Jock Kane

John Kane (7 April 1921 – 27 September 2013) was a Scottish whistleblower who was prevented from publishing two books alleging corruption at the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Kane served with the Royal Air Force in various European theatres as a radio operator in World War II, before joining GCHQ after the war. While serving with GCHQ in Hong Kong, Kane was concerned with the lack of security and after uncovering fraud, raised his complaints with officials. Kane retired in 1978 and his complaints were investigated by a senior civil servant, but the report was never published. Kane wrote a memoir in 1984, GCHQ: The Negative Asset, which was subsequently banned, as was a second memoir, The Hidden Depths of Treachery. Kane later worked as a school bus driver after retiring from GCHQ.

Personal life Kane was born in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, in 1921, his mother died in childbirth when he was two. Raised by his father with the help of aunts, he was educated at St Patrick's High School in Coatbridge. Raw intelligence material would be supplied by Hawklaw to Bletchley Park (known as X-Station) to be de-coded. During the Cold War, the target of Kane's interception efforts at Hawklaw were the Soviet Union and its allies behind the Iron Curtain. Senior GCHQ officers were also involved in the fraud, and Kane found that senior management at GCHQ were not interested in his complaints. Kane believed that these activities could expose staff to blackmail by hostile intelligence agencies. The programme was modified after having been restricted from being broadcast by the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Copies of the Negative Asset were seized from its London publisher and from newspapers that had been considering serialization of its contents; police officers from Special Branch also travelled to New York to seize manuscripts. The Daily Telegraph said that these events gave the "ring of truth" to Kane's criticisms.