McBride handed over his original complaint about the “over-zealous” investigations of special forces soldiers along with thousands of pages of supporting documents.

Oakes says McBride was very clear about the story he wanted told.

“He really simply wanted to say that the special forces in Afghanistan were being unfairly targeted and unfairly scrutinised.

“There was no mention of potential war crimes.”

Oakes came to an entirely different conclusion.

“The more I looked into it, I couldn’t conceive how anyone would think these guys were being too tightly monitored. It was precisely the opposite.

“What happened out in the field stayed in the field.”

I knew the essentials of this, that the story he wanted told was more about Army treatment of SAS soldiers. I didn’t realise the story was meant to be basically the complete opposite to the Afghan files, though.