Fiddles and fraud Large sums of money disappear annually Jock Kane's story into the hands pf businessmen who have established corrupt relationships with GCHQ. Its operations are secret and un-supervised, I LEFT GCHQ sixteen months ago. I was then documents. My life in the Service was made and some of its officials have been long ac- in the £7,000-a-year Supervisory Radio Of- impossible because as soon as I became aware customed to the abuse of public trust in service ficer grade at an intelligence-gathering station of the losses In 1973 I insisted on reporting of their own financial advancement. Routine in Scotland. them - and on reporting other losses which corrupt practices involve false subsistence and Much of GCHQ's work could be important have occurred since then. travel claims, false overtime payments, false/ and worthwhile. But it is conducted behind a The material went missing, at times accommodation and furniture allowances a( wall of artificial secrecy, which protects a unknown but certainly over a lengthy period, overseas stations - together with oversized disgusting network of corruption, inefficiency from the Little Sai Wan station in Hong Kong, payments for transport of property and in- and security betrayal. which is one of GCHQ's most important surance, and much unnecessary travelling. I When I joined GCHQ in 1946, our 'indoc- operations. estimate that such pilfering from the public trination' prescribed that the name of the When I arrived there in January 1973 my purse exceeded at least £1 million during 1976. organisation, and the nature of its work - 'interference' in reporting that many The fiddles are practised everywhere. But signals intelligence, or 'Sigint' for short - documents were missing was bitterly. resented. ground level corruption is worst in GCHQ's should never be breathed in public, because of I was expected to 'conform', and to write each overseas 'posts. And Hong Kong, which has the danger of alerting our targets to the idea day Classified books checked correct been the principal doorway into corruption that Britain might be listening in. GCHQ's alongside my signature. Such was the for many British institutions, is the place Security Handbook is very specific: negligence and chaos that managerial civil ser- where dishonesty is most thoroughly routine. vants were daily signing registers as correct, Fraud which was prevalent in the UK was GCHQ and its end products are known to be the when many of the documents listed in them target of (hostile intelligence) services and in fact almost compulsory in Hong Kong. any piece of information which is accidentally were missing - sometimes, missing for years. All G<::HQemployees enjoy highly generous leaked may be expected to find its way into alien I did not 'conform'. I was so disturbed by foreign' allowances in addition to the envied hands. Moreover, every member of GCHQ is a this that I pressed for an official muster of all advantages of the Hong Kong posting. An or- potential target. - classified documents held 'at the station: after dinary Radio Officer, taking all allowances in- six months of bitter argument, this was I still take the indoctrination oaths very to account, was receiving £12-14,000 a year in agreed. On 21 September 1973 the task of seriously indeed. But when many GCHQ per- the mid-seventies. In addition to salary at assessing the losses of Secret and Top Secret sonnel, involved in corruption, work in areas London rates, there was £1,500 Foreign Ser- where highly secret documents are missing - documents from Little Sai Wan was given to a vice Allowance (tax free) and £5,000 accom- and other documents continue to disappear - middle-grade civil servant, Alec Crombie. modation allowance, together with movement The results of his check were appalling. So it is in the public interest that the subject allowances, school fees and lesser perks. many documents were missing that, to the should be aired. .Around this centre of secret government astonishment of myself and many others, the While the huge, ultimately abortive 'ABC' munificence there long ago grew up a network existing registers were ordered. by GCHQ to be Official Secrets Act case was being directed in of camp-followers, expert in the ins and outs destroyed, and new classified registers 1977 against three outsiders, GCHQ was of every fiddle. Far from resisting such traffic, prepared for the documents that were left. covering up the loss of large quantities of GCHQ administrators recommended new No investigation into the losses took place. Secret and Top Secret information from its staff at Little Sai Wan to the local traders with No-one was asked to account for the missing major listening station in Hong Kong - infor- the best in dishonest deals. papers, or to explain why they had been sign- mation which was as accurate, up-to-date and . Issuing of false receipts by hotels and ing the old registers as correct. highly classified as any intelligence could be. landlords was a standard feature of Hong Two "years later in 1975 another member of A pile of highly important documents had Kong life. A flat worth £300 a month would be the station's junior management showed he vanished by 1973, and GCHQ did not want to rented for a nominal £400 and a receipt issued find out where they had gone. had learnt the lesson. He proceeded - wholly to that effect. The difference would be split unauthorised - to destroy his new register Unless action is taken, disappearance of between landlord and tenant. The same hap- and replace it with yet another, after I had pened with hotel bills. sensitive documents will continue. So will the reported another fourteen classified annual subventions to businessmen who have Even without fiddling, of course, very large documents as missing. Placed alongside the established corrupt relationships with GCHQ sums were being dispensed, because a family GCHQ Security Handbook's ruling that 'C:lIlY - and the institutionalised overpayment of piece of information which is accidentally staff allowances which the secret department's leaked may be expected to find it way into managers and operatives have turned to their alien hands', this behaviour is inexplicable personal advantage. and inexcusable. I have raised these matters, successively, I raised the question of the missing papers with GCHQ's own security division, its Direc- through successive levels of the GCHQ hierar- tor, with the RAF Provost and Security Ser- ehy, In March 1974 I had an unproductive in- vice, with the Scotland Yard Special Branch, terview with the Head of Establishment Divi- with the Director of Public Prosecutions, and sion in Cheltenham (where GCHQ is based). with the Cabinet Office through the help of He said I was right to draw attention to the Members of Parliament. breaches of security. The culprits, he said, had . At every stage, GCHQ's great and secret been disciplined. I -know of culprits having bureaucratic power has been able to prevent ;'0 been sought, let alone identified and disciplin- anything happening. During 1979 a Cabinet ed. The interview was a substitute for action. Office investigation, ordered by the Prime When I tried to raise the issue with the Minister and conducted by Sir James Waddell, Foreign Office, which is formally in charge of ground to a halt. ca, GCHQ - although, as in the case of its other I have been threatened with disciplinary 'subsidiary', MI6, it has no effective control charges and the Official Secrets Act - as have - I was improperly blocked from contacting several members of GCHQ who have express- the FO's Permanent Secretary. ed disquiet at the state of affairs. But they The story of the missing documents must be would be glad, and relieved, to set the facts put into context. The context is the corruption out for a proper independent tribunal of in- and inefficiency inside GCHQ's secret world John' Jock' Kane worked for Britain's largest quiry. secret intelligence agency, Government Com- which is so widespread - and so in- munications Headquarters, for 32 years before stitutionalised - as to make any sort of in- taking voluntary early retirement during 1978. Documents go missing vestigation officially unthinkable. If an in- He joined as a radio operator after the war and GCHQ has lost, and doesn't care to find, vestigation into security risks were to begin, retired as a Supervisor at a Scottish in- dozens and dozens of highly classified Sigint they fear, would it ever end? telligence station. He now lives in England. 740 could get as much as £5,000 rent allowance in Hong Kong, plus another £600 to hire fur- niture. Deals were struck with furniture hirers so that civil servants were able to illegally hire purchase some of the furniture for shipment home. Payoffs at the social club Little Sai Wan must cost at least £10 million a year to run. In the last year I was there, outright waste and pilferage absorbed £500,000 - perhaps even £1 million - of this total. Opportunities for corruption, and thus blackmail, existed in other ways. In Hong Kong a social club, Ariel House, is maintained for the large staff of Little Sai Wan within the station perimeter: this might be a sensible ex- ercise for a government anxious to keep highly secret personnel segregated as far as possible from the outside community. In prac- tice the opposite effect is achieved. Although Composite Signal Organisation Station Hawklaw. near Cupar in Fife, is one of GCHQ's less civil service rules specifically forbid the accep- attractive and exotic postings. After persistent complaints about lax security and corruption tance of gifts, a steady flow of gold watches, overseas, Kane was posted here and told he wouldn't go abroad again.