David Shayler (ex-MI5) speaks out on the cost of whistleblowing

On 29 September 2014, former MI5 agent, David Shayler, told us this at the Neon Nettle blog:

"It was at Clapham Junction station two days ago I saw her. Standing there with my carrier bags, dressed like a tramp, I looked up and yes, it was without doubt her, the woman who had made my life hell for a couple of years in the mid-90s.

Here was Wendy Probit, the name I gave her in my novel, my boss when I was in MI5's T2A, countering the Provisional IRA on the British mainland. Remarkably, it was exactly twenty years to the day that I had left her section in MI5 to go and 'have a crack at the Towelheads', as the Muslims were occasionally referred to by the more irreverent members of the Security Service.

She looked pretty much the same – that bob hair was unmistakable, though grey now. She looked up, saw me, chuckled, then pretending she hadn't seen me, quickly began to tap away at a text, presumably to a fellow MI5 officer to bring them up-to-date with this hot, new intelligence. I chuckled involuntarily too.

After waiting for about ten minutes – without ever catching each other's eye – we got on the same train, the 17:45 to Sutton, stood in the same carriage for the ten minute journey to Streatham Hill, where we both got off without ever speaking a word or exchanging a glance.

This chance and brief encounter got me thinking. Twenty years ago, we were both MI5 officers, theoretically working to protect the British people. Now here we were on the same station platform but coming from very different worlds. Her in her smart office attire, mildly browbeaten from another day 'at the coalface' in Babylon; her life not much different in terms of routines and outcomes – I imagine – from the way it was when I worked in MI5.

Me, on the other hand... Well, I really didn't look my best. I'd been at Runnymede Eco-village for a month without access to a bath or shower. My clothes were thick with dirt. I imagine Wendy may have thought I was a downandout, the just fate awaiting anyone who 'betrays' the secret state – at least in her mind.

In my mind, it just made me relieved that no matter how dishevelled I looked, I wasn't now on the side of terrorists, torturers and war criminals – unlike Wendy.The self-same day, my editor at Neon Nettle had asked me to do a piece on the costs of whistle-blowing to those who venture into this uncharted territory. This, combined with my chance encounter with my ex-boss, got me thinking: 'Was whistle-blowing worth it?'

The answer came back to me in seconds: 'Of course it was. In fact, it was so the right thing to do that it was a no-brainer'. Don't get me wrong. Being a Whistleblower is not for the faint-hearted. It has meant two spells in prison for me; countless attempts on my life; sustained ill-health, due to stress; and periods of being virtually destitute, induced by the real powers-that-be in an attempt to make me give up and go away.

I even lost the then love of my life, Annie Machon, although to this day I thank God that he chose to show me at that point how shallow her love for me was.Yet despite having my character blackened, my relationships destroyed and my livelihood taken away, I have absolutely no regrets about what I did. It has always of course been clear that I have never broken the law because I have not caused harm, loss or injury to anyone.

'But you betrayed MI5, MI6 and the country,' the munchkin retorts.

And I retort back: 'If your country is built on murder, terrorism and lies, then perhaps it is they, not I, who betray you. If you believe in 'My country, right or wrong', then you have ceased to be a moral human being and have become a dangerous automaton likely only to cause suffering to your fellow man.'

I, after all, blew the whistle on MI6 funding our terrorist enemies and murdering innocent people. The foreign secretary of the day, Malcolm Rifkind has made it clear that he did not give permission for any such attack. This makes an already heinous crime prosecutable under English law, although the Blair government failed to call in the police in a timely fashion.

Rifkind then invested in the war industry and has made enormous amounts profiteering from unlawful wars in the Middle East. So unlike BLiar, Rifkind and the British taxpayer, my conscience is clear.

I wonder though how people like Harriet Harman, Clare Short and Jack Straw – or indeed my ex-boss, Wendy Probit – sleep at night. These ex-government ministers are the very quintessence of the lefty, do-gooder liberal who believes himself to be the very epitome of modern morality. But when push came to shove, they committed war crimes and have ironically only got way with it because they left a legacy of Zionist repression which has fatally undermined the rule of Law.

In any decent society, they would have swung from a rope for their extreme crimes. After all, they failed to deal with my evidence of how MI6 tried to replace a moderate regime with Islamic Extremists then promoted wars in Iraq and subsequently Libya which did exactly that. That is one of the reasons why we now see Islamic militants not just beheading Westerners on TV almost every night but in charge of the abundant Iraqi oil supply.

If they had taken my evidence in 1997, imagine how different the world would now be. Imagine if:the intelligence services had been reformed in the late 1990s to stop them inducing the media to support their war plans or put out propaganda about 9/11. An enquiry had established that MI6 had funded Islamic militants in Libya to assassinate Colonel Qadhafi and those murderers and terrorists had been brought to justice.

Parliament had scrutinised my evidence about MI5 making assessments on the basis of little or no reliable intelligence.the people knew how MI5 had conspired to let 10,000s of Islamic militants into the UK in the 1990s to create what the CIA dubbed 'Londonistan' and which has aided the activities of anti-Western groups who wish us harm.

Around the same time, the people had given New Labour a majority of 179 in the House of Commons, one of the biggest landslides in our history, to a party standing on a platform of human rights, freedom of information and an ethical foreign policy. If there was one subject which potentially ticked these boxes, it was my disclosures about MI6's funding of our terrorist enemies.

Instead, the New Labour administration turned on me, leaking information designed to discredit me, briefing the left wing press (The Guardian) that I was a right wing nutter who wanted to increase the power of the secret state.When I used a legal route to alert the Bliar government to MI6 funding Al Qaeda, I was the one put in prison, with a view to extradition.

Can you imagine how I felt when a cell door slammed shut on me for the first time and I heard the distinctive rattling of a key in a lock, wondering why I, the witness to the crime, had ended up incarcerated, when its perpetrators still went free?

Think I'm making a big deal? How would you feel if you reported a heinous crime and you were the one who finished up deprived of your liberty and treated like a common criminal. In this instance, the munchkins can't even call on their usual refrain of 'You signed the Official Secrets Act...' because in this case, I had used a legal route to alert ministers – specifically set up as a result of my whistle-blowing.Even now, I'm astounded by the psychopathic tendencies of those who believe a rule of the UK Parliament like the 1989 Official Secrets Act takes precedent over human life.

They would never of course advance this argument if their children had been murdered by MI6, proving they are hypocrites. It really makes you want to fund a terrorist attack in which their children are horrendously murdered just so they know what it feels like. At this very moment, the war criminal David Cameron is compounding his crimes by arguing that the coalition should bomb the IS, even though it is well-embedded within Iraqi cities,meaning any bombing raid will inevitably cause civilian deaths.

Given the nature of his investments, Dave will of course be increasingly his personal wealth as a result of the bombing and continued manufactured war. But doesn't that put him into a conflict of interest under the Law and the rules of Babylon?

I sometimes wish someone would bomb little Flora Cameron into smithereens – so Just Call Me Dave and his pushy wife would know what it is like to lose a loved one in a terrorist attack -- bringing to an end the mass slaughter which has been going on in the Middle East since Al Qaeda was wrongly blamed for 9/11.

I only think these things of course. I don't persuade Parliament to induce our armed forces to actually commit war crimes. As yet, thought crime is not an offence – even under their system.

When I blew the whistle, I thought I was taking on MI5 and the British government. I knew I could beat them because I had seen just how dumb, unwieldy and intransigent they really were. Of course, I eventually came to realise I was taking on an international conspiracy, which manipulated governments; assassinated dissidents like Dr David Kelly or Princess Diana; and took great delight in perverting the course of justice.

In the run-up to my trial five years after I'd blown the whistle with my health failing and looking at wrong end of six years in prison – all for telling the truth – I was truly tested. Up until this point, blowing the whistle had been exhilarating.

But as the frequency of the attempts on my life increased and the unfairness of my upcoming trial became ever more apparent, as an atheist I had to deal with the very real fear that shadowy forces were going to keep on trying to assassinate me until they were successful.

Most people would of course in these circumstances, simply give up. But I didn't. I resolved shortly after I left prison to tell the whole truth about what I knew, which I did in Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers – written by me but published under Annie's name for legal reasons – even though I knew it would most likely result in my death, even though I then believed death was the end. For an atheist, it was a remarkably spiritual act.

You cannot know if you are a truly moral human being until you have been tested. So for me, whistle-blowing made me – as a man. Without the persecution and suffering at the hands of BLiar and the dark elite which gave me an opportunity to truly be tested, I genuinely don't know how I would have found myself on the true journey to redemption as a man of faith.

Unlike Bush and BLiar, I actually began to live my life by the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels, heeding his message to 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself'; and to stand up for truth, justice and peace without reward or fear for the consequences to yourself.

Crucially, I also learnt from the biblical Christ to know my enemy so I might be in a better position to defeat evil – before realising that that was what my life had been all about. God had taken me on an extraordinary journey of injustice and suffering at the hands of the enemy so I would know how to defeat them, unlike the millions of activists who continue to use the old-fashioned forms of protest, which simply don't work and are directed at the wrong targets.

So though I have no assets to my name, no proper home and little means of support, I do – as a result of my whistle-blowing – hold the key to bringing down Babylon and ushering in an age of peace which will make the world a safer place for all God's children, including little Flora Cameron, to grow up and fulfil their potential. Going on that journey of redemption has made my heart braver and gladder than any decision to walk away from this fight knowing my own life would be easier.

So to anyone considering blowing the whistle, I say: 'Just do it!' You'll never make a better decision."

David Shayler, a courageous and honourable Englishmen at a time when such are in short supply.