Since then more revelations have surfaced about the Qaddafi assassination attempt. Shayler included the names of two MI6 officers alleged to have participated in the failed plot in a file he submitted to the government when he urged prosecution of the two. He provided the same information to The Observer and The Guardian, which reported the story without publishing the names. But the government went to court in March and got a judge to order Martin Bright of The Observer to hand over his notebooks along with any documents or e-mails from David Shayler about the assassination plot. Bright has refused and faces imprisonment, since in Britain journalists have no immunity from court orders to disclose their sources. "The prospect of jail really is my worst nightmare," Bright told The Independent. "Let's face it, I'm a middle-class journalist.... I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about doing time." The editors of The Guardian were also ordered to hand over documents relating to an opinion piece of Shayler's they published.

Meanwhile, in February the names of the two MI6 officers were published on a US website run by Yahoo (since closed down) and in a Portuguese maga zine. Then they were published in Brit ain--in defiance of a High Court injunction--in an article by Stephen Dorril in the journal Free Press, which is published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. (The article is online at www.cpbf.demon.co.uk/FreePress/freepress.htm#10. Dorril is the author of the new book MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service.)

Shayler is following in the footsteps of three former CIA agents who went public exposing agency crimes. Victor Mar chet ti was the first former CIA employee to attempt to publish a book about his experiences. The agency went to court and got a permanent injunction barring publication until he submitted his manuscript to the CIA for review. The court then ordered extensive deletions of what they said was classified material. Marchetti's The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (co-written by John Marks) was published in 1974, with white space in place of the deleted passages. A new edition published in 1980 contained some previously deleted passages.

Philip Agee published Inside the Company: CIA Diary in 1975, without agency review. He had been a CIA agent who during the Vietnam War came to view US policy as wrong. His book, a sweeping exposé of agency misconduct, named names of agents. As a result of Agee's book and political activities, the United States pressured five NATO countries to expel him and eventually revoked his passport. The book was translated into nineteen languages. He went on to write a memoir of the experience, On the Run, published in 1987. Today Agee lives in Havana and promotes tourism from the United States at his website www.cubalinda.com.

Frank Snepp also worked for the CIA in Vietnam. In 1977 he published his book Decent Interval, in which he argued that we betrayed the Vietnamese who'd depended on us. The New York Times featured the book on its front page. Since Decent Interval contained no classified information, Snepp published it without CIA clearance. Nevertheless, the agency promptly sued him. The Supreme Court ruled that his failure to submit his manuscript for CIA review had "inflicted 'irreparable harm' on intelligence activities vital to our national security." The agency confiscated $200,000 in royalties, and Snepp also lost the right to publish any thing in the future about the CIA without first receiving agency authorization. Last July he published an account of his case, Irreparable Harm--which did receive CIA clearance. He has a website at www.franksnepp.com.

The British government calls Shayler a traitor. In fact, he's a whistleblower who has exposed government abuse of power. He recently wrote in The Observer that he was only "standing up for the basic principles of freedom of expression, democratic accountability and freedom of information."

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