Ian Crooke

Former Lieutenant-Colonel in the SAS.

SAS

Gambia

Crooke led a three-man SAS team which overcame a coup attempt in the Gambia, launched while the President was out of the country for the 1981 royal wedding.

Falklands

Crooke was second in command and operations officer of 22 SAS during the Falklands War. He was reportedly due to lead a mission to attack an Argentine Airfield at Rio Gallegos, which was aborted.

23 SAS

Crooke's last post in the army was as commanding officer of 23 SAS, a territorial unit.

KAS Enterprises

Crooke was appointed as managing director when David Stirling founded the security company KAS Enterprises in 1986.

Project Lock

In 1987 Stirling and Crooke approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Dr John Hanks of the World Wildlife Fund about an anti-poaching project in Africa. After an intelligence-gathering phase in 1988, the active phase of the project got underway in 1989.

Ian Crooke and a team of a dozen ex-SAS members established themselves in South Africa, where they organized a safe house and set up computer database containing their accumulated intelligence. It was then that their problems really began. The team established cordial relations with various South African agencies based on mutual self-help, which immediately made them suspect to Black Africans...

...In July 1989 the whole operation was blown wide open, allegedly as a result of Ian Crooke's indiscretion. A local Reuters correspondent issued a report which insinuated that Project Lock was an undercover operation designed to designed to destabilise certain Black African states , funded by South Africa and using as operatives ex-SAS mercenaries.

KAS was wound up in February 1991, three months' after Stirling's death.

Affiliations

• Special Air Service
• 22 SAS
• 23 SAS
• KAS Enterprises

Connections

• Alistair Crooke - Brother
• David Stirling