COPS WITH CAMERAS
These FBI AGENTS were photographed in Washington, DC in February, 1990. Les Coleman reports that they were taking pictures outside FBI headquarters of Americans expressing their constitutional right to march and protest againForeign Policy. What did the demonstrators get? An FBI file with their name on it.
Coleman was locked up without bail for six months after voluntarily surrendering to face Perjury charges. He is the first person ever to be charged with perjury based on an affidavit in a civil case.
His treatment while he was locked up has been labeled an "outrage" by the British relatives of the Pan Am 103 victims..
The above portion of this report was updated on October 15, 1997.
July, 1997
LOCKERBIE campaigners in Britain and America are voicing concern over the U.S. authorities' treatment of a renegade American spy who claims there has been a massive international cover-up over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103.
Lester Coleman, a former agent with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, provoked controversy on both sides of the Atlantic by claiming that the tragedy in which 270 people died was caused by an American drug "sting" operation in Lebanon that went badly wrong. He was serving in the Middle East at the time.
Mr. Coleman and his family were forced to got into exile in Europe after U.S. intelligence chiefs ordered his arrest on charges of perjury. His supporters claim that the charges were brought because he had contradicted the official American view that Libya was responsible for the bombing.
But, after living in exile for six years and in failing health, Mr. Coleman returned to the U.S. at the end of last year intending to clear his name. He was arrested at Atlanta Airport and was held at New York's Federal Detention Centre in Brooklyn, which houses murderers, drug dealers, Mob figures, and gang members.
Numerous bail applications were rejected, even though he was diagnosed as suffering from cancer and the charges he faces are relatively petty ones. Vivian Shevitz, his defense lawyer, wrote to the judge responsible for the case, condemning as "an outrage" the medical treatment Mr. Coleman received since being remanded in custody. Ms. Shevitz claims that Mr. Coleman, now in his mid- fifties, has been denied proper medical care since being returned to jail a few days after undergoing cancer surgery. A private doctor who attended Mr. Coleman described Mr. Coleman's treatment as "criminal".
Dr. Jim Swire, M.D. the spokesman for the British relatives of the Lockerbie victims, said he was disturbed at how the U.S. authorities were handling the case. "The gross maltreatment of Coleman by the American authorities appears to fit a pattern of the victimisation of people who challenge the official version that Libya was solely to blame for Lockerbie," he said.
Mr. Coleman's story, as related in his book, TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS, is relatively straightforward. During the late 1980's, Mr. Coleman was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, based in Cyprus, then a major intelligence-gathering post in the Middle East. Part of his task was to spy on the activities of a second American organization, the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Mr. Coleman claims that the DEA was operating a number of Beirut-based "sting" operations, averaging two per year, involving more than 130 paid informants, which allowed "controlled" deliveries of Heroin from Lebanon to America. The goal was the arrest of U.S. based drug gangs.
But, Mr. Coleman says the operation was infiltrated by Iranian-financed terrorists, who had been ordered to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airbus in July 1988: instead of placing a suitcase of Heroin on the flight, they checked in a suitcase full of explosives.
Mr. Coleman made the allegations in an affidavit to Pan Am during the airline's investigation into the tragedy. But it was only after he reiterated them in his book, which was published three years later, that the U.S. government responded by accusing him of perjury.
After six months held without bail, Les Coleman's lawyer obtained his release to house arrest, at his daughter's home in up state New York. His wife and three small children have not seen him since his arrest at Atlanta airport last fall. He is the first person in u.s. history charged with perjury based on an affidavit filed in a civil case.
Mr. Coleman spent 33 days in solitary confinement. He was told by the prison unit manager that his background as a u.s. intelligence agent had leaked, and it was for his own protection.
After Coleman's release, the unit manager and nine other federal prison officers were arrested by the justice department inspector general for smuggling drugs, booze and contraband into the prison for Italian Mob members.
Coleman has filed a federal tort claim citing his mistreatment.
His lawyer, Vivian Shevitz is representing him without fee. The government has even denied her expense monies.
