Lester Coleman

Lester Knox Coleman III (September 25, 1943 – August 15, 2021) was an American who was the co-author of the 1993 book Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie – Inside the DIA, in which he claimed that a secret drug sting enabled terrorists to evade airport security in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan American World Airways Flight 103.

Coleman claimed he was at one point employed by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Coleman further alleged that a compromised American covert drug-operation allowed Iranian-backed terrorists – the PFLP-GC, led by Ahmed Jibril – to slip a Semtex bomb aboard the plane.

According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalist Ron Martz, in the 1980s, Lester Coleman frequently traveled through Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East and worked as a journalist, primarily in television.

Coleman had a Lebanese wife.

According to Martz, Coleman frequently used the pseudonym "Collin Knox" while publishing some works.

Tom Silewski, the managing editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine, said that Coleman used the alias Colin Knox when writing two stories for the magazine.

Micheal Hurley, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) operations in Nicosia, Cyprus, said that Coleman worked as an overseas informant for the DEA.

Joe Boohaker, a Birmingham, Alabama man who served as Coleman's defense attorney, said that Coleman worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and checked on the DEA's operations.

Although the Time magazine article on the crash of Pan Am Flight 103, "Pan Am 103 Why Did They Die?," states that Coleman was a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agent, a later article in the American Journalism Review disputes that he ever worked for that agency.

In 1985, he worked as a correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network in the Middle East.

CBN later closed its Beirut bureau, and Coleman was no longer employed by CBN.

He also worked as a public relations employee of the Boy Scouts of America in Chicago.

Schafer had worked for Coleman in Beirut for six months in 1985, and Schafer was the best man at Coleman's wedding.

After Schafer was recognized, Coleman said that he was trying to expose Schafer as being the same person as Lovejoy.

As a result of the publication of the photograph, a $26 million libel suit was filed against the magazine.

Coleman said he left the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus in 1988 and claims in his book that he was not engaged by the DIA again until 1990.

According to him, he was told to apply for a passport using a former false identity used primarily for work with the DIA.

That identity was to be a man named Thomas Leavy.

In May 1990, as he prepared for his unknown job, Coleman was arrested by the FBI and charged with applying for a false passport.

In 1990 Coleman was a resident of Mobile, Alabama.

During that year, a Chicago, Illinois grand jury indicted Coleman on passport fraud charges.

The government accused Coleman of gaining a passport under the name of a newborn baby who died years prior to the application.

According to Redding Pitt, a federal government attorney from Montgomery, Alabama, Coleman missed the bail hearing and appeared in Europe.

While away from the United States, Coleman sought asylum in Sweden, though Sweden denied his residency application.

Coleman accused the federal government of prosecuting him to try to silence Coleman's knowledge of the crash of Pan Am Flight 103.

In October 1990, ABC News and NBC News broadcast programs that used Coleman's version of the Pan Am incident.

Their stories at that time did not identify any sources by name, but 18 months later, on April 20, 1992, TIME published a story on Pan Am 103, titled "Pan Am 103 Why Did They Die?," using Coleman's version of the events and directly naming Coleman as a source.

After the publication of the article, Steven Emerson, an investigative reporter for CNN, wrote a story for the Washington Journalism Review criticizing the Time story.

The Time article that used Coleman's thesis included a photograph of Michael Schafer, a 39-year-old man from Atlanta; Coleman said that the photograph of Schafer represented a CIA double agent, David Lovejoy.

Coleman and Donald Goddard co-wrote Trail of the Octopus, which received its United Kingdom publication in 1993 and its first United States publication in 2009.

Coleman wrote that terrorists had infiltrated a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operation outside of the United States and, because of incompetence on the part of the DEA, were able to smuggle a bomb on Pan Am 103.

Bloomsbury published Coleman's book in the United Kingdom.

Hurley sued Bloomsbury in a London court.

The resulting settlement papers from the publisher stated that remaining copies of the book had been destroyed.

On September 11, 1997, Coleman stated to a New York Federal court that "...he lied when he claimed that a secret drug sting enabled terrorists to evade airport security in the bombing..."

In a plea agreement, Coleman was sentenced to time served, which was five months, and six months' home confinement under electronic monitoring.

Conspiracy theories alleging that the federal convictions of Lester Coleman were an effort to silence him and to hide the truth about Pan Am Flight 103 circulated around the internet.

Coleman's hometown was Panama City, Florida.

According to one source, Coleman once served as a news director for WSGN radio in Birmingham.