The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

by Jon Ronson

  “I kept imagining him suddenly saying, ‘We spotted you a mile off and now you can fuck off!’” David laughed. “ ‘ We’re going to ruin your life!’ ”

  I laughed. “That’s exactly the kinds of crazy thoughts I have!” I said. “Really! I have thoughts like that! They can be quite intrusive!”

  (“Intrusive Thoughts” are all over the DSM-IV, by the way, as symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, etc., all the disorders characterized by an overactive amygdala. I used to see them as positive things: journalists should be quite obsessive and paranoid, shouldn’t we? But ever since I read about “Intrusive Thoughts” in the DSM-IV, I’ve found the idea of them a little scary, like they’re something serious. I don’t have them all the time, by the way. I wouldn’t want you to think that. Just sometimes. Maybe one a week. Or less.)

  MI5 offered David the job. Later he asked them how many other people were recruited from that “Godot Isn’t Coming” advert, and they told him none. Just him.

  He was, he discovered on his first day, to be an office-based spy, in a quite mundane room, nowhere near as entrancing as his conspiracy-minded friends imagined life inside a shadowy organization like MI5 would be. (David was not a conspiracy theorist at all back then. He became one only later, when he was out of the demystifying world of shadowy elites and back in everyday life.)

  “It was just a perfectly normal office,” he said. “You’ve got an in-tray and an out-tray. You process information. The difference is if you don’t process the information correctly, people die. I was happy to be making the world a safer place, stopping men of violence. It was good work.” But it was not without its weirdness: “They had files on all sorts of people, like John Lennon and Ronnie Scott and most of the people who would eventually end up in the Labour cabinet. People were being accused of communism for all sorts of stupid reasons. There was a file on a twelve-year-old kid who’d written to the Communist Party saying he was doing a topic on communism at school and could they send some information? They’d got him down as a suspected communist sympathizer.”

  “Would this kid ever have known MI5 had a file on him?” I asked.

  “No, of course not,” David said.

  From time to time he’d go out into the field, but not often. “One time I went to a demonstration dressed as an anarchist. This guy thrust a leaflet in my hand going, ‘What do you know about the Anti-Election Alliance?’ which I was then studying in MI5. I felt like saying to him, ‘A lot more than you do, mate.’ ”

  We talked about his now famous covert meeting with PT16B, about the plot to assassinate Gadhafi, the flight to Europe, the months on the run, the arrest and imprisonment, and then the conversation turned to Rachel North. He was, he said, still convinced she didn’t exist.

  “Let me talk about Rachel North being a composite MI5 person,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing the intelligence services would do.”

  “But you’ve met her,” I said.

  “Yes, I know I’ve MET her,” he said. His voice was rising now, getting faster. “She may exist as a human being but that’s not to say there aren’t five people behind her posting in her name on the Internet.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said.

  “You should look at the evidence of her copious postings,” David said. “You should look at the evidence of how many posts she was doing at one point.”

  “She was posting a lot,” I said. “I have no doubt of that.”

  “People in the movement have come to the conclusion that there were far too many posts to have come from one person,” David said.

  “Oh, you know what bloggers are like,” I said. “They write and write and write. I don’t know why, because they’re not being paid.”

  “I am also very suspicious of the fact that she refuses to sit down and have a dispassionate briefing about 7/7,” David said. “Why won’t she allow somebody to patiently talk her through the evidence?”

  “She was in the carriage!” I said. “She was in the CARRIAGE. You really want her to sit down with someone who was on the Internet while she was in the carriage and have them explain to her that there was no bomb?”

  We glared angrily at each other. I had won that round. But then he smiled, as if to say he had something better. It was, his smile said, time to pull out the big guns.

  “When Rachel North came to one of our meetings in the upstairs room of a pub,” he said, “I thought her behavior showed signs of ”—he paused—“mental illness.”

  “You think Rachel’s mentally ill?” I said. It was a low blow.

  “It was the degree to which she attacked me,” David said. “She stood up and came running towards me and shouted at me. There was a madness to this—”

  “But that’s because she thinks it’s nonsense—” I interrupted.

  “She won’t look at the evidence,” interrupted David. “I’m getting the same sort of vibe off you here, Jon. A viewpoint arrived at without evidence is prejudice. To say Muslims carried out 7/7—those three guys from Leeds and one from Aylesbury—to say they did it is RACIST, Jon. It’s racist. It’s racist. You’re being RACIST to Muslims if you think they carried out that attack on the evidence there.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said.

  That evening I telephoned Rachel to tell her I’d spent the afternoon with David Shayler.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “That you either didn’t exist or were mentally ill,” I said.

  “It’s all because of that stupid meeting,” she said. “They make it sound like I got up from the floor, marched up onto the stage, and started declaiming away. That’s not what happened. The whole room erupted in shouting. Everybody started shouting. Yes, I raised my voice to be heard over them shouting. But they shouted. I shouted . . .”

  My interview with David Shayler—the “fuck off ” included—was broadcast one night a few weeks later on BBC Radio 4. I began panicking during the hours before it aired. I believe my amygdala went into overdrive. Was I—in telling David Shayler to fuck off—about to open a Pandora’s box? Would I incur the wrath of the 7/7 truth movement? Would they come after me, guns a-blazin’, in the same way they had endeavored to ruin Rachel’s life? There was nothing I could do. Wheels were in motion. Somewhere inside some BBC building the tape was stacked up, ready to be broadcast.

  For the first few hours the following morning I was too nervous to open my e-mail in-box. But then I did. And it was—I discovered to my delight—filled with congratulations from listeners. The consensus was that I had struck a blow for rational thinking. This felt good: it is always good to be commended for thinking rationally. It became one of my big interviews. It caught the public’s imagination. I didn’t hear from the July 7 truth movement at all. My amygdala went back to normal. Life moved on.

  A few months passed. And then David Shayler was everywhere. He was on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show and BBC Five Live’s Steven Nolan show. There was a double-page spread in the New Statesman magazine. The reason for this ubiquity was that he had developed an unexpected new theory:I ask Shayler if it’s true he has become someone who believes that no planes at all were involved in the 9/11 atrocity. [His girlfriend Annie] Machon looks uncomfortable. “Oh, fuck it, I’m just going to say this,” he tells her. “Yes, I believe no planes were involved in 9/11.” But we all saw with our own eyes the two planes crash into the WTC. “The only explanation is that they were missiles surrounded by holograms made to look like planes,” he says. “Watch the footage frame by frame and you will see a cigar-shaped missile hitting the World Trade Center.” He must notice that my jaw has dropped. “I know it sounds weird, but this is what I believe.”

  —BRENDAN O’NEILL, New Statesman, SEPTEMBER 11, 2006

  David Shayler had become part of a rare and extreme faction of the 9/11 truth movement—a “no planer”—and journalists who would normally find the movement a little too dry to cover
were suddenly entranced.

  I telephoned him.

  “There is no evidence of planes being used apart from a few dodgy witness statements,” he said.

  “And . . .” I said.

  “And some very obviously doctored footage,” said David.

  “But the footage was going out live,” I said.

  “Ah, no,” said David. “The footage was going out on a time delay.”

  “Are you in trouble with your girlfriend and the more conservative elements of the truth movement?” I asked.

  I heard David sigh sadly. “Yes,” he said. “They asked me to keep the hologram theory to myself.” He paused. “Apparently there’s going to be a motion in the upcoming truth movement AGM to disown me.”

  I could tell he felt stung, but he said he didn’t care. “Jeremy Vine, Steven Nolan, this is very prestigious stuff, listened to by millions of people,” he said.

  “Jeremy Vine and Steven Nolan only want you on because your theory sounds nuts,” I said.

  David countered that not only was it not nuts, but in terms of holograms this was just the beginning. Plans were afoot to “create the ultimate false flag operation, which is to use holograms to make it look like an alien invasion is under way.”

  “Why would they want to do that?” I asked.

  “To create martial law across the planet and take away all our rights,” he said.

  Actually, the idea that the government may one day utilize holograms to mislead a population was not quite as farfetched as it sounded. Some years earlier I had come across a leaked U.S. Air Force Academy report entitled “Nonlethal Weapons: Terms and References,” which listed all the exotic weapons in the proposal or developmental stages within the U.S. Department of Defense. One section was labeled Holograms:Hologram, Death.

  Hologram used to scare a target individual to death. Example, a drug lord with a weak heart sees the ghost of his dead rival appearing at his bedside and dies of fright.

  Hologram, Prophet.

  The projection of the image of an ancient god over an enemy capitol whose public communications have been seized and used against it in a massive psychological operation.

  Hologram, Soldiers-Forces.

  The projection of soldier-force images which make an opponent think more allied forces exist than actually do, make an opponent believe that allied forces are located in a region where none actually exist, and/or provide false targets for his weapons to fire upon.

  “So maybe David isn’t quite as crazy as he seems,” I thought.

  A year passed. And then an e-mail arrived:September 5th

  2007

  Dear All

  This is absolutely serious. Please don’t miss the biggest story in history: at the darkest hour, Jesus returns to save humanity. Location of press conference will be Parliament Green, next to the Houses of Parliament and the river at 1400 hours, Thursday 6th September.

  Love & Light

  Dave Shayler

  David, as his attached press release explained, was to announce that he was the Messiah:Journalists are asked to arrive with an open mind as this is a truth which they are in no position to determine and they may be risking their chances of eternal life.

  This is all rather embarrassing for someone who was an atheist technocrat three years ago. And I am painfully aware how mad all this sounds. There is, however, ancient evidence to show that the Messiah is phonetically called “David Shayler.” When added to recent signs which have appeared independently of me—including a Messianic Cross of Saturn, Mercury, Venus and the Sun in the skies on 7/7/7, the day I was proclaimed Messiah—it has become inescapable that a higher power is indicating that I am the anointed or chosen one who has come to save humanity.

  Other incarnations have included Tutankhamen, King Arthur, Mark Anthony, Leonardo da Vinci, Lawrence of Arabia and Astronges, a Hebrew shepherd and revolutionary leader crucified in Palestine in 1 BC.

  —DAVID MICHAEL SHAYLER

  It was a surprisingly small turnout. David was sitting in the center of a circle, dressed in flowing white robes, looking slim and well. There were only two journalists in attendance—someone from Sky News and me. Everyone else seemed to be old friends from the truth movement. They looked embarrassed.

  The man from Sky News told me he was here to interview David but they had no intention to broadcast it. The plan was to get it in the can and then put it on the shelf, “in case something happens in the future.”

  There was no doubting that the “something” he was alluding to would be something truly awful.

  David was telling his cluster of listeners that the signs were there from the beginning.

  “Remember when I answered that advert in The Independent?” he said. “‘Godot Isn’t Coming’? I believe it was tailored for me. It even had the word ‘God’ in the title—‘Godot Isn’t Coming.’”

  “Why would MI5 want to tailor a recruitment advert just for you?” I asked.

  “I believe it’s MI5’s job to protect the incarnations of the Messiah,” he said. “I know how MI5 works. They want to get in contact with you. They know through tapping your phone that you’re looking for a job, you read a certain newspaper. So they’ll target an advert at you. Interestingly enough, nobody else was recruited from that ad.”

  I got talking to the woman standing next to me. She said her name was Belinda and she’d once been David’s landlady. As David continued to preach, she whispered to me that she couldn’t just sit back and listen anymore. It was too sad. She had to say something.

  “Uh, David, can I . . .” she began.

  “How dare you interrupt the Messiah,” David replied.

  “Okay,” Belinda sighed. “Carry on.”

  “Being the savior,” David crossly told her, “I’m trying to explain how people can access eternal life . . .”

  “All right, sorry . . .” muttered Belinda.

  “. . . and people who want to gain eternal life will probably want to hear it from me without interruptions . . .” David said. “I’ll take questions at the end, Belinda, but I am trying to tell an important story.”

  “I think it’s rather a sad story, David,” said Belinda. “According to Messiah culture, or prophet culture, you’re making several mistakes. Firstly, you’re not taking time out to really meditate on your mission. You’re coming public far too soon. Secondly, you’re not gathering a following around you. Thirdly, you’re announcing it yourself when really it should be for other people to say, ‘He is the One,’ and start to bow down to you or whatever. But you’re coming out and throwing it at everybody. My point is, you’re not behaving in a very Messiah-like way.”

  David shot back that seeing as how he was the Messiah, any way he behaved should be considered a Messiah-like way.

  “How are you suddenly an expert on Messiahs?” he snapped.

  “I see someone with huge talents and a first-class mind,” said Belinda, “who was doing extremely well along the track that he was going down, suddenly blowing the whole thing by going off on some esoteric trip. You’re spewing out all sorts of stuff that people just can’t connect with other than on the level of ridicule. Which is a terrible shame.”

  David looked evenly at her. “I know I am the Messiah,” he said. “It’s up to you to find out why you can’t accept that.”

  David spoke a lot during the press conference about the urgent need to get the message out, but during the weeks that followed, nothing much happened. There were one or two interviews, but nothing like the number he’d done around the hologram time. I began to see the arc of David Shayler’s madness in terms of a graph.

  How the arc of David Shayler’s madness intersects with media interest

  There seemed to be a tacit consensus that in David’s case the “July 7 never happened” was a little too dull for the right sort of madness, the hologram/plane theory was ideal, and the Messiah was the wrong sort of madness. But why? What made one appropriate and the other not? Most journalists would presumabl
y plead innocence, saying the holograms seemed an innocuous enough cough along the way to the obvious lung cancer of the Messiah declaration—and of course there would be some truth to this—but I wasn’t sure it was as simple as that. Both theories seemed to be palpable manifestations of mental illness, yet only one had proved to be a ticket to the airwaves.

  For the next two years David dropped out of the public eye completely. The only sighting was in the summer of 2009, when police raided a squat at a National Trust farmhouse in Surrey. Blurry camera-phone footage of the forced eviction made its way onto the Internet. It was composed for the most part of squatters yelling, “I’m not contracting with you!” at the police as they were dragged from their beds. But for a moment amid the commotion the camera whipped to the side and caught a glimpse of a very glamorously dressed transvestite. She later told the Daily Mail her name was Delores, but you could see under the wig and the makeup that it was David Shayler.

  As it happens, transvesticism—or Transvestic Fetishism—is, I was surprised to learn while riffling through DSM-IV, a mental disorder: “Usually the male with Transvestic Fetishism keeps a collection of female clothes that he intermittently uses to cross-dress. . . . In many or most cases sexual arousal is produced . . . [although] the motivation for cross-dressing may change over time with sexual arousal diminishing or disappearing. In such incidents the cross-dressing becomes an antidote to anxiety or depression or contributes to a sense of peace and calm.”