Classified documents leaked to journalists by McBride led to a series of reports alleging that Australian special forces troops committed war crimes in Afghanistan. McBride has previously said that the tenor of the stories was “totally” different from what he had intended.
Brereton's four-year inquiry, which was not prompted by McBride's revelations, later uncovered credible information about 23 incidents of possible war crimes, involving the alleged deaths of 39 Afghans and the cruel treatment of two others between 2005 and 2016.
While the defense said McBride was motivated to expose what he believed to be criminal behavior by senior military officials, the prosecution argued that he never articulated through official complaints what the actual criminality was before leaking the files and post material on a website called The Ops Room.
McBride found the Army's processes to be “corrupt,” Mossop said in his sentencing comments.
Mossop said the disclosure of sensitive documents forced Australia to alert allies about the security breach. Doing so “prejudiced” Australia's foreign interests and may have reduced partners' willingness to share information with Australia.
The breaches could also have exposed Defense personnel to attacks by foreign intelligence services, Mossop said.
McBride's lawyers argued he was a man of exemplary character with a “passion for justice” who genuinely believed the Defense was acting inappropriately. The risk of his offending was low and he was suffering from mental health problems when he stole and leaked the documents, they said.
Prosecutors, however, argued that McBride was a misguided whistleblower who brazenly and recklessly broke the law to expose unsubstantiated claims about military cover-ups.
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Mossop said McBride was not a nefarious character but had become “obsessed with correcting his own feelings” and gave no weight to the idea that military processes were not corrupt. He acknowledged there was a risk McBride's poor mental health would worsen in prison.
As he entered court on Tuesday, McBride told dozens of supporters he was proud to be Australian and did not hold back his decisions.
“I may have broken the law, but I didn't break my oath,” he said.
The former defense attorney kept top secret documents in his home. When his property was open for inspection, potential buyers were able to see classified documents stored in plastic tubs, Mossop said.
“Unsurprisingly,” Mossop said, “this did not meet” Commonwealth standards for stockpiling material.
“These documents … have lasting intelligence value for harm or potential harm to Australia's national security,” Mr Mossop said.
“I expected his conduct to be somehow vindicated in a way that was not legally correct.”
McBride, whose father was a whistleblower about the harms of the drug thalidomide, left Australia to live in Spain in 2017. He returned to Australia for an event and was arrested in 2018 as he tried to board a flight from back to Spain
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The ruling ends a high-profile whistleblower case that prompted the Greens and transparency groups to demand that the federal government step in to protect McBride. Attorney General Mark Dreyfus refused to do so.
The Albanian government is consulting on a new tranche of whistleblower protection laws.
