David Shayler is a former member of MI5 (Britain's domestic security intelligence agency) who became disillusioned, quit, and started spilling secrets. [Read more here.] He seems to be telling the truth, because the British government has been trying to nail him for violating state secrets, "infringing" the copyright on intelligence documents, etc., all of which indicates that he is the real McCoy. He's currently being tried under the Official Secrets Act.
Since the government is having a hard time shutting him up, it's doing the next best thing: muzzling the media. The UK press now risks prosecution if it reports on Shayler, his trial, and his accusations. Already, the Guardian, the Evening Standard, and the Scotsman have either pulled or sanitized their articles. [Read more here.]
It also appears that someone has done a number on Shayler's Website, called Shaylergate and formerly located at
Not only that, but there is not a trace of it in Google's cache. Go ahead--do an advanced search at Google for any page in the domain shayler.com. The result is absolutely nothing.
But it gets even weirder. Go to the Internet Archive and search for shayler.com. If you try to get the most recent archived version (26 Jan 2002), you'll be greeted with this puzzling message: "Path Index Error. Sorry, we can't find the archived version of this page. The URL has been archived but not indexed." Say what?
Now try to access the version before that (24 Sept 2001). It takes you to a porno Website.
Clicking on the prior versions produces sporadic results. A page here, a page there. The most intact single version is from 8 June 2000, but even that is mostly incomplete.
Below, I have mirrored every Webpage I could find from any version of Shayler's site. If anyone has more of it, please get in touch.
View the Shaylergate website archive
