Summer Investment Club 2023

Peter McAleese was born in Glasgow in September 1942, and at the age of 17, enlisted with the British Army's Parachute Regiment in Aberdeen. Within two years he had transferred to 'D' Squadron, 22 SAS, where he served with the squadron's Mobility troop in Aden. Over the following few years, a pattern emerged of Peter being returned to Unit from the SAS for disciplinary reasons and then re-joining the SAS. At the end of the 1960s, Peter resigned from the British Army and thereafter I think it would be fair to say that his life became even more interesting.   He was involved in the Hilton assignment project (an attempt to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi); he was a mercenary soldier in the Angolan Civil War for several months in 1976, fighting for the National Liberation Front of Angola; and in 1979 he joined the British South Africa Police's Special Branch operating in South Rhodesia. After the fall of Rhodesia in 1980, he enlisted with the South African Defence Force's 44 Parachute Brigade, which he served as a Colour Sergeant in the early 1980s, where he assisted with the creation of a new pathfinder reconnaissance unit and took part in the South African Border War.   Perhaps the event which Peter is most well-known for is Operation Phoenix – the 1989 plan to assassinate the Columbian drug lord, Pablo Escobar. Paid for by one of Escobar’s rival drug cartel – the Cali Cartel – the operation fell apart after the helicopter carrying Peter and his colleague Dave Tomkins, crashed as it flew low through the clouds over the Andes, killing the pilot.   In later life Peter became an author publishing 2 books "No Mean Soldier" and "McAleese's Fighting Manual".