He was brought out of retirement following the September 11 attacks to assist with a rapid expansion of the CIA and was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.
[1] He served as a research analyst with the Department of the Army between 1951 and 1955, during which time he ran an operation to rescue airmen shot down behind enemy lines in the Korean War.
[2] He was a keen recruiter of personnel for the CIA, securing 33 high-quality agents, often rising politicians or foreign intelligence agency employees, in the course of one three-year posting.
[3] Bane was appointed chief of mission at the US embassy in Accra, Ghana, in 1964 and during this posting, according to former CIA officer John Stockwell, he played a key role in the 1966 pro-Western coup.
He dropped hints that the CIA would support a coup carried out from within the military, which gave them the confidence to plan in earnest from mid-January 1966.
[2] Bane was able to give his seniors at the CIA 24 hours notice of the coup, which took place in late February, despite press reports at the time that it came as a surprise to the US government.
[4][5] Bane had proposed going further and using the coup as cover for the Special Operations Group to storm the Chinese embassy in Accra, kill the occupants, and steal secret records.
He worked closely with the Dutch authorities during the crisis, and his efforts were rewarded with promotion to head the CIA's Office on Terrorism when it was founded in 1978.
[7][8] In 1979 he headed the CIA's involvement in Operation Eagle Claw, the unsuccessful American attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis by force.
In the early 1990s Bane was one of the first CIA officers to recognize the threat posed by Islamic jihadism and tried to focus his teams on the Middle East.