Keenie Meenie Services
Keenie Meenie Services also known as KMS Ltd was a private military corporation set up by ex SAS] officers in the 1970s. The name has been claimed to be Swahili for the movement of a snake through the grass, or Arabic for covert operation.[1]
- Formed in 1974 as a subsidiary of Control Risks by a former SAS officer, Major David Walker, its brief was to win government contracts for security work. In 1977 Walker staged a management buyout and took control. He was joined by Colonel Jim Johnson who had managed the Yemen operation for David Stirling and the company base was moved to Jersey.[2].
Walker, a former captain in the Special Air Services, registered the company in Jersey as "Executive International" to hide the identities of fellow board members Col. James "Jim" Johnson (who went on to become a broker for Lloyds of London), Brig. Mike Wingate Gray and John Martin Southern of the Blackwall Green, Ltd. insurance firm.
KMS's first major contract was training the Sultan of Oman's special forces. In 1983, the company was hired to train Sri Lankan forces fighting the Tamil Tigers.
In 1984, KMS was approved by the British government to train the Special Task Force arm of the Sri Lankan military against the Tamil rebels. The STF was widely reported to have been committing atrocities against the Tamil population and by 1987 KMS had moved their two hundred personnel to Latin America. The British press had reported, though the company denied it, that employees for KMS were quitting their jobs because the Sri Lankan troops were out of control.[3]
In 1987, the discovery of a flow chart prepared by Oliver North proved the company's involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. During the Iran-Contra investigations, KMS was accused of repeatedly carrying out sabotage operations in Nicaragua that included mining the Managua harbor and destroying enemy camps, buildings and pipelines.[4]
- That June, Walker and Johnson handed over the day-to-day running of KMS to two former SAS officers, and much of the work was passed to a subsidiary company based in London. From time to time during 1987, other stories surfaced about KMS, alleging that they were training the guerrillas in Afghanistan at the behest of the CIA. [5]
On November 22, 1987 the London Observer's Simon de Bruxelles published a three page proposal from KMS to the CIA suggesting sending small teams of instructors into Afghanistan to train rebels in "demolition, sabotage, reconnaissance and para-medicine."[6]
KMS was accompanied by Saladin Security (a subsidiary) and Defence Systems Limited in their training programs in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
KMS closed down in the early 1990s, and Saladin began operating more internationally[7]
