David Shayler

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

David Shayler born 24 December 1965 is a former member of the British Security Service (MI5) who was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act after passing documents to the Mail on Sunday newspaper in August 1997. He alleged that the Security Service was paranoid about socialists and that it had previously investigated Labour Party ministers Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw and Harriet Harman.

Contents

1 Early Career
2 MI5
3 After MI5
4 Return and trial
5 After prison
6 See also
7 References
8 Further Reading
9 External links

Early Career

Shayler was born in Middlesbrough, whose football club he continues to support. 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 Dundee University 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 agent Peter Wright which was banned 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 although his employment was terminated six months later.

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" asking 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 PIRAs Phelim Hamill who at the time was coordinator for the PIRAs mainland campaign. He moved again later 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 learnt 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 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 Malcolm Rifkind (required under British and international law). The plot involved paying a London based Libyan opposition group with 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 matterhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/shayler/article/0,,359729,00.html as well as parliament's security and intelligence committee and the police.

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 conterfeiting operation citing the source as a British banking official when in reality the source was MI6. This was later confimed 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 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 in 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.http://www.guardian.co.uk/shayler/article/0,,829971,00.html At the trial Shalyer represented himself, claiming that the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human Rights Act and that it was a crime to report a crime although these arguments were dismissed by the court with the latter being ruled irrelevant.http://www.guardian.co.uk/shayler/article/0,,829971,00.html. Shaylers 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.http://www.guardian.co.uk/shayler/article/0,,834442,00.html The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that Shayler could not argue that he had revealed information in the public interest. After more than three hours of deliberation the jury found him guilty.http://www.guardian.co.uk/shayler/article/0,,830205,00.html 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 Prime Minister Tony Blair but decided to withdraw and switched his support to Reg Keys.

References

External links

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