David Shayler Interview

EYE

SPY

EXCLUSIVE

Shortly after the launch of Eye Spy Intelligence Magazine in May 2001, our researchers met with former MI5 officers David Shayler and Annie Machon at a safe house in London.

Shayler was prosecuted and jailed under the Official Secrets Act for passing secret documents to a media contact.

This is an exact transcript of our Exclusive Interview with David Shayler (Eye Spy 3 August 2001). Additional content was withheld on national security grounds and some parts of the interview deleted in line with current United Kingdom laws.

David Shayler joined MI5 in 1991 and resigned in controversial fashion five years later...

THE SHAYLER INTERVIEW

Working for MI5

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EYE SPY: How did you find it working for MI5?

DAVID SHAYLER: I have got to say that I am probably the most unlikely person ever to work at MI5. If somebody had said to me in March 1991 that at some point in my life I would be working for MI5 I would have told them they were talking nonsense. And if they had said that I would have been working for MI5 by the end of that year I would have said that this is just not going to happen.

At the time, I was an unemployed journalist and I was looking through the media section of ‘The Independent’ newspaper for jobs. One job seemed interesting and the description referred to current affairs and being able to analyse information. I applied and had a series of interviews. After that I was telephoned and told it was for a job at the Ministry of Defence.

But my first reaction to that was that I didn’t want to be a civil servant; and they responded by saying, “Well, it’s not really the Civil Service.”

The second interview was in an unmarked room in London. They guy who interviewed me looked like the typical intelligence officer: swept back, silver hair; pin-

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stripe, dark suit and very well-spoken. And I had this bizarre interview which began with the question: “What were your political beliefs and your religious views when you were twelve?” Then there are various questions about your personal ethics and then you arrive at the person you are today. They then

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start asking questions about Intelligence. He asked: “Why do you think you are here?” Well, I replied that this was quite obviously Intelligence. He said yes, and that to proceed further I would need to sign the Official Secrets Act – so I signed it.

After that there were then various tests, management tests, meeting psychiatrists, interviews with people in the Civil Service and MI5 officers – this was all during an intensive two-day period. Then you have a security interview and then you’re before the final board. The whole process took about seven months.

EYE SPY: What was your first posting within MI5?

DAVID SHAYLER: My first posting was in the Vetting Section and then to the Counter-Subversion Section – I was looking at anarchists, communists and extreme right-wingers. And from there I moved on to the Irish section – T Branch. I was T2A-11 and I was responsible for the north-east of England. T2 was split into three groups: the London Group; the Southern Group; and the Northern and Scottish Group. But quite early on in my career a process of disillusionment began: working in the Counter-Subversion section was an eye-opener. It was founded on the premise that the Communist Party of Britain was an enormous threat.

However, if you look at what the Communist Party were like, you find that very few were signed up to the Leninism-Marxist creed and that most were simply left-wingers who joined the Communist Party because it was a bit different. My argument is that being a member of the Communist Party is something that is legal in a free society. The time to be actively investigating these people is when they start making Molotov Cocktails and start intimidating people – not just because they are in the party or might associate with people in it.

Well, I then moved on to the Terrorism Section; but I was amazed that there was this institutional bureaucracy that was not about protecting civil liberties and human rights but was

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about not understanding how to get the work done quickly. The thing with, say, the Communist Party or the embassies of the former Eastern Bloc is that these are static targets. You can certainly put telephone taps on the embassies, you can have observation posts in place. But when you are reacting to terrorism – or the threat of terrorism – you need to be on your toes.

Now, MI5 seemed to have no notion of the urgency of doing that. And I have to say that they were woefully unprepared to take over from the Metropolitan Police.

And after MI5 took over, the IRA put more bombs down on the British mainland than it has ever done before or since – and MI5 is just sitting there drawing up bloody warrants all the

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time and taking days or weeks! Now I have to stress to you that there were a lot of people

there who were very bright and very dedicated to the job; and it was through their devotion and in spite of - rather than because of - management, we had a number of successes. But that was because we brought in younger people who had worked in other organisations and they were more self-confident and had more initiative and

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we had enormous results after about six months. But the big problem with MI5 was this policy of posting people on every two years – which is a typical Civil Service thing – and into another department. So when, for example, the IRA bombed Canary Wharf, the people with the expertise weren’t there any more. And even though MI5 had indications of a possible bomb attack on an unspecified location and some people were posted back, it wasn’t enough. And I can tell you and your readers that all the issues of concern that I raised in the public interest such as these, I raised with my bosses at MI5 first.

EYE SPY: There has been one allegation put to us that you, even before you decided to go public with your concerns, were due to be removed from MI5 for performance related reasons. Can you comment on this?

DAVID SHAYLER: That is totally untrue. I had a performance-related bonus in my final year with MI5 establishing that I worked consistently above the standards of my grade that year. So that is total nonsense.

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EYE SPY: Certainly the most controversial aspect of your revelations centre around a Secret Intelligence Service-connected operation to assassinate Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.

Can you expand on this for Eye-Spy readers?

DAVID SHAYLER: When you’re being recruited MI5 specifically says to you that it doesn’t break the law and that they have the utmost respect for civil liberties and the rule of law. As part of the questioning in my recruitment I was asked about the situation in Northern Ireland and regarding an SAS shoot-out.

And there was speculation in the press that the SAS had murdered

certain people. I was asked in my recruitment what I thought about this and I said that we were not actually in a state of war with the IRA and that the rules of war are governed by the Geneva Convention. Therefore, the SAS in Northern Ireland is a police force. Of course, if they are engaged by the IRA they must defend themselves but that doesn’t mean that they can summarily execute people. The rule of law as it exists says that you must put people on trial and find them guilty of an offence before you can take any action against them. And the guy said “Yes, that is the way we work.”

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I was attracted to the idea of working against terrorists – anyone who is a real democrat will say that terrorism has no place in a democracy. But when it came to the Gaddafi assassination plot in 1996, suddenly I was on the other side of things: I was a part of the Statesponsorship of terrorism and this was without ministerial control – MI6 did this themselves.

They told me at the time when I asked if this had been submitted to Government, that: “Yes, this has gone all the way to the top.” I was sceptical about this and I raised it with my bosses.

EYE SPY: How did you hear about the Gaddafi plot?

DAVID SHAYLER: People always say that MI5 and MI6 don’t work particularly closely; and when I took over in the Libyan section it became clear that progress was not being made towards targets. So, I instituted regular, three-monthly meetings with MI6 and forged a relationship – I wanted it to be one of trust. I’d been working there for about a year when my opposite number in MI6, who was known as PT16B, phoned me up and said, “I’ve got to come over and talk to you – something very important is going on.” And it was then that he told me that a Libyan they nicknamed Tunworth had walked into the Tunis Embassy and asked to see an officer of MI6. He wanted money to be able to orchestrate an assassination attempt on Gaddafi – after which he would take power in a coup in Libya. This got back to my opposite number in London who decided it would be a good idea and checked the guy against their records.

Now, this all sounds very dramatic but at the time I had heard of so many proposed MI6 operations that hadn’t got off the ground that I didn’t take it seriously to start with. But this one began to evolve and I was briefed by my opposite number in MI6 – and I stress that this was not bar-room gossip. I briefed my bosses about this too – partly to protect my own back - and the response within MI5 was one of a total lack of concern.

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At Christmas 1995, PT16B told me they had paid around $40,000 to Tunworth already. Now, I know he met with Tunworth on at least two more occasions; and he said that he had given similar amounts of money then. So we’re talking about a total figure of about £100,000, basically, to fund this plot. I don’t know how extensive the group was, but Tunworth said he was leading a group of Islamic extremists.

EYE SPY: Can we be clear on one point – this money was provided not just to fund this group but to specifically fund an assassination attempt on Gaddafi?

DAVID SHAYLER: No, this was not funding for the group: it was specifically a plan and at one point a report was issued detailing a list of equipment that the guy would need. And there is no way that MI6 would pay that sort of money just for information.

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EYE SPY: In a nutshell what is the crux of the forthcoming court case against you?

DAVID SHAYLER: Their argument is that any disclosure by an Intelligence Officer or former Intelligence Officer will damage national security and therefore people should be convicted of that – without defence. It’s my argument that that is nonsense. What the British Government can’t distinguish between is embarrassment and damage to national security. It can be argued that Peter Wright’s book ‘Spycatcher’ was very embarrassing and may have harmed the national interest but it did not damage national security. But I was an intelligence officer and I love my country and I would never put people’s lives at risk. The Libyans, for example, came knocking and offered me millions of pounds in a Swiss bank account for the names of MI5 and MI6 agents in Libya and to betray my country – I gave them nothing. I even had MI5 telling us that there were rumours that the Libyans were going to kidnap me and MI5 offered me no help or protection. If I had committed a crime, why did the Government negotiate with me? The Government does not negotiate with criminals.

EYE SPY: In conclusion, who is David Shayler?

DAVID SHAYLER: I would say I’m just an ordinary bloke who found himself in extraordinary circumstances. My experience in this case demonstrates that there is no real, fundamental protection of individual rights in this country; and I would like to be involved in changing this country at its heart – changing the Establishment. The people of Britain are a lot more savvy about civil liberty issues than our rulers are. The last general election shows that people are crying out for something different. Now, a lot of people will tell you that is hard-line socialism. I don’t think that for a second. People are just getting fed-up with excessive state secrecy. © EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE