On 22 September 1993, five days before hardback publication of Trail of the Octopus, Christopher Byron telephoned Bloomsbury Publishing to ask if they had heard that a Federal grand jury had just indicted Lester Coleman on eight counts of perjury.
It was six o'clock in the morning, New York time.
This was news to Bloomsbury but no surprise. For three years, Coleman had been the target of a relentless campaign to destroy his credibility as a witness in the Lockerbie affair. On learning that the indictment was based on his affidavit of April 1991 in support of Pan Am's suit against the US government, and that the charges could have been brought against him at any time in the previous two and a half years rather than five days before publication, Bloomsbury thanked Byron for getting up so early to tell them about it, expressed their continued faith in the book and were left wondering what had prompted his call.
' Was this a publicspirited gesture on the part of a responsible commentator trying at the last moment to save a leading publisher from possible embarrassment? Or had he been unwittingly used by the US government in an attempt to shake Bloomsbury's confidence in Trail of the Octopus to the point where they delayed or cancelled the book's publication?
The indictment certainly showed every sign of having been cobbled together in a hurry. The first count accused Coleman of perjury in saying that he spoke Arabic. This certainly amused MaryClaude, to whom he had proposed in Arabic! If they had been old enough to appreciate the joke, it would also have amused his children, for whom Arabic is a family language.
The other seven counts were simply flat denials of passages from Coleman's affidavit describing his work for the US government, statements that could only be confirmed or disproved by reference to classified security documents that Washington refused to disclose.
As these denials were already a matter of public record, the most interesting thing about the indictment, apart from the haste that seemed to have inspired it, was a telling slip in the very last sentence: 'Coleman was deactivated by the Defense Intelligence Agency more than two years prior to May 11, 1990.' (He had stated in his affidavit, perjuriously according to the government, that he had been 'deactivated' on that date )
By any reading, this implied that he had been active as an agent of the DIA until the beginning of 1988 or thereabouts. This appears to conflict with the observation of LtCol. Terry Bathen, assistant general counsel to the DIA, that Coleman had performed no services for the DIA after November 1986, more than four years prior to 22 May 1990.
Nevertheless, the indictment served to secure a warrant for Coleman's arrest and representations were made to the Swedish government to secure his extradition, even though perjury is not an extraditable offence. When challenged on this point, a Justice Department spokesman claimed that extradition was possible in a case of 'aggravated' perjury. Although inquiries failed to discover any such offence in the canon of Federal law, the manoeuvre set off another round of hostile publicity that coincided with publication of Trail of the Octopus.
Besides Coleman, the same Federal grand jury had also targeted James Shaughnessy, lead counsel for Pan Am, and Juval Aviv, the private investigator whose report had first called attention to the government's role in the Lockerbie disaster. In view of the allegations now being levelled at him, on 21 October 1993 Shanghnessy wrote to Chief Judge Platt, who had presided over the case from the start, to correct the one minor error he found in the record. In a footnote to an affidavit opposing the government's application for financial sanctions against him and his firm for daring to question the official version of events, Shaughnessy had written that, 'Mr Coleman was never paid any amount except for his expenses in meeting first with me and then with [my partner] Mr Prugh.'
These expenses, including air fares, hotel bills, meals and so on for three meetings spread over a total of seven days, plus the expenses of a second witness who spent three days with the defence team in Brussels, amounted to about $12,500, most of it billed directly to Pan Am. In addition, the airline paid a further $2,688 for the shipment of the Coleman family's personal effects by air cargo from Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity convent in Spain to their new home in exile in Sweden.
But Shaughnessy had forgotten to mention that three separate payments of $1,000 had also been made to Coleman as compensation for loss of working time. Concerned that this omission might be seized upon by the government, however improbably, as evidence that he had paid Coleman X3,000 to perjure himself, Shaughnessy corrected the record by drawing the judge's attention to the payments and apologizing for his lapse of memory.
But if he had honed to close off this loophole, he had reckoned without Christopher Byron. In the 8 November issue of New York magazine he charged Shaughnessy with having 'built [Pan Am's] defense, in part at least, out of testimony obtained by secret and demonstrably improper payments to Coleman'. After speculating 'about who else might have been paid', Byron went on to assert that 'by Shaughnessy's own admission, the defense team did pay Coleman handsomely. The total amount: some $18,000, of which $15,000 was for '`expenses" and $3,000 was in the form of direct cash payments.' Writing dismissively of Coleman as 'the international con man and fugitive'
though the evidence for this serious charge seemed to be based on a payment of $3,000 and a few nights in a Brussels hotel Byron reminded his readers that Coleman 'ran into trouble after being arrested on passport fraud charges in 1990' and 'fled to Europe, where he swore out his affidavit in support of the airline's case while pocketing his payoff '.
The article did not mention the deficiencies in the FBI's case. Documentary evidence, some of it from the Bureau's own files, had already proved that the passport charges were false. But the allegation against Shaughnessy, picked up and repeated elsewhere in the media, served its purpose. At the end of November, to avoid possible embarrassment to his client, he stepped down as Pan Am's lead counsel, handing the case over to his associates.
Juval Aviv, the government's third target, had been similarly maligned since 1989, when his confidential report linking the CIA with the bombing was leaked to the press, but after four years Justice Department officials were still frustrated in their efforts to punish him for his impudence. Evidently losing patience, they instructed the FBI to put him out of action by more
direct means. During 1993, agents visited all his clients and business associates, ostensibly looking for 'evidence' to present to the Federal grand jury but in fact to inform them that Aviv was 'dishonest, unreliable and unpatriotic' and under investigation in connection with the Pan Am 103 disaster. As he discovered later, the FBI even went so far as to interfere in a case he was working on for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a blunder that could have cost the American taxpayer over $34 million in stolen bank asset.
But by the end of 1993, the focus of Washington's displeasure had broadened to include a new target. The American film producer Allan Francovich, with financial backing from Lonrho plc, had embarked on a gominute television documentary about the bombing of Pan Am 103 which seemed certain to undermine the official version of events. Already unpopular in US government circles for exposing the activities of the CIA in Europe and South America, Francovich had picked up the Trail of the Octopus at the point where the book left off and was scouring Europe with his research team for further evidence of government involvement.
Countermeasures were called for.
On 27 November 1993, the Financial Times broke the news of his project under a sixcolumn headline, 'Lonrho to finance Libyan film about Lockerbie'. 'Lonrho and: the Libyan government have set up a Caribbean shell company to finance a £633,000 documentary film about the Lockerbie bombing,' the story ran. 'The disclosure of the secret partnership between the UKbased conglomerate and Libya in the film project comes just days before tough new United Nations sanctions against the country are due to come into force . . . [The project] is being funded by Metropole Hotels, which is twothirds owned by Lonrho and onethird by the Libyan Arab Finance Company, the main investment vehicle of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.'
Although the story went on to report that Francovich had said 'he had complete control of the project and could withdraw if there was any interference from Lonrho or the Libyans', the innuendo was clear. It was to be a 'Libyan film' financed by a 'secret partnership' between Libya and Lonrho's chairman Tiny Rowland, who had said 'he felt honour bound to work closely with Libya since: selling it the Metropole stake for £177m in 1992'. In otherwords, it was to be a piece of Libyan propaganda designed to get Gaddafi off the hook for the Lockerbie bombing. 22
Christopher Byron wrote in similar terms in what turned out to be his last article for New York magazine on the Lockerbie subject, denouncing Lester Coleman as a 'fantasist and a fraudster' who had 'peddled his yarn to the media [and] sold it for $18,000, to Pan Am's lawyers'. In February 1994 the new editor of New York magazine, Curt Anderson, failed to renew Byron's contract.
Francovich, meanwhile, had reorganized the production company's finances and was on course for a showing of his gominute commentary on Channel 4 in June, but he was having a bumpy ride. The accusation of 'Libyan propaganda' having not derailed the film, its opponents now sought to deny it an audience. On 21 April the Glasgow Herald printed a letter, signed by Bert Ammerman, John Anselmo and Allen Benello on behalf of '24 others' in New York and London, protesting at Channel 4's negotiations 'with a Libyanfinanced production company to purchase and broadcast a documentary about Lockerbie [that] seeks, predictably, to absolve Libya from any responsibility for the bombing'. The letter went on: 'The project's sources and researchers include an assortment of confidence tricksters who for many years have sought a market for their Lockerbie and other conspiracy stories . . . Channel 4 would not consider purchasing a documentary from the IRA about the Warrington bombing. We ask that it similarly decline to purchase material from Libya about the bombing of Pan Am 103.'
Strong stuff, considering that the production company was no longer owned by a Lonrho subsidiary in which Libya had a minority stake, and that Francovich, an independent American filmmaker, had repeatedly asserted that his contract gave him total editorial control. Coming after representations from other quarters and hints from government ministers of legal action to prevent the film being shown, the letter prompted Channel 4 to deny that there were any 'ongoing negotiations' with Francovich. There are no plans to show the film in our current schedules,' said its spokesman, apparently unaware that the station had been pressing for delivery by 22 June. He could not, however, explain why the film, provisionally entitled 'The Maltese Double Cross', had been rejected unseen.
Francovich himself had no doubt about the reason. The documentary would show that Iran and Syria were responsible for the Lockerbie disaster and that the American and British governments had concealed that information to protect strategic interests in the Middle East. The project had therefore become a target for dirty tricks by their intelligence agencies. He told the Guardian on 23 April that he had heard a month earlier that five CIA agents had been sent to Europe to discredit the production. In addition, his office telephones had been tapped, his researchers harassed and staff cars sabotaged. 'This attempt to intimidate Channel 4 was meant to bring the film to a halt,' he said. 'If we are doing such a bullshit movie, why are they putting all these resources into trying to stop us?' The Guardian went on to report that, 'he believes the letter is part of a campaign that has involved smearing collaborators and the infiltration of agents provocateurs into one of America's Flight 103 groups.'
The attitude of the British families towards the film was certainly in sharp contrast to that expressed in the Ammerman letter. Replying to it in the Herald of 23 April, Dr Jim Swire wrote that, 'unlike any of those who signed that letter, some of the British relatives have met with Mr Francovich and discussed his project with him. We had first looked at his track record as a producer of internationally shown, hardhitting documentaries mainly on subjects concerned with political coverups in other fields ... Mr Francovich assured us that he has complete editorial control over what goes into the film and accepted that the film must stand or fall on its own content, plus any objective and corroborative evidence which can be produced.' Dr Swire concluded by saying that 'loose ends' in the official version of events 'leave us uneasy and uncertain as to what the truth may actually be. Mr Francovich's version of what happened should be allowed to stand or fall on its own merits.'
There was a similar exchange ofviews in the London Evening Standard a few days later, and on 10 May' the paper printed a letter from another American family challenging Francovich to call a press conference and make his new evidence public. 'If the information is onetenth as sensational as he has alleged, there would
be an immediate and worldwide demand for his film,' wrote Daniel and Susan Cohen, of New Jersey. Preferring to complete the film first, Francovich may well follow their suggestion when the time comes, although he has already promised the British families that they will be the first to see the final cut. If so, given the bottomless well of public sympathy for them, they will certainly not be the last to see it.
But in the end, 'The Maltese Double Cross', like the Trail of the Octopus, can do no more than affirm everybody's right to the truth. Only a public trial of the Libyans accused of the bombing can finally dispose of that part of the mystery, and only a new public trial of the relatives' compensation suit against Pan Am will leave the government coverup plain to see. The prospects of either, however, are not encouraging.
On 31 January, a threejudge Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York astonished almost everyone who had followed the case with a majority decision upholding the judgment reached against the airline in 1992. Even counsel for the plaintiffs reacted cautiously. Asked to comment by The New York Times, Lee S. Kreindler told its reporter that Pan Am could have its appeal reheard by a larger panel of the Court of Appeals or petition the United States Supreme Court for a hearing. No doubt he was as unimpressed as most other observers by the Appeal Court's grasp of the facts.
'Few Americans have forgotten the bombing of Flight 103,' observed Judge Richard J. Cadamone, author of the 56page majority opinion. 'There were 259 Americans aboard Pan Am's plane from all walks of life.' In fact, sixteen nationalities were represented in the passenger list.
Judge Elsworth A. Van Graafeiland, the dissenting judge, was scathing in his dismissal of the case against Pan Am. 'At the outset, I want to state one clear and uncontrovertible fact,' he wrote. 'No one knows when, where or how the bomb got on the Pan Am plane except the person who put it there. The jury had to content itself with "expert" testimony, more properly described as educated guesses . . .'
And again: 'Having read the testimony of Pan Am's experts that the district court kept from the jury, I am convinced that had the jury been permitted to hear this evidence, there is a strong likelihood it would have rejected plaintiffs' contention that the bomb which: exploded began its deadly journey in Malta.'
And again: 'This district judge's lack of evenhandedness cannot be justified by his reliance on the indictment of two unapprehended, unquestioned and unapproachable Middle Eastern terrorists.'
And again: 'Because the house of cards to the effect that the bomb entered the stream of commerce in Malta was constructed entirely of opinion testimony introduced by plaintiffs, simple justice required that defendant's experts be given an opportunity to demolish it ... Denial of this ultimate safeguard ... was prejudicial reversible error.'
And again: 'The district judge treated this case as if Pan Am were being prosecuted for criminally violating a federal regulation and, relying on his erroneous interpretation of criminal law, precluded every attempt by Pan Am to demonstrate that it did not know or believe that the probable result of its conduct would be injury to the plaintiffs.'
And finally: 'Because I am convinced that this case should be retried on the merits, I am reluctant to detract in any way from the strength of my argument by discussing the issue of damages ... If all of the irrelevant and prejudicial evidence . . . were eliminated
from this case, it could be retried in several weeks . . . Justice demands that the matter be remanded so that it can be tried fairly.'
Encouraged by the vigour of Judge Van Graafeiland's dissent, Pan Am's attorneys filed on 28 February for a new hearing by a fivejudge court. As yet, a date has not been set.
There were also signs of renewed political pressure for an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster following the collapse of the socalled forensic evidence against the two accused Libyans. In 1990, two years after the bombing, a tiny fragment of charred circuit board found among the wreckage was identified by CIA analysts as part of a prototype timer from a batch supplied to the Libyan government in 1985. Although there was no chain of evidence directly linking the timer to Megrahi and Fhima in 1988, the Swiss manufacturer, Mebo, was said to have sold the prototypes only to Libya, and that, according to Buck Revell, who led the FBI investigation, was enough to complete the case against the two Libyans. In 'Silence over Lockerbie', a BBC Radio documentary aired on the fifth anniversary of the bombing, Revell told reporter Gerry Northam that he felt 'very, very confident that we have identified the right people'. Robert Mueller, the assistant US Attorney General in charge of the American investigation, was equally certain. The piece of circuit board was 'indisputably from a particular timer that was purchased by Libya', he assured Northam. 'It could not have been bought by anybody else.'
Always tenuous as evidence against Megrahi and Fhima, the 'indisputable' connection with Libya had already collapsed, however. In October 1993, Edwin Bollier and Erwin Meister, the proprietors of Mebo, revealed that the: timers had also been supplied to East Germany and that two more had probably been stolen from their Zurich premises. Even more damaging: was their claim that they had told British and American investigators about this a year before the indictments were returned. Not content with demolishing the 'indisputable' forensic evidence against Libya, Mebo went on to suggest, according to the Observer, 23 January, that 'the fragment might have been planted by Western intelligence agencies seeking to frame Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's regime'.
When Tam Dalyell MP asked the Prime Minister about these developments in the House of Commons, John Major acknowledged that 'new evidence has been reported in the press casting doubt on Libyan complicity. But after five years', he went on, 'the inquiry into the bombing has not revealed any evidence that implicates any country besides Libya.' The Lord Advocate' he said, remained convinced that the evidence still justified the warrants issued for the arrest of the two Lockerbie suspects.
As MP for a neighbouring constituency Tam Dalyell had followed the Lockerbie investigation closely from the beginning, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the official position. On learning of the American government's attempt to extradite Lester Coleman for perjury, he urged the Swedish authorities in November 1993, to grant him asylum. 'From my considerable knowledgeof events surrounding Pan Am 103, I have come to the considered conclusion that Goddard and Coleman's Trail of the Octopus is convincing,' he wrote. 'But, of course, if Goddard and Coleman are telling the truth, the whole position of theUnited States government over the past few years is undermined.'
To clarify the situation, Dalyell brought Coleman's plight to the attention of the American ambassador in London, Ray Seitz, and invited the comments of Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. The ambassador replied with a copy of the Justice Department press release announcing the perjury indictment, 'which pretty much sums up what the US government thinks of Mr Coleman and his claims'. Seitz also referred Dalyell to Christopher Byron's campaign in New York magazine which 'convincingly exposes Mr Coleman as a notorious con man'.
Douglas Hogg, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was rather more diplomatic. 'It would not be proper for me to comment on the allegations made by Messrs Goddard and Coleman,' he wrote, 'not least since I understand they may be related to the eight charges of perjury on which Mr Coleman has been indicted by a US Grand Jury . . . You may rest assured however that the Dumfries & Galloway Police continue to investigate all relevant new information on the Lockerbie atrocity.'
Encouraged by the Minister's response, I wrote to Chief Constable George Esson of the Dumfries & Galloway Police on 20 December:
Dear Sir,
As you will see from the enclosed correspondence, I have raised through Tam Dalyell MP t e question of why Lester Coleman was never interviewed by your officers, or, indeed, by investigators from any other agency, in connection with the Lockerbie disaster.
Despite a wellorchestrated attempt to discredit him, Coleman has insisted on the truth of his sworn affidavit for almost three years, at no small cost to himself and his family. As far as I am aware, nothing of substance has emerged in that time to challenge, much less refute, his eyewitness account of a DEA CIA operation in Cyprus in the spring of 1988, that may well have had a bearing on how and why the bomb was placed aboard Pan Am Flight 103,
In the United States, the response to his testimony has been a campaign of vilification which reached new heights of absurdity with Coleman's indictment for perjury in September. On this side of the Atlantic, however, the only response appears to be one of complete and continuing indifference.
For my part, there is little I can add to Trail of the Octopus, but I have no doubt that Coleman himself can be of material assistance to your officers. Though naturally concerned for his safety, he is prepared, even at this late stage, to make himself available for questioning, albeit at a time and place and in circumstances of his own choosing.
If you care to act on his offer, I will gladly serve as intermediary in making the necessary arrangements..
The Chief Constable replied on 5 January 1994:
I refer to your letter of 20th January, 1993 and have to advise you that the position of the Lord Advocate is, and has always been, that anyone with any evidence pertaining to the Lockerbie inquiry should approach the Dumfries & Galloway Police.
If Mr Coleman believes that he has evidence which has a bearing on the Lockerbie investigation then my Force would be happy to receive that evidence from him personally at Dumfries or in writing.
It would be inappropriate for the Police to enter into any clandestine arrangement to see Mr Coleman, especially in view of the fact that there is no specific reason to believe that there is any need to interview him and he is a fugitive from justice [italics added].
I trust that this clearly sets out my position in this matter.
Well, it didn't entirely, and so I wrote again on 21 January:
Thank you for your letter of 5th January about Lester Coleman's offer to assist your officers with their inquiries into the Lockerbie disaster.
Having engineered a fugitive warrant for his arrest, the FBI has made it difficult for Coleman to present himself in person in Dumfries. However, as a first step, he asked me to send you a copy of the affidavit he swore out in Brussels almost three years ago as this will convey the gist of what he knows about, and considers relevant to, the bombing of Flight 103.
I hope this will be of interest, although clearly, after a fiveyear investigation, you and your officers are in a much better position than he is to determine what is relevant and what is not. In his eyewitness account of events in Cyprus in 1988, he may well have omitted details that could turn out to have a significance of which he is entirely unaware.
For this reason, I was frankly amazed to learn that you saw no particular need to interview him. I was also surprised that you should assume I was proposing some sort of clandestine meeting. Coleman is prepared to be interviewed on any mutually acceptable 'neutral' ground in a Swedish police station, perhaps, or in one of several European embassies of countries unimpressed by the charges trumped up against him in the United States.
If, on reconsideration, you find any merit in his offer, I will gladly set the wheels in motion.
This letter was not even acknowledged. It was simply ignored ..
The Chief Constable evidently saw no merit in finding out what Coleman had to contribute, which was doubly discouraging because documentary evidence had just come to hand that would have satisfied the Dumfries & Galloway Police that he had been framed on the passport charge and could not, therefore, be properly described as 'a fugitive from justice'. (The charge was that Coleman had obtained a copy of a Connecticut birth certificate for one Thomas Leavy from the state's public records office and had used it fraudulently to apply for a passport in that name. According to the FBI, Thomas Leavy was born on 4 July 1948 and died two days later. A search of the state's records, however, had already shown that no one of that name had died on 6 July 1948 Now a further search had established that no one of that name had been born on 4 July either. Coleman was therefore clearly innocent of the charge. The State of Connecticut was in no position to provide him with the birth certificate of a nonexistent person.
In the early hours of 31 April 1994 Tam Dalyell returned to the attack in a House of Commons adjournment debate.
'I am driven to the conclusion', he said, 'that Her Majesty's Government simply do not want either to find or to stumble on the truth of the Lockerbie crime.
The truth, if it were established, would be altogether too awkward, too inconvenient, too embarrassing to Britain and the United States. I have been ever more curious about Lockerbie since those last days of December 1988, when a constituent friend and police officer told me that it was extraordinary how Americans, swarming around the wreckage, were interfering with evidence within hours of the crash.'
Dalyell also found it remarkable that Margaret Thatcher had made no mention of Lockerbie in her memoirs. 'But, of course, the fact is that two American Presidents asked Downing Street to keep a low profile on Lockerbie,' he went on. 'Lady Thatcher does refer to the 1986 bombing of Libya, and she seeks to justify it on the grounds that Libya could no longer back terrorists: "The muchvaunted Libyan counterattack did not, and could not, take place."
'She, of all people in the western world,' he declared, 'must have known what intelligence was saying about Lockerbie, and her memoirs cannot be squared with information that blames Libya.
'Like the Maltese Government, the Maltese police, Air Malta, the Luqa airport authorities, and, indeed, Dr John Buon Tempo, the former Maltese ambassador to the Arab states, whose mediation efforts are, I hope, being taken seriously by the Foreign Office, I do not believe that a bomb was posted yes, posted in Malta to go through the RheinMain airport and Heathrow without detection. Nor bluntly do I, as the longestserving Scottish Member of Parliament, with a history of respect for the office of Lord Advocate, believe that the Grown Office has the evidence that it claims to have and pleads that, for legal reasons, it cannot produce.'
After insisting that Lester Coleman should be taken seriously and interviewed by the Scottish police, Dalyell demanded to know 'just what negotiations have taken place between the State Department and the Foreign Office? Bluntly, I believe that there has been a major conspiracy in Washington and London to obscure the course of justice.'
In his reply, the Foreign Office Minister Douglas Hogg failed to address any of these questions, preferring instead to review the sanctions imposed against Libya by the UN Security Council. 'Our position, together with that of the French and United States Governments,' he said, 'has been that the Libyan Government must surrender the two Libyan officials accused of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing for trial in Scotland or the United States, satisfy the French judicial authorities over the bombing of UTA 772, pay appropriate compensation and demonstrate by concrete actions their renunciation of terrorism.'
And that was all.
When Sir Teddy Taylor MP, who had also convinced himself of Libya's innocence, sought to intervene in the debate, the Minister left the Chamber.
Determined not to let the matter rest, Tam Dalyell tabled a further question for the Prime Minister on 18 May.
With the prospect of the two accused Libyans being brought to trial now increasingly remote no doubt to the relief of government prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic the last best hope of getting at the truth about Lockerbie probably resides in the determination of Dalyell and others to keep the issue alive and in the attempt by Pan Am and its insurers to win a new trial of the relatives' claims against them.
But a breakthrough is always possible. As Judge Van Graafeiland pointed out, only the people who put the bomb aboard Flight 103, know exactly when, where and how it was done, and some day one of them may choose to speak. Whether anyone in government will listen, however, is another matter.
In a Beirut courtroom on 31 June 1994 Yussef Shaaban, a follower of Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Nidal, startled the world by stating that he had planted the bomb. On trial with two others for the murder of a Jordanian diplomat, he was the first member of a terrorist organization to claim responsibility for Lockerbie, a claim that may well have had more to do with seeking attention than purging a guilty conscience, but which was at least plausible enough to merit investigation.
Responding for the Dumfries & Galloway Police a spokesman announced that they had no plans to question Shaban about his 'confession'.
As for Lester Coleman, having had his say at last in Trailof the Octopus, he is content now to let others make what they will of it. He has no plans to return to the United States. Though confident the charges against him would never stand up in court, he is far from confident that the United States government would not then invent some more.
From now on, his concern is to provide his wife and children with a more settled family life than Washington has allowed them so far.
Somewhere . . .
Donald. Goddard.
June , 1994
Introduction | First Chapter | Afterward | - Order - | Related Article |
