Site Map

TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS -- FROM BEIRUT TO LOCKERBIE -- INSIDE THE DIA

Chapter 19:

Sweden's idea of a refugee camp would not look out of place in any prosperous, middle-class suburb. Nor does its scale of support for refugees fall short of the minimum standard of life it underwrites for its own citizens. Indeed, the generosity with which the Swedish government treats the displaced and persecuted, and the numbers given asylum in relation to the country's population and economy, speak of a genuinely civilized society that, without setting out to do so, serves as both an example and a reproach to the rest of the world.

The Colemans' 'camp' was a modern apartment complex in a landscaped setting on the edge of town, with its own medical centre and children's nursery. While their claims for asylum are considered, newcomers are temporarily housed there in circumstances that, even by American standards, are little short of luxurious. Accustomed to a gulf between theory and practice in most Western professions of virtue, Coleman was astonished.

"They put us up in a three-bedroom apartment with brand-new appliances, including a TV and a computerized refrigerator, and completely furnished, down to the bedsheets. It was summer, so we bought a used bicycle to go to the market, and every other Thursday, we'd stand in line outside the office to receive our stipend, which amounted to about £700 a month.

"It was amazing. People arrive, exhausted and demoralized, expecting workhouse charity at best, and it's a shock, not to be greeted as a problem, as a bureaucratic nuisance. The Swedes never toot their horn about it, but they really care. They do all this for genuinely humane reasons. Outwardly, they may not seem a very emotional people, but they express their feelings in practical ways. They take everybody very slowly -- you have to prove yourself. But once they accept you as a friend, you're a friend for life."

Even so, the Colemans were in exile. Despite the hospitality and protection of their hosts, there were endless adjustments to make in the business of day-to-day living, to differences in outlook, culture and language, and, not least for a Southerner like Coleman and his Mediterranean wife, to a change of climate as drastic as their change of status. Above all, there was an underlying sense of impermanence that nothing could dispel. The shabby pretext for issuing a fugitive warrant was proof enough that the octopus was still out there, waiting.

Having agreed to offer the Colemans sanctuary while their application for permanent asylum was considered, the Swedish government was clearly in no hurry to arrive at a decision. 'Refugees can wait for years, unable to work or live a normal life, the uncertainty gnawing away at you day by day,' says Coleman. 'They call it "living in splendid misery".

'After a year in the camp, when it became clear to everybody that the passport charge was a phony, the police moved us into a modern apartment in town for our own protection. The rent and utilities were paid for, and they gave us a grant of 50,000 kronor to furnish it. Not a loan -- grant. At that time, before the recession really hit, we also got 600 hours of free language tuition, bus tours all over the place, picnics, computer classes, and access to all the social services open to Swedish citizens. And that's remarkable, when you remember the cost was borne by a country of only eight million people with all kinds of economic problems of their own. But even so, we were still in limbo, still awaiting a decision.'

Meanwhile, the FBI had tried to get at him through his mother. On 26 March 1992, Special Agent Robert Sleigh (pronounced 'sly') of the FBI's CI-3 counter-intelligence section stopped by her house in Birmingham, Alabama, for a chat. After Syrian George had been debriefed by the DIA, Coleman had turned him over to Sleigh so that the FBI could determine his eligibility for a resident's visa.

Introducing himself politely, Sleigh proceeded to ask Margie Coleman a series of questions about her son.

Did she know where he was?

'Me?' she said. 'You're the FBI. Don't you know where he is?'

Well, they thought he was in Sweden. Did she know if he planned to come back?

'I don't know,' she said. 'Is there any reason why he shouldn't?'

Well, that was up to him. Did her son love America?

'A whole lot more than America loves him,' she said. 'After serving his country the way he has, he deserves better than this from you people.'

Well, would he renounce his American citizenship?

'Does he have a choice?' she asked. 'You better ask him yourself.'

Well, they certainly would like to talk this over with him. Could she give them his number?

'I don't think he wants to talk to you,' she said. 'Goodbye.'

Having shown Agent Sleigh the door, she went around to a neighbour's house and telephoned Coleman from there, just in case her line was tapped.

After thinking things over, Coleman informed the Swedish police, who advised him to report the incident in writing to the attorney who was helping him with his affairs.

"It is quite interesting [he wrote], that Agent Sleigh should appear at my mother's home within weeks after you and I were told by Swedish Immigration that the evidence I have presented in my claim for political asylum may be verified by the Swedish Foreign Office. ..

"I must conclude that the Swedish government is making inquiries in the USA about me, and this has alerted the FBI CI-3, whose job is to monitor foreign governments in the USA.

"I am sure the Swedish Foreign Office is aware that their secure cable and voice traffic is being monitored by the FBI. The bottom line is that the FBI now believes that I am in Sweden and is asking some very political questions about my patriotism."

Coleman's next disturbing call was from Joseph L. Boohaker, the Lebanese-American attorney who had arranged bail after his arrest on the passport charge. Somebody had contacted Boohaker to ask about him, and the circumstances were sinister enough for Boohaker to write this report on the incident while it was still fresh in his memory:

"On Thursday, 11 June 1992, at approximately 3:00 P.M. (CDT), I received an anonymous phone call from an individual who identified himself only as a person calling from Washington, D.C. The individual had a message for me to convey to my 'friend living in the North country'. The message, roughly, was as follows:

"'Mr. Boohaker, tell your friend living in the North country that Monzer al-Kassar was arrested today in Barbados and that among his belongings was found a picture of your friend. Tell your friend to take extra security precautions.'

"When I asked for the person's identity, he refused to give it. When I asked him, 'Should my friend from the North country ask where I got the information, what should I tell him?'

"The anonymous caller said, 'Just tell him that it comes from a reliable source, and he will figure out who I am.' He continued, 'Also contact Sly [sic] and Strike 6 in Birmingham, and give him the same message.'

"I asked, 'Who is Sly and Strike 6? Is it FBI?'

"He replied, 'I can't tell you. You will have to find out for yourself.'

"I contacted Mr. Coleman, who gave me the identity of Sly. I contacted Sly and we met in my office on Friday, 12 June 1992. At that time, I gave Mr. Bob Sly the same message related hereinabove. I also related to Mr. Sly that my wife had indicated Thursday evening that the same anonymous caller had called my home looking for me and that his call was directed to my office.

"Mr. Sly was very gracious. He explained that the FBI was interested in my friend only as a fugitive from US justice. He also indicated that he wished to talk to my friend regarding Pan Am 103.

"I provided Mr. Sly with a copy of the Time magazine article written by Mr. Rowan that featured an interview with my friend and that also referenced Mr. al-Kassar. I told Mr. Sly that the article would tie together the entire matter. Mr. Sly asked for a copy of the article and I provided him with mine.

"I expressed concern that an anonymous caller would call my home and asked Sly if he could tell me anything about what was going on. He did not know. However, he took a description of the caller from me and said that the telephone company may be able to trace the origin of the call. I gave him permission to find out. He called later and said that the phone company could not trace the call to the individual number that had placed it, but he did say that if I got another such call to notify him."

When he heard what had happened, Coleman asked Boohaker to do the same thing, because there was not enough there for him to 'figure out' who the 'reliable source' really was.

'Boohaker also told me that Sleigh wanted to talk about Flight 103,' he recalls, 'and did I want to talk to him? No, I said. "Well, he seems friendly enough," said Boohaker. "And he says he remembers you as being rather a nice fellow."

"'I'm sure he does," I said. "If he calls again, tell him I'm thinking about it."'

It was the first time that anybody, British or American, concerned with the official investigation had shown any interest in talking to him about the Flight 103 disaster. After thinking about it for almost a month, curiosity got the better of him.

"I decided, well, what the hell ... I had one of those USA direct number directories in my wallet, and one day I placed a call from here to the USA direct number in Austria and called Sleigh collect. So when the operator got on the line to the FBI, she offered a call from Mr. Coleman in Austria.

"'Well, hi,' he says. 'How'ya doing? Where are you? What's going on?'

"'You tell me,' I said. I reminded him of the Syrian George episode and asked him if he'd realized I was working for the DIA at the time.

"'Well, no,' he says, like it was big news. 'No, I didn't know that. But that's not what I want to talk to you about. I want to talk about the passport charge and this Flight 103 business.'

"'Left it a bit late, haven't you?' I said. 'I'll call you back in five minutes.'

"So I hung up and called him again, this time through the Swedish direct number operator.

''I can call you from Bangladesh next,' I said. 'In fact, we can play this game all day if you like.'

"'No, come on,' he says. 'We know where you are. Let's talk about Flight 103. Let's see if we can't figure out some way to clear up this mess.'

"'Sure,' I said. 'I'll talk about it. You get that US attorney up in Chicago to drop his phony charge against me and I'll talk all you want. But I guarantee you, he won't do it.'

"'Well, it's not as easy as that,' he says. 'You know how it works. He's going to be looking for some kind of a deal here.'

"'I already know what kind of a deal he's looking for. He wants a deal to stop me talking about Flight 103. Otherwise you guys are going to be tied up in hearings from now until Doomsday.'

"'And what about you?' he says. 'You got a wife and kids. Are you being fair on them? Unless you cut some kind of a deal, you're going to be on the run for the rest of your lives. You can't just walk away from this, you know. They won't let you.'

"'Then you better come and get me,' I said. 'If you know where I am, you can have me extradited. We'll have a public hearing in a neutral court, and talk about all the juicy little details, and we'll see what an impartial judge thinks about it.'

"'Don't kid yourself, Les,' he says. 'This is the United States government you're talking about, and that you can't beat. Nobody can. If they want you bad enough, they're going to get you -- we both know that. So why don't you make your peace? Now. While you still got the chance.'

"'First drop the charge,' I said. 'Then pull the warrant. After that we can talk.'

"And I guess that must have sounded pretty final because he just sighed and said, 'Okay. I'll run it up the flagpole. If anything comes back, we'll contact your attorney in Chicago.'

"And that was it. I never heard from my attorney in Chicago."

Coleman knew in his bones that Sleigh was right. They would never leave him alone, although the chances that the FBI would resort to direct methods of the Fawaz Younis type seemed remote. It was one thing to snatch somebody in international waters, from Mexico or from a Central American banana republic and quite another to operate on Swedish soil. Besides being logistically difficult, the diplomatic fallout would be out of all proportion to the likely gain. But if force was ruled out, and probably extradition, there was still plenty of pressure that Washington could exert on the Swedish government to have him deported as an undesirable.

Trying hard to resist the claims of paranoia, and equally to avoid displeasing his hosts, Coleman signed up for his story to be told in a book.

There was no other way he could think of to defend himself against the octopus, against that ruthlessly powerful, self-protective oligarchy of senior intelligence, military and law-enforcement bureaucrats who were convinced they knew best, regardless of what the politicians had to say, and who cynically manipulated the machinery of government to cover their tracks.

As it lived away from the light and worked best in secret, Coleman felt he might be safer out in the open.

Stranded in Sweden, he also needed the money. If he restored his reputation, there was still an outside chance that he could pick up the threads of his former career, perhaps as a writer and journalist.

In the late summer of 1992, that prospect was all but extinguished by the flat-out assault on his character by Byron and Emerson in New York magazine and the Washington Journalism Review. Coleman was a soft target, as there was no risk of his responding with a libel suit, but it had an unexpected side effect. Until then, not a word about his application for asylum had appeared in Sweden, but now the country's national afternoon newspaper iDAG picked up the reference to his whereabouts in Byron's article and traced him through the immigration authorities.

He was interviewed in the conference room of his local police station. The superintendent served coffee and biscuits. And on 19 October 1992, the paper came out with this front- page banner headline:

"USA AGENT SEEKS ASYLUM IN SWEDEN
Speaks Out on Murder Threat From His Hiding Place"

Outlining how Coleman had been driven into exile, a two-page inside spread with pictures described him as 'The Man Who Knows the Truth About the Lockerbie Catastrophe'.

In a curious way, it made him feel less isolated, less like an object of no one's concern. Besides generating public awareness of his plight -- Sweden had lost two of its citizens in the Flight 103 disaster -- the iDAG interview also made it seem less likely that he would be targeted for covert action, authorized or not. To that extent, he felt more secure, particularly as the story carried the implicit endorsement of the Swedish police.

It also had the effect of dispelling his inhibitions about possibly embarrassing the Swedish government by drawing public attention to himself. Now that everybody knew he was there, the appearance of a book, with its attendant publicity, would serve only to underline his need for asylum.

And that seemed to be getting more acute. As Special Agent Sleigh had made plain, the octopus was still probing for him. From a contact in Washington, Coleman had learned that the American Embassy in London was inquiring through Interpol about his status in Sweden, to see if Swedish law provided for the possibility of deportation. Now, through another contact in the Justice Department, Coleman obtained a copy of a confidential FBI 'Investigative Summary', dated 30 March 1992, setting out the basis for the passport violation charge and the subsequent issue of a fugitive warrant.

It was the 'smoking gun' he had always hoped to find.

The charge had been rigged as a plea-bargaining counter for the government to exchange for his silence. No great care had been taken in framing it as there had never been any intention of going to trial. That would have defeated the object. But now Coleman had escaped from American jurisdiction, it was necessary to patch over some of the holes so that the charge held at least enough water to persuade the Swedish authorities that there was a real case for him to answer.

To do that, the Justice Department first had to get around the fact that Coleman had held a birth certificate in the name of Thomas Leavy since 1 March 1982, when it was given to him by the government itself. The other big obstacle it had to gloss over was that a copy of that birth certificate had already been misappropriated by the DEA, apparently to obtain a passport for one of its people in Egypt.

As no inkling of this could be revealed to Interpol or the Swedes without the frame-up becoming self-evident, there was only one thing to do, and that was to dissemble.

"This investigation was instituted on February 7, 1990 [the FBI summary began], when New London, Connecticut Resident Agency, New Haven Division, reported that they had been notified by the New London Bureau of Vital Statistics that a person identifying himself as Thomas Leavy had requested a copy of his birth certificate. Leavy's date of birth (DOB) was listed July 4, 1948, his parents were listed as John and Mary Leavy, and Thomas Leavy's address was listed as 416 County Line Road, Barrington, Illinois. A computer check of the Bureau of Vital Statistics records revealed that the real Thomas Leavy had died in New London, Connecticut, two days after his 1948 birth.

"On April 6, 1990, Richard Beckman, Chicago Passport Office ... advised the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Chicago that he had a possible passport violation. An application submitted by a Thomas Leavy on March 26, 1990, at the Arlington Heights Post Office, had a number of indicators that pointed to a violation.

"The first indication was the birth certificate for the dead baby. Other indicators were recently issued driver's license and Social Security Account numbers."

Though plausible on the surface, this raised or begged as many questions as it tried to answer.

If Coleman already had a Thomas Leavy birth certificate, issued 1 March 1982 (and still had photocopies), why would he need another one?

And why, if he did, would he apply to the New London Bureau of Vital Statistics when Connecticut's official authority for issuing birth certificates is located in the state capital of Hartford?

And why, if he did, would the New London Bureau go ahead and give Coleman, posing as Thomas Leavy, a copy of Thomas Leavy's birth certificate if a computer check revealed that he had been dead for 42 years?

And why, if it did, could Ms. Gloria Hatfield, clerk of the Records Office in New London, later find no record of the alleged death of Thomas Leavy on 6 July 1948? (When asked about his alleged birth on 4 July she explained that a birth record required the presentation of documents which the researcher did not have.)

And how did Richard Beckman in the Chicago Passport Office know that the Thomas Leavy birth certificate was for a dead baby, and thus 'the first indication' of a 'possible passport violation'?

Thus committed to a piece of pure invention (reflecting no great credit on its author's imagination), the rest of the FBI's 'Investigative Summary' was concerned to ice the cake by putting a false construction on the admitted facts of the application, but even here it stumbled from one improbability to another.

'The home and work addresses on the application,' for instance, 'came back to two separate mail drop locations ... Another indicator was that the contact person listed on the application was a relative. The contact is Lestre Colman [sic] 416 West County Line Road, Barrington Illinois ... listed as a brother-in-law.

'Investigation at Chicago revealed that the owner of one mail drop and the office manager of the second identified the photo from the passport application as Lester Knox Coleman.'

But if Lester Coleman, or anybody but an imbecile, had wished to obtain a Thomas Leavy passport for his own unauthorized use, is it likely that he would have rented two mail drops in his real name?

Or, if the passport was for his own unauthorized use, is it even remotely probable that he would have given his own name and address as a reference?

Nor did the FBI or the prosecutor anywhere suggest a motive for the application. Why would Coleman want a Thomas Leavy passport for his own unauthorized use if he already had a perfectly good one in his own name?

The only motive ever proposed was the one he had himself suggested at the time of his arrest, when he was still concealing his identity as a DIA agent. He was returning to the Middle East to research a book, he had told the FBI, and needed a new passport because his real name was known to Arab drug dealers -- but he had never seriously expected anyone to swallow that. Anybody proposing to visit an Arab country for such a purpose would normally be at pains to avoid using a Jewish-sounding name like Leavy. If Operation Shakespeare had gone ahead, the intention had been to travel on the Leavy passport only as far as Israel.

With the frame-up exposed in the FBI's own document, Coleman was not overly concerned that the Swedish authorities would take the charge at its face value or see it as grounds for deportation. But the octopus had long tentacles, and putting himself in the shoes of those who were probably now regretting that, out of deference to another agency, they had not gone for a Casolaro-type solution, Coleman approached the second anniversary of his arrival in Sweden with a growing apprehension that some new and more serious charge against him might be in the works.

If the risk of covert action had diminished, the possibility of perhaps some sort of treason-related case, properly constructed this time and backed by impeccably manufactured evidence of a kind the Swedes could not ignore, began to seem more likely. It was not a comfortable feeling for a family man, to know in his bones that Washington would prefer him to be dead.

His country had certainly not forgotten him. To mark the fourth anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster, Mike Wallace, for CBS in New York, returned to the attack by interviewing Juval Aviv in the 20 December edition of the network's flagship news programme '60 Minutes'.

CBS News had tried to inveigle Coleman into appearing also but, now wise in the ways of the octopus, he had prudently declined. Any programme produced with the help of Vincent Cannistraro, late of the CIA, Christopher Byron, fresh from setting out the government's stall in New York magazine, and Steven Emerson was hardly likely to deal objectively with anything he might have to say.

And he was right. Referring to the judgment against Pan Am in the civil liability suit a few months earlier, Wallace opened the proceedings by saying: 'It is not surprising that Pan Am and its lead insurer, US Aviation Underwriters, would appeal that verdict. What is surprising, perhaps, is that they would hire a private detective like Juval Aviv to help them avoid paying huge damage claims.'

Anyone who had not been following the case closely -- that is, all but a handful of viewers -- might have assumed from this that Pan Am and its insurers had hired Aviv after the judgment against them in an effort to avoid the consequences, that '60 Minutes' was about to report a new development. In fact, there was no connection at all between the verdict and the hiring of Juval Aviv. The juxtaposition of the two was simply to create the illusion of a news peg in order to justify a rerun of the charges already ventilated in New York magazine. Wallace was well into the programme before he acknowledged that Aviv had resigned from the case on 31 May 1990 -- two and a half years earlier.

After summarizing the always questionable construction that Aviv had placed on the intelligence data in his Interfor Report, Wallace invited Lee Kreindler, lead attorney for the victims' families, to comment on the 'brutal shock' his clients received when Aviv's findings were leaked to the media (in 1989!).

One of them, he said -- 'I love her dearly, she'd lost her husband, a wonderful lady and she said, "Lee," she said, "how do I renounce my American citizenship? The CIA killed my husband." All this is pure fabrication. Out of the mind of Juval Aviv.'

Vincent Cannistraro agreed.

As far as he was concerned, it was 'a transparent attempt to get Pan Am off the hook, which has, as its only purpose, to blame anyone else other than Pan Am for the crash of Pan Am 103'. There was never any CIA involvement with an undercover drug operation at Frankfurt airport, he said. 'No such element ever existed, no such "sting" operation existed at Frankfurt airport.' Nor was the plane targeted because of the five CIA agents aboard, returning home to blow the whistle on a rogue CIA operation.

'Completely false,' Cannistraro declared. 'First of all, there weren't five CIA agents on that plane. There were two CIA agents on that plane. And they made their travel arrangements at the absolute last minute, and therefore there was no way that they could have been targeted, or that flight could have been targeted in advance.' (He did not reveal that the agents had changed their plans on Cyprus, using the DEA's travel agents, RA Travel Masters. This had always suggested to Coleman the possibility that Hurley had told them it was all right to fly Pan Am 103 as it was a controlled delivery flight.)

Wallace then turned to Aviv's claim that he was a former member of the Mossad, a claim rejected by an Israeli source who had described him as 'a junior security officer for El Al'.

'You were fired in April, 1984, after less than eighteen months of work,' said Wallace, 'because you were, quote, "unreliable and dishonest", close quote. And [the statement] goes on to say that after that, you had been, quote, "involved during the years in various acts of fraud and impersonation". So they're lying about you?'

'I'm not saying anything,' replied Aviv. 'I do not discuss. They are free to say whatever they say. I know what I am, and I will not get into it.'

Wallace conceded that some law firms Aviv had worked for had praise for him, 'but others had charged him with everything from ripping off clients for tens of thousands of dollars for spurious investigations, to originally trying to sell his services to the families of those who were killed in the plane bombing ...' (Two years earlier, Aviv's colleague and attorney, Daniel Aharoni, had explained to Barron's that 'our heart was with the families, but the problem was there were 270 victims, and families with all levels of sophistication. How do you report to 270 different clients? And Pan Am was very clear that they wanted the truth. They said, "Let the chips fall where they may".')

Kreindler's recollection was different. According to Wallace, 'he was appalled that Pan Am and the insurers would hire a man like Juval Aviv,' and Kreindler confirmed this on camera.

'They embraced this character, Juval Aviv,' he said. 'The slightest checking on their part would have shown that he was a fraud.' (In the same Barron's article, James Shaughnessy had stated that 'we asked him for references from other law firms ... They checked out in glowing terms.')

At this point, Wallace set up Aviv for a face-to-face confrontation with Cannistraro.

'You've ever talked with him?' he asked Aviv.

'No.'

'Well, he says -- Cannistraro told us -- your theory is -- is totally wrong. He says, a tissue of fabrication.'

'Well, that's his opinion. As ex-CIA, he has to do the party line. He's not going to simply come out and say, Now that I left, I was involved in maybe cover-up. He will not say that. He can't say that.'

'So you would like to talk to Cannistraro, let's say.'

'I would talk to -- well, Cannistraro, I would like to talk to Cannistraro --'

'We're going to make that possible for you right now,' Wallace interrupted. 'Vince? Come on in.'

The results of this ambush, perhaps more appropriate to 'This Is Your Life' than a serious news programme, were not particularly illuminating.

'Almost everything you said is completely fabricated,' said Cannistraro. 'It's invented.'

'What you're doing right now -- you don't discuss the issues,' Aviv replied. 'You're attacking me again.'

'Wait a minute,' said Wallace, intervening as they both started to talk at once. 'We're talking about Pan Am 103. What you have said, Juval Aviv, is that the United States government -- that the United States government knew about that bag that was going aboard this particular flight, did nothing to stop it.'

'Yes.'

'Totally false,' said Cannistraro. 'Your report, which I have read very carefully, alleges the existence of a CIA element, which you call CIA-1, at Frankfurt airport. Totally false. Completely false. Today, Mr. Aviv has only speculation, rumours and theory that has not been supported by one scintilla of material evidence. I would like to see it before we continue this discussion.'

Again, they both started to talk, and Wallace cut through to say: 'No, no, no -- with all respect, Mr. Cannistraro, you're ex-CIA.'

'Sure.'

'It has to be suggested that perhaps a former CIA man is not going to point the finger at his own government, at his own agency.'

'Well, I assure you, CIA is probably not very happy that I'm appearing on television, saying these kinds of things. But I had personal friends on that plane who died. And I assure you that I wanted to find the perpetrators of that disaster as much as anyone wanted to. And I really resent people like Juval Aviv and all the other shysters that were involved in constructing this government conspiracy theory blaming everyone else other than Pan Am for the negligence that resulted in that disaster.'

'And the fact is,' added Wallace, cutting away, 'that in a letter dated June 1990, the lead lawyer for Pan Am's insurers, James Shaughnessy, wrote to Juval Aviv that despite probably hundreds of thousands of dollars given him, Aviv had failed to come up with, quote, "a single piece of admissible evidence" for the Pan Am case. It was at that point that Aviv finally went off the insurers' payroll. (A moment's reflection on Wallace's part -- or anybody's part -- might have suggested that Shaughnessy's letter reflected, not 'a transparent attempt to get Pan Am off the hook', but a transparent conviction that Pan Am's case could be supported by admissible evidence.)

'Even after that, though,' Wallace went on, 'Pan Am kept pushing its case in the courts and in the press, kept pushing the idea of conspiracy, focusing now on the US Drug Enforcement Agency instead of the CIA, despite vehement denials from the US government.'

He sounded aggrieved, as if defending a lawsuit were somehow perverse.

"Where did Pan Am's DEA evidence come from? [he asked]. One key source. This man -- Lester Coleman, who claims to have been a key undercover agent for the US DEA. But according to the DEA, Coleman was little more than a low-level informant for a couple of years. He was ultimately fired for, quote, 'lack of integrity and a propensity for fabrication' -- a description we heard repeated by many who have known Coleman over the years.

"Currently, he is in Europe avoiding arrest on passport fraud charges in the United States. And who helped him get out of the US to Europe, from where he supplied an affidavit in support of Pan Am's charge?

"Pan Am flew him there, free of charge."

It was a typical Byronesque shot, right down to the sleazy implication that Pan Am had helped a wanted criminal escape.

At the end of the programme, Wallace would thank Christopher Byron for his help in sustaining the reputation that CBS had already earned in the trade as the Cheap Broadcasting System, but first he had a word with Tom Plaskett, board chairman of Pan Am at the time of the bombing.

'Aviv, who is charged with being an imposter; Coleman, fleeing the United States on passport fraud charges -- these are two of the lead investigators for Pan Am?' Wallace suggested.

'I don't think it's proper to characterize them as "lead investigators",' Plaskett replied. 'In the first place, in intelligence and in the world in which some of these people operate, you simply don't have a diploma hanging on the wall which certifies their credibility.'

'Would you hire Aviv again?' asked Wallace.

'I don't think so,' said Plaskett. (And who could blame him, with media coverage like this?)

At this point, Wallace interpolated a comment from none other than Steven Emerson, who, he said, had written 'about the various parties who, he charges, knowingly bought into Aviv and Coleman's fabrication'.

'They knew they were being conned,' said Emerson, 'but they went along because they had a constellation of the same interests [sic]. The insurance companies wanted to avoid paying out. Pan Am wanted to avoid being accused of being negligent. And the media wanted a good story.'

Not unexpectedly, the principal culprits turned out to be ABC, NBC and Time magazine, who, if Emerson's remarks meant anything, must have been surprised to hear that they shared a common interest in helping the insurance companies to avoid paying out and Pan Am to avoid being accused of negligence.

Cutting back to Plaskett, Wallace quoted from a memo written by Bob Alford, former head of the claims department of the lead insurers, who was 'highly critical of the tactics used by his former employers to avoid paying those big damage claims to the families of Pan Am 103'.

'This man, Alford,' said Wallace, 'senior vice president of your own insurers, says, quote, "These families should have been compensated two years ago. The money that has been spent litigating this case is outrageous." And you acknowledge it's tens of millions.'

'Mike, it has been a very long and difficult process,' Plaskett replied, 'and I certainly have great empathy for the families in waiting so long. But no one has proven how the bomb got on the airplane. The act of wilful misconduct, on which the jury based its verdict, we do not believe will be sustained in a court of appeals.'

With this, Wallace returned to Cannistraro for his 'last word' on the conduct of Pan Am and the insurance companies.

It was 'reprehensible'. And 'despicable'.

'By the way,' added Wallace, in conclusion, 'we, like many in the media, were briefly taken in by Juval Aviv a few years back. We paid him no money but we did provide him with a letter indicating he was checking into certain stories for "60 Minutes". A mistake.'

This was a necessary admission, for Aviv had kept a copy of the letter. It had been written, not 'a few years back' but on 11 April 1991 -- long after Aviv's 'fabrication' had been leaked to the media and 'discredited'; long after Pan Am's 'reprehensible' conduct had been denounced in the media; long after ABC and NBC had knowingly allowed themselves to be 'conned' by Lester Coleman, and months after Emerson had 'unmasked' Coleman on CNN television as a 'low-level DEA informant'.

With all this information at his disposal, Wallace had written:

"Dear Juval Aviv,

"This letter will confirm that you will be working with myself and [producer] Barry Lando as a consultant on numerous assignments for '60 Minutes.'

"Sincerely,
Mike Wallace,

CBS News/60 Minutes"

A mistake?

' .... surprising, perhaps, that they would hire a private detective like Juval Aviv to help them ...?'

' ... when the slightest checking on their part would have shown that he was a fraud?'

It would be interesting to know what additional information had come Wallace's way between April 1991 and December 1992 to cause him to change his mind so completely about the competence and credibility of Aviv as an investigator. He certainly did not confide it to his viewers or, indeed, tell them anything new. In fact, with the families having already won their case against Pan Am, it was hard to see any point to the programme at all except that, like Byron's New York magazine article, it served the government's purpose in helping to create a climate of opinion hostile to any further questioning of the official line on Flight 103.

So who was 'conned'?

ABC, NBC and Time by Pan Am, Aviv and Coleman?

Or Mike Wallace by the government, Cannistraro and Byron/Emerson?

In the days when CBS News enjoyed a reputation for independence and responsible reporting, '60 Minutes' might well have been more interested in examining the substance of Pan Am's appeal than questioning its right to appeal. For Coleman, watching the programme in Sweden and remembering the days of Ed Murrow and Walter Kronkite, it was a dispiriting experience, all too consistent with the standards of television journalism that had driven him into the coils of the octopus eight years earlier.

It was a bad time in any case.

On 6 January 1993, his father died. So far away, Coleman found that hard to grasp. He would have liked to have been there when his father's ashes were scattered on the lake. He would have liked to have felt, and to be, closer to his mother, and his children by his former marriage. His son was growing up and he had missed his daughter's marriage. There was something dream-like still in not really belonging anywhere, in waiting endlessly in exile for something to happen.

In February 1993, he heard on the grapevine that the Department of Justice had empanelled a Federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia and was trawling through his record, calling witnesses who had known him in his six-year spell with the DIA.
Clearly, there was to be no forgiveness for anyone who had tried to bring out the truth about Flight 103 and the tragedy at Lockerbie. Among the grand jury's other targets were Juval Aviv and James M. Shaughnessy.

Then in March, just two months short of the second anniversary of the family's arrival in Sweden, Coleman heard that his application for permanent residence had been denied.

Go to Next Page