legalled.
As I ran, the pre-dawn light illuminated my path. Warehouses to my left, the swollen creek to my right. I wondered why Roberts-Smith had reacted so defensively to my efforts to engage with him. Weeks earlier, I’d sent him a LinkedIn message requesting a meeting or interview. My message was polite and respectful, but had also flagged the fact of the ongoing Brereton inquiry into rumours of unlawful conduct in Afghanistan.
As I began to run back towards home, my thoughts turned to the loudest whisper about Roberts-Smith. It involved a story about an Afghan prisoner who had been pushed, thrown or kicked from a great height in a village called Darwan in the badlands of southern Afghanistan in September 2012. I was deeply sceptical about this allegation. To me, it seemed too far-fetched, too ugly, too brutal, even for soldiers who’d endured endless deployments to an endless war.
An exhibit in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case, showing the village of Darwan. The “X” marked with “B” and an arrow is the cliff from which Ali Jan was kicked by Roberts-Smith.
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