An internal Australian Defence Force report explicitly warned of a 'code of silence' and a culture of cover-up in the special forces, years before allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan emerged.
One FOI document, titled Lessons Learned, was written in the immediate aftermath of the East Timor misconduct investigations, which wrapped up in 2003.
The redacted report of Major General Paul Brereton's inquiry into allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, which was publicly released in 2020, made 30 references to a culture or code of silence within the special forces. The Lessons Learned report about East Timor written years earlier warned that measures should be adopted to "break down" the special forces' code of silence.
"I honestly believe that prior to coming over for the interviews with us, [the SAS witnesses] would have all been taken into rooms and been fully briefed either by their own people or by legal officers working for the SAS and told what to say and how to say it and how to behave in an interview," he said.
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