94․ By the time of the officer's correspondence, Mr McBride had already removed some of the materials from the Website. He removed the remainder of the materials after receiving the correspondence.
Disclosure to Daniel Oakes
95․ On 2 May 2016, that is, while the Website was still up and prior to the letter from the officer at ADF Legal Services, another Australian journalist, Daniel Oakes, contacted Mr McBride after reading material on the Website. He asked Mr McBride whether he wanted to discuss the complaints and material on the Website. Mr McBride said that he did, and Mr Oakes told Mr McBride that he wanted to communicate using the encrypted app "Signal", as he was concerned about security.
96․ On about 17 May 2016, Mr Oakes and his colleague, Neil Mercer, travelled to Canberra and met Mr McBride at his home in Deakin. During the meeting, Mr McBride showed Mr Oakes and Mr Mercer a number of documents to substantiate his complaints. Mr Oakes asked Mr McBride for copies of these documents and suggested that they meet later that day at the Kingston Hotel in Griffith in the ACT.
97․ Later that day, Mr McBride met Mr Oakes and Mr Mercer at the Kingston Hotel. Mr McBride provided Mr Oakes with a plastic bag containing two lever arch folders of documents. Those documents included the IGADF Submission and Supporting Documents. They also included some additional documents that Mr McBride had collected since he first made his complaint to the IGADF. Mr McBride knew that what he was doing was inconsistent with the ADF Instructions on handling classified information.
98․ In relation to the additional documents that Mr McBride provided to Mr Oakes, the following facts are known.
- (a) In June 2019, when the AFP executed a search warrant at the ABC, they located seven spreadsheets which detailed a number of individual documents. The AFP made a comparison of the documents seized at Mr McBride's Griffith property and the documents listed on the ABC spreadsheets. In addition to the Supporting Documents, 139 additional documents were listed on the ABC spreadsheets that correlated with documents seized at the Griffith property. Of those 139 additional documents, 120 were classified SECRET. The 139 additional documents contained naval, military or air force information as defined in s 73A(1) of the Defence Act. In relation to 10 of the documents referred to in the ABC spreadsheets, the AFP could not identify a correlating document from the Griffith property.
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