KAS Enterprises

David Stirling founded the security company KAS Enterprises in 1986, appointing Ian Crooke as managing director.

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.

People

• David Stirling
• Ian Crooke
• Simon Mann