Delores Kane

David Shayler talking at an anti-war meeting at Sheffield University

David Shayler is a former MI5 (British Security Service) officer and self-declared messiah who was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act after passing documents to the Mail on Sunday newspaper in August 1997 that alleged that MI5 was paranoid about socialists and that it had previously investigated Labour Party ministers Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw and Harriet Harman.

Early career

Shayler was born in Middlesbrough. He attended John Hampden Grammar School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire whose head teacher once described him as "a born rebel who sails close to the wind ... and suffers neither fools nor their arguments gladly". He later attended the University of Dundee starting in 1984 where he was editor of the student newspaper Annasach and was responsible for publishing extracts of the book Spycatcher by another former MI5 officer Peter Wright (banned in the UK at the time). He graduated with a 2:1 degree in English in July 1989. After leaving university he worked as a journalist at the Sunday Times newspaper although his employment was terminated six months later. He repaired once more to Scotland, where he attempted to get another student newspaper - The Paper - off the ground in Edinburgh, with his partner Matt Garranty. The venture failed to attract sufficient contributions or advertising revenue, and folded within six months with the partners agreeing that Garranty should declare himself bankrupt.

MI5

Shayler joined MI5 in October 1991 after responding to an oblique job advertisement in the 12 May edition of The Observer entitled "Godot isn't coming" a reference to the play Waiting for Godot in which Godot never arrives. The article asked if he had an interest in current affairs, had common sense and an ability to write. Believing the job was media related, he applied. He started work in F branch, which dealt with counter-subversion, including the monitoring of left-wing groups and activists, where he worked vetting Labour Party politicians prior to the 1992 election, later being transferred to T branch, which handled Irish terrorism, in August 1992. While at T branch he was involved in an investigation of Sean McNulty, an associate of the PIRA's Birmingham-born, Belfast-bred Phelim Hamill (aka Felim O'Hadhmaill), who at the time was coordinator for the PIRA's mainland campaign.

Shayler moved again, to G9 branch, responsible for Middle Eastern terrorism where he headed the Libyan desk as G9A/5. It was during his tenure at the Libyan desk that he learned of the MI6 plot to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi from his MI6 counterpart David Watson (PT16B) and Richard Bartlett (PT16) who had overall control and responsibility for the operation. He finally left the service in October 1996 after having become disillusioned with its management.

After MI5

Shayler stated that MI6 had been involved in a failed assassination attack on Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi in February 1996 without the permission of the then foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind (required under British and international law). The plot involved paying the Libyan terrorist group LIFG with supporters in London and links to Al-Qaeda £100,000 to carry out the attack. The group was paid to plant a bomb underneath Gaddafi's motorcade. The attack happened in March 1996 in the coastal city of Sirte. The bomb was planted under the wrong car and failed to kill Gaddafi but did result in the deaths of several innocent civilians. In November 1999 he sent a dossier of detailed evidence of this including the names of those involved to then home secretary Jack Straw who stated that he was looking into the matter as well as Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee and the police. In 2005, the LIFG was banned as a terrorist group in Britain.

He also stated that the intelligence services were deliberately planting stories in newspapers and the mainstream media by feeding willing jounalists with misinformation, such as a November 1996 article in the Sunday Telegraph by Con Coughlin linking Colonel Gaddafi's son with a currency counterfeiting operation citing the source as a British banking official when in reality the source was MI6. This was later confirmed when Gaddafi's son served the paper with a libel writ which later admitted the true source of the information.

According to Shayler the 1994 bombing of the Israeli embassy in London was known to the intelligence services before the event happened and could have been prevented.

The British government later placed an injunction on the republication of Shayler's claims although this was later lifted on 2 November 1997 allowing the paper to print his claims of how the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in London in 1994 could have been prevented if the service had acted on prior knowledge it had obtained. On the 19 June 1998 he told The Spectator magazine that the security service had information that could have prevented the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing. After revealing information to the Mail on Sunday in August 1997 Shayler fled the day prior to publication, first to Utrecht in the Netherlands and then later to France with his girlfriend and former colleague Annie Machon and was arrested by French police on 1 August 1998 with an extradition warrant on the request of the British government and then held in La Santé Prison for four months under the prisoner number 269151F. On 18 November 1998 the French courts decided that the British governments extradition request was politically motivated and therefore not grounds for extradition.

Return and trial

In August 2000 he voluntarily returned to the UK and was arrested and held on remand in Belmarsh prison for three weeks.

He was charged with three charges of breaching the Official Secrets Act on September 21 2000, one charge of passing on information acquired from a telephone tap (a breach of section four of the act), and two others of passing on information and documents obtained by virtue of his membership of the service (a breach of Section One of the Act). The judge at the trial was Mr Justice Moses. At pre-trial hearings he ruled that Shayler had to disclose all information and argument he intended to present to the jury to the judge and prosecution beforehand. At the trial Shayler represented himself, claiming that the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human Rights Act and that it was not a crime to report a crime although these arguments were dismissed by the court with the latter being ruled irrelevant. Shayler's defence attempted to argue that there were no other avenues to pursue his concerns with the service and its performance. The judge ruled that while this was true it was irrelevant. The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that a defendant could not argue that he had revealed information in the public interest. After more than three hours of deliberation the jury found him guilty. In November 2002 he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, of which he served just under seven weeks in Ford Open Prison, finally being released on December 23 2002 although he was electronically tagged and under a 7pm to 7am curfew for a further seven weeks.

After prison

He stood in the 2005 general election in the constituency of Sedgefield against the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, but decided to withdraw and switched his support to Reg Keys.

9/11 Truth Movement

Following the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, David Shayler joined the 9/11 Truth Movement, a movement which holds as a primary tenet the belief that the official explanation for the September 11, 2001 attacks is partly (or completely) inaccurate. The New Statesman has reported Shayler stating "no planes were involved in 9/11" and that the apparent "planes" were missiles camouflaged by holograms . Shayler allegedly argues that the planes seen crashing into the World Trade Center were switched out planes with detonation pods underneath, although he says the attack on the Pentagon was not the result of a plane impact.

This has led many in the 9/11 Truth Movement to dismiss him as an agent of government disinformation (see COINTELPRO), spreading ridiculous fantasies to discredit legitimate questions about the events of September 11, 2001. He joins a growing list of people deemed 'disinfo' by the movement as they struggle to find legitimate sources.

An interview with Shayler was included in the documentary TerrorStorm, which was directed by Austin, Texas-based journalist and filmmaker Alex Jones. Shayler has been interviewed by Jones multiple times as well as James Whale. Shayler is also interviewed in the documentary Oil, Smoke, Mirrors.

"I am God incarnated as spirit and man"

At the July 2007 Glastonbury Symposium, David Shayler announced publicly that he was the new Messiah, stating that much of his revelation had been attained as the result of drug-induced altered states of consciousness; listing mushrooms, Ayahuasca & Ibogaine coupled with the sustained use of marijuana, as the primary catalysts for the realisation of his divine mission. In an effort to bring him back to consensus reality, Shayler has been challenged by friends and family to desist from the continued use of hallucinogenics.

In August 2007, The Times reported Shayler's claim to be a reincarnation of a Jewish revolutionary named 'Astronges'. For Shayler, "[t]he Jesus of the New Testament is an archetype. His name derives from the 13th Name of God in Qabalah, which helps activate the Messiah consciousness within us. I was, though, crucified with a crown of thorns and nails when incarnated as Astronges, a Jewish revolutionary put to death by the Romans at around the end of the last century BC", he wrote. However, there is no record of 'Astronges' in historical texts. He was most likely referring to Athronges.

In September 2007, Sky News quoted Shayler as saying, "I am the last incarnation of the Holy Ghost (aka the Holy Spirit) or the Yeshua or Jesus Spirit (aka the Christ consciousness).

"As the Holy Spirit is God incarnate as essence, I am God incarnated as spirit and woman."

See also

• Richard Tomlinson, former MI6 officer accused of publishing a list with names of MI6 agents.
• Katharine Gun

Further reading

• Machon, Annie (2005). Spies, lies & Whistleblowers. MI5, MI6 and the Shayler affair. Lewes, East Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd. 185776952X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Hollingsworth, Mark (1999). Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair. Andre Deutsch Ltd. 0233996672. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• David Shayler's Official Web Site
• David Shayler: spook or psychic? by Channel 4 News
• Extracts from 'The Organisation - An unpublished novel by David Shayler
• Guardian Special Report on the Shayler case
• Early Shayler timeline from the BBC
• Timeline: Shayler spy row by BBC News
• Shayler's web site preserved on the memory hole
• A more critical view of Shayler from UK Indymedia
• Shayler Analysis of 911

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