I Solemnly Swear: Conmen, Dea, the Media and Pan Am 103

By Kenton V. Smith and Micheal T. Hurley

Smeared by cheap innuendo and false accusations alleging he is responsible for having allowed a bomb aboard Pan Am 103, Micheal T. Hurley, career law enforcement veteran, faces a dilemma as real as his lifetime savings: bet everything that truth would win out in a court of law or just surrender to that which he knows to be wrong. Succumb or fight? Capitulate or resist?

I Solemnly Swear captures his answer to that dilemma and presents a diverse group of heroes and traitors, lawmen and outlaws, the innocent and the guilty who bounce between Seattle, Larnaca, London, Washington, DC, Frankfurt, and Fort Lauderdale.

In an international game of cat and mouse, Hurley spends his last three years as a DEA Supervisory Special Agent being jerked around by a media that is all too willing to criticize the US Government and to mar Hurley's reputation as a competent international narcotics agent. This is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 26, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469770796

Kenton V. Smith

Micheal T. Hurley, a retired Supervisory Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), served as a full-time law enforcement officer for over thirty-two years, six and a half with the Oxnard, California Police Department as a patrol officer and detective. While with DEA his foreign assignments were in outposts such as Ankara, Turkey, and Kabul, Afghanistan. Along with his wife Carol, Hurley served six years in Cyprus with area responsibility for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel as well. His domestic assignments included Los Angeles, Washington DC, Little Rock, New York, and Seattle. His association with law enforcement organizations now spans more than 50 years. His current law enforcement affiliations include, being a life member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the board chairman for the Law Enforcement Association of Southwest Washington, the 2nd vice president of the International Police Association’s Region 24, a member of The International Narcotics Officers Association, a member of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents, and a charter member of the Oxnard Police Alumni Association commonly known as The Fuzz That Wuzz. Kenton Smith has spent most of his adult life teaching English at a small high school near Mt Rainier in Washington State. Smith, semi-retired, chooses to teach today at Centralia College East, a small satellite college also near Mt. Rainier. Smith was the co-author with Micheal Hurley of I Solemnly Swear: Conmen, DEA, the Media and Pan AM 103 and has since authored The Pipsqueak Kid, with Micheal and his brother Jerry Hurley’s assistance. Kent has received three Teachers of the Year Awards --- one from students, one from his fellow teachers, and one from the community which he serves --- and he treasures them as some of his highest achievements, although it is as a writer that Kent feels most comfortable. He has written several plays, one non-fiction work about the actual teaching of writing, and numerous short stories. At the college level Kent usually teaches English 101, English Fundamentals, American Drama, Film, or Creative Writing.

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All Rights Reserved © 2004 by Micheal T. Hurley and Kenton V. Smith

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

iUniverse, Inc.

For information address: iUniverse, Inc. 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com

Book cover design by Jeff Layton, website: www.site-designs.net.

ISBN: 0-595-29947-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 0-595-66084-3 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-7079-6 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of the 270 victims of Pan Am Flight 103.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

INTRODUCTION

1 Terrorism over Lockerbie

2 Breaking News—Twenty-Two Months Later

3 Official Confirmation

4 Headquarters Calling

5 Interrogations and Meetings

6 Disclaimers and Denials

7 Fax for Micheal in London

8 The Aviv Report

9 The Aviv Report: Part II

10 The INSLAW Affidavit

11 Time’s Cover Story

12 Unraveling Time’s Cover Story

13 The Donahue Affair

14 Coleman’s Indictment

15 The Tale of the Octopus

16 Statement of Claim—Penguin’s Paperback

17 The Maltese Double-Cross

18 Security for Costs, Defense and Reply

19 Channel Four Television—London

20 COLLATERAL DAMAGE—BRUSH FIRES

21 Taking Statements

22 Statement in Open Court—More Statements

23 Night and Day

24 Queen’s Bench XIII

25 Coleman Surrenders

Afterword

APPENDIX Documents

Selected Bibliography

The Authors

Acknowledgments

It would be disingenuous of me to say that I did not enjoy writing this book even though it forced me to relive one of the darkest and most stressful decades of my life. To thank everyone who made this book a reality would necessitate me thanking Libyan Strongman, Muammar Qaddafi, and the other charlatans and money grabbers who teamed up with my arch nemesis to spin and re-spin the bizarre deceit that forms the genesis of this story.

I do not want to do that. I will stick to thanking all the good people who propped me up when I was down and encouraged me to keep on writing, editing, and banging my head against the impenetrable wall put up by the mainstream publishers and their cadre of agents.

Whenever I look at the calluses on my writing finger, my thoughts go immediately back to the early seventies, when my boss and dear departed friend, Francis

L. Frank Briggs, had a standard response to my every suggestion: Write it up! So I wrote it up. From that time on I spent my career filling file cabinet after file cabinet.

Never in my wildest imaginings had I thought that I would write a book to tell the world that the mainstream media was irresponsible in its reporting about the single most horrific terrorist act against American citizens prior to 9/11.

First and foremost, I want to thank my soul mate, my partner, my wife, Carol, for honoring those Valentine’s Day vows of 1980 and standing by me when I hocked our retirement and life’s savings to challenge the evil-doers who were bent on destroying a reputation that I had spent a lifetime developing only to line their pockets while trying to divert the course of justice away from Libya, a terrorist nation.

Next, my co-author, Kent Smith, who not only paid for every other breakfast in the shadow of Mt. Rainier while developing the outline, but who also gave up big chunks of his retirement to write, re-write, guide, edit, correct and pare down the voluminous drafts to a readable manuscript, while trying hard to preserve my voice throughout.

Although I can’t possibly name all of those who helped me through these trying times, I will name those who have stood out the most: Jeff Layton, sitedesigns.net, who managed to keep my computers humming along and used his many talents to design the cover; William Michael Knight for lending his copy-editing eye to the draft and his offering of sound advice; Neil Compton for his reading and re-reading of the manuscript and telling me when it needed some refinement; John McCurley for his support, long standing encouragement and ideas; Lloyd Burchette and Ron Martz for their help and constant encouragement, not only through the lawsuits, but also through the processes of getting this story into print; Richard Howard, my solicitor and friend, without whose support I would have been beaten before I started.

It goes without saying that I dearly thank those who helped with their statements and other assistance during the lengthy court hearings. Dan and Susan Cohen, who lost their daughter, Theodora, and Nazir Jaafar, who not only lost his son, Khalid, but who also had to spend the next several years under assault from the media which was all too anxious to falsely accuse Khalid of being the Bomb Carrier in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Both the Cohens and Nazir Jaafar—and my friend Dan O’Connor, who lost his life at Lockerbie—stood out as inspirations for me to continue when it looked like all odds were against me. They helped wherever they could to ensure that the truth of Pan Am 103 survives.

Preface

This is a true story. It is an episode in my life’s journey that I could have done without. I have written the story in the most logical way possible given the chaotic sequence of events that affected my life and the way I dealt with it. Obviously, in Chapter One, I had to use my imagination since there is no living person on this planet who could accurately chronicle those horrific events. In trying to reconstruct conversations from so long ago, I cannot claim that they are all verbatim transcripts. I have done the best I could from memory. Suffice it to say that these conversations occurred, if not exactly as recorded here, at least they are faithful to the truth.

When quoting certain passages from the numerous documents that I have cited, my spell checker was more comfortable with the American version of English rather than the British. To assist my readers when coming upon an unfamiliar name in a foreign language, I have used a standard transliteration of these names because they are spelled in several different ways in the various newspapers and periodicals from which I have quoted.

In attempting to recreate my outrage and mood, I have, at times, had to resort to occasional crudity, profanity, vulgarity, and sarcastic comment. Please accept my apology if such language offends your sensibilities. I accept full responsibility for my own thoughts and opinions that I share with you.

Henry David Thoreau once described a scene he witnessed in which two ants from different hills fought a pitched battle with each other on a wood chip. One ant eventually lost a leg and limped away. Thoreau wondered if these ants might both have spent their declining years sitting on the front porch of an old folks’ home, each one attempting to convince the other that they had fought for some great principle.

Similarly, I, too, found a battlefield where I had least expected one, at a time when I least wanted one. Two forces came together for a colossal showdown. On the battlefield of human endeavor good and evil vied for their moment in the sun. On such a battlefield the concepts of good and evil are clear-cut.

Wherever good and evil face each other, whether in colossal or miniscule showdowns, goodness cries out for victory. There is no pick and choose. We must protect all that is good, always.

I fought a battle to protect the truth. I fought a battle to defeat a pervasive evil slithering throughout the ever-present media. Was it worth the effort? What would my life had been like if I had buckled under? What pleasures and enjoyment did I give up? What would my experience have included if I had not acted as I had? I once read, There are no birds in last year’s nest. From my vantage point today, I can’t help looking backward, wondering what the empty nest of those years would have contained if I had done nothing. Would my friends have known me anyway? Does a man have to earn his reputation twice?

Like Thoreau’s ant, I have limped off to my front porch. The battle has consumed too many years of my life and has devoured my savings that I had hoped would have been for my front porch sitting.

At times, I feel a bitterness gnawing at me, an anger possessing far more power than it deserves, resentment taking more of me than I should have given. If I had not gone onto this battlefield, would evil have won, ultimately, or does goodness, ultimately, win, regardless?

Ah, we do not know the answer to that one, you and I. Onto the battlefield once more in the name of all that is good and holy, always.

There is no pick and choose about it.

Micheal T. Hurley

Supervisory Special Agent-Retired

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

INTRODUCTION

Sliding out of bed quietly so as not to disturb my wife, Carol, and Raggs, our Terrier Poodle mix and native of the island of Cyprus that was curled up beside her, I started my morning as usual. This first morning of winter was chilly in our old farmhouse nestled amongst the Alders and Conifers on the Western slopes of the Cascade Mountain range in Washington State. I climbed quietly down the dark stairs, stoked the fire, our main source of heat, brushed my teeth, washed my face and snuck silently back up the stairs to my office where I fired up my computer to check my e-mail. After going through the business mail I noticed one from a friend that had an attachment from a website I recognized as the Rumor-mill.

I didn’t need the attachment to remind me that it wasn’t a usual morning at all. It was December 21, 2000, the twelve year anniversary of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

I had never forgotten.

The attachment to my e-mail meant that I would have a specific interest in what the Rumormill had to say this morning, and it would be something about my arch nemesis, Lester Coleman. I had received several such e-mail attachments recently, all of which were crying out in desperation for a letter campaign to secure the release of one Lester Knox Coleman III from federal prison, to expose his maltreatment there, and to explain how this political prisoner was being unfairly treated by a government bent on destroying his credibility because he had the inside scoop on the U.S. government’s involvement in the Pan Am 103 tragedy.

Today, I opened the attachment and found a posting by someone named Doretta entitled & One More Letter to Write. Doretta was soliciting letters of support for Coleman to remain custodial parent of his three children. Doretta wanted the letter writers to inform the judge in that case of the …circumstances of his ordeal, the outpouring of support that led to his release, and the fact that his original affidavit concerning Lockerbie has been corroborated by other witnesses—and that the truth is slowly but surely emerging in the on-again off-again trial in Zeist. I believe Les told the truth and I want the judge to know this.

I stared at the screen and wondered how anyone could believe anything Coleman had to say after all that had transpired.

Doretta said that the hearing would take place sometime after January 1, 2001, and she had asked writers immediately to send their cards and letters to the judge.

Even though Doretta would not have liked it, I have to admit that I was very tempted to write a letter of truth to the judge. I did not because I was busy writing this book instead. A book would be a better way to explain the whole Cole-man-Pan Am 103 affair. Even a book couldn’t say it all. There were just not enough words in the dictionary to explain it all.

It has been well over ten years now since Coleman had injected me, personally, into the Pan Am 103 media scam. As a civil servant for thirty-six years of my life I had learned to accept a certain amount of criticism from those that I served. Sometimes, there were vicious lies which ended up in the press. But I had never been flat out accused of being an accessory to murder before. Lester Coleman was a first. He had a grudge and a willing mass media that blew the socks off of any misconceptions I may have previously possessed about truth, justice, and the mass media.

I made my way back down the stairs and stirred the hot coals to re-ignite the kindling I had placed in the stove. I stared at the fire as it started to blaze and thought of how my Pan Am 103 story had begun in such a bizarre fashion in the wee hours of a fall morning in 1990.

The friendly glow of a fire in a wood-burning stove can make a person reminisce—damn it I had wanted to do most of the events in my life. For the most part, it has been a premeditated life. I have set goals and trudged after them. And, like many people, I have my regrets, too. Too many cars. Unsuccessful marriages. A battle of the bulge. Credit cards.

But you are holding what I most did not want to do. More than anything, I regret the need to have invested yet even more of my short life in one of the dirtiest, most contemptible, and inauspicious periods in American history. Although Shakespeare wrote that truth has a voice and it will out, it does not do so on its own. Without breath, without the human ingredient, it will just lie there, gasping for air while guilty people continue traipsing through the pages of time stomping on all that is beautiful and good, pure and uncontaminated, bright and wonderful. This book is for the beautiful and the good.

This book is the voice of truth.

Shakespeare was right.

1

Terrorism over Lockerbie

And the stately ships go on to their haven under the hill. But, O, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.

—Tennyson.

This is your Captain speaking. We are just about to reach our cruising altitude of 31,000 feet and will be shutting off the Fasten Your Seat Belt sign in a few minutes so you can move freely about the cabin.

Flickering as if it had a short—not a comforting thought while a person is 31,000 feet up—the sign finally blanked out.

For your safety, however, we ask that while you are seated, please keep your seat belt fastened. Our route this evening will take us up over Scotland, then westward over the Atlantic across the southern tip of Greenland before we enter US air space and start our descent into New York’s JFK Airport.

His voice sounded strong, healthy, sure. The voice of a God who held you in the palm of his hand, some thought.

Our anticipated arrival time is 10:35 PM, which puts us into New York 35 minutes behind schedule due to our delay at Heathrow. So, please sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight. The flight attendants will be around serving your evening meal in a few moments. Thank You.

While the flight attendants prepared their drink carts and the evening meal, a loud explosion in the forward baggage hold—the results of a Toshiba radio/cassette player packed with Semtex plastic explosives—ignited and literally ripped the wings off of the Boeing 747. Two hundred fifty-nine people found themselves free-falling through the air. Experts estimate that at 31,000 feet passengers who survived the blast would have lasted no more that eight to ten seconds before losing consciousness from lack of oxygen. It seems so long: one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five, one thousand six, one thousand seven, one thousand eight is a long time to free-fall; it is not enough time, however, to review a life.

There was no Christmas in Lockerbie that year. No one stood in the village square and made an announcement. No one printed such a headline. No one had to. To many people God Himself was dead. Perhaps He had never existed, some thought. No good God would have let such colossal carnage occur like a gentle rain over the Scottish hillside, ending the lives of the 259 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Eleven residents of that Scottish village also died as a wing tank full of aviation fuel exploded in the village vaporizing everything in close proximity.

On the ground, two women, still holding hands, sat buckled into their airline seats looking so very life-like, looking as if they were about to speak. Further afield, a man knelt priest-like in front of nothing, his unanswered prayer long since over, his lips perhaps still forming an amen. It was not difficult to imagine the words: Dear Heavenly Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others who trespass against us. His body balanced there, unsupported, in defiance of the laws of physics, and why not? He, too, perhaps, believed that God had abandoned them. For him and the others it was the holocaust question. Where was God when He was needed? Am I a test of faith, many asked then and many ask now. To believe without logic, in defiance of reason, that was faith, but this test, this analysis, did not occur then. That would come later. Now was only, Where’s my Sarah? My Dad? My daughter? My Mother? Now was disbelief, now was shock as millions turned to their televisions and made phone calls for the truth and heard in reply, I am sorry to have to tell you this. I have terrible news, or, worse yet, nothing definite, and the television continued into the long nights and days as witnesses described the fiery twinkling out of lives extinguishing themselves over a Scottish village. Twisted sheet metal. A jackscrew. An arm. A leg. The burned-out hulk of the forward cabin of Pan Am’s Boeing 747, Maid of the Seas. Dinner trays scattered throughout 85 square miles of Scottish landscape.

In light of such stuff, does all hope perish.

Loved ones did not arrive that holiday season. Families everywhere, if they did not already know, began to suspect the awful terrible news and in only a matter of hours suspicion turned to awful terrible truth. A bomb had exploded in a forward cargo hold.

Pan Am Flight 103 had departed London’s Heathrow Airport late. That lateness had changed the site of the explosion. Had it not been late, Lockerbie would have been celebrating Christmas.

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the world thirsted for an explanation of how a bomb could have made it past security and onto Flight 103. Many theories were advanced. The Daily Express of London ran a front-page picture identifying a young Lebanese boy as the bomb carrier. Inaccurate, unfair reportage. Awful, terrible journalism. A tragedy that was almost equal to the devastation caused by the explosion itself was just beginning in the newspapers, on television, and in news magazines. Before the business surrounding this barbaric act of terrorism would be concluded, dozens of innocent people would have their lives inexcusably and irretrievably altered. Some guilty people, hiding behind literary and broadcast nameplates, should be thoroughly ashamed for reporting the hurtful propaganda and misinformation peddled to a gullible audience at the behest of a terrorist nation and it’s stable of greedy minions.

Whatever else the death of 270 people in Lockerbie meant, it did not mean that terrorists should win.

2

Breaking News—Twenty-Two Months Later

What is reported of men, whether it be true or false, may play as large a part in their lives, and above all in their destiny, as the things they do.

—Victor Hugo—Les Miserables

Suddenly, I felt a stabbing pain in my right side and heard a ringing in the distance. Damn it, Micheal, it’s the phone! Get the phone!

Okay, I mumbled as I nestled my head back into the pillow, little realizing that my life was about to be altered irrevocably and forevermore.

Reality hit as I rose out of the depths of a solid, enjoyable sleep. Popping up into the darkness of the bedroom, into the here and now, side aching, I realized that my wife had her elbow cocked for another kamikaze attack but this time I was awake. That loud, obnoxious ringing was coming from our living room.

My God, why were we getting a telephone call at this hour? It had to be bad news. Those were the only calls you received in the middle of the night. Carol was nudging me to move a little quicker. The ringer on that phone was not designed for giving wake-up calls. I staggered out of bed and clumsily made my way to the darkened living room. The only phone in the apartment was somewhere on the floor among the helter skelter packing crates. The coffee and end tables were gone as were the chairs and couch. We had moved dining chairs into the living room and were using the packed moving boxes as our end tables. Thank God we would be out of this cramped apartment in a couple of days and into a nice rambler in a quiet neighborhood.

We had spent the previous six years in Cyprus where I had been assigned to the American Embassy as the Senior Attaché for the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), trying to stem the flow of drugs into the United States from the Middle East. After I completed my six-year overseas tour, DEA’s Management reassigned me to the DEA Seattle Field Division to finish out my career. I was fortunate that an opening existed at my grade level in the Seattle Field Division at the same time my overseas tour was about to end. Washington State was the home I left as a teenager to join the Navy and my ultimate goal in life was to return there.

Recovering still from the jet lag after our move home from Cyprus, I felt my way along the wall, as my toe found a fully packed cardboard box sitting directly in its path. I went over the box with the full force of my 6’1" 235 pounds hitting the floor like an uncoiling Slinky. There, right in front of my nose was that Slim Line Princess telephone loudly calling for me to pick it up. I grabbed at it. Not a graceful sight. Micheal T. Hurley, DEA Supervisory Special Agent, formerly from Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, now of Seattle but, most currently, from the floor of an apartment directly under the airport flight path.

Hello? I mushed from a dry mouth.

I finally got the mouthpiece turned. I was still trying to make sure that the earpiece was in its proper position so I could hear the response. I couldn’t remember right then if the cord was on the talking or hearing end. Of all the dumb-ass things to forget. I must have landed on my head.

Hello, Micheal?

There was some hesitancy in the male voice and I noticed a hollow sound that was typical of overseas calls. I didn’t recognize the voice and he obviously didn’t recognize mine. I would bet, however, that the sun was shining on the other end of the phone while we were just beginning our fall rainy season.

Yes?

Micheal Hurley?

What time of morning was it, anyway, I wondered. My internal clock told me very clearly that I hadn’t gotten my sleep out. It was still pitch black outside and the airplanes weren’t taking off from the Seattle Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac) yet. The planes didn’t seem to take off and land from about ten at night until roughly six in the morning. Then from early in the morning until late at night the airplanes would take off from SeaTac flying directly over our apartment, which made having any type of conversation a series of short clips between flights. When we had a telephone call, the party on the other end would be privy to the noise of the jet engines from our end of the conversation. Sometimes, the party on the other end would keep right on talking, even though they must have known we couldn’t hear a word they were saying.

I had asked Carol when she went apartment and house hunting to find us a place in Federal Way, a nice, quiet, little town about midway between Seattle and Tacoma on the old Highway 99, which I remembered well from when I lived in Washington as a kid. I remembered a combination gas station and store there and not much else. That was just about the time that I-5 was being put in as a part of the interstate freeway system. I wanted to live south during the time I continued working in Seattle so that we would be closer to our retirement property. She found us a nice apartment, but Federal Way was not as nice as I remembered. It had grown since my youth and was now one of the larger and more congested cities in Washington State. And SeaTac had become one of the busiest airports on the West Coast. I was glad our stay was only temporary. After living in Los Angeles and New York I wanted to be away from the gridlock and high volume traffic. And I didn’t want to live under the sound of jets taking off, even in the daytime. What did I get? Seattle, gridlock capitol of the world, and a living room sitting at the end of the tarmac.

Yes, this is Micheal Hurley, I answered hesitantly. There weren’t too many people to whom I had given that phone number since I knew it was only temporary.

This is John Cooley, ABC News, London; you may recall we met in Cyprus. I am sorry for calling you so early over there. Were you still in bed? What time is it?

He was asking me what time it was? How would I know? I was on the floor, in my underwear, in the middle of a stack of cardboard boxes, and it was pitch black. We didn’t have one of those clocks that light up in the night setting on any of our packing boxes. John Cooley wasn’t one of those I had given my temporary number.

Uh, yea, but that’s all right.

I did remember John Cooley. He was an older gentleman with white hair, a sport coat, dress shirt, tennis shoes, and a tie. I couldn’t remember what story he was working on when I met him in Cyprus, but thought it must have had something to do with illegal drugs, since that was my forte.

Micheal, I was wondering if you would mind talking to one of our producers? She is working on a major story and we thought you might help.

Ah, yeah, sure, John, I mumbled from my nest in the cardboard boxes, always wanting to help the media get their stories straight—and often wondering later why I ever bothered. Yeah, put her on.

Sometimes, there seemed to be an arrogant attitude in much of the media. With some, their motto was something like, Why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Being an optimist, I was always hoping that I could help my clients, the American taxpayers, get a more accurate picture of what was going on in my world if I could only get the media to get it right once-in-awhile.

The throbbing in my toes continued. My body seemed to be stuck in an electronic pause mode, going neither forward nor backward, just flickering.

Great, Micheal, I knew I could count on you. I hope you are all right though. You sound a little, I dunno, down-in-the-mouth. Are you sure you’re all right? John asked.

Down-in-the-mouth? Is that what he said? God, I hate understatement.

Yea, I’m fine, John. Just go ahead and put her on, I mumbled as I rolled onto my back. Jeez, I must do something about my mumbling. I have a bad habit of trying to talk softly and many times it ends up as just plain mumble. To make matters worse I tend to hold my right hand to my mouth, index finger laid firmly on my upper lip, thumb extended along the jaw line and the three other fingers firmly against my chin. I do this consistently when I am in deep thought. At times I pet my mustache with the index finger. I wondered if I wasn’t subconsciously looking for the cigarette that used to hang there. Carol has a special signal for me to move my hand away from my mouth by making as if she’s slapping a fly away from her chin. She is so subtle in her gesture it would take a microbiologist to catch her at it. I usually get the point, which puts a sparkle in her beautiful brown eyes, as if to say, Good boy.

Sure, I’ll just hand the phone over to Linda Mack, who will be doing the story, John said. Nice talking to you, Micheal.

Likewise, John, glad to help, I replied. No small talk. That was John Cooley. Just down to business. I must have made some impression on him. He tracked me down in my temporary quarters. I wondered what time it was in London. It must have been close to quitting time over there. It had to have been pushing toward five in the morning West Coast time.

Hello, Micheal? This is Linda Mack. Thanks for talking to me. We are working on a story about the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. Do you recall the incident?

What? Had she just called it an incident? The most horrendous, terrorist attack in recent years, the murder of 270 innocent civilians—passengers, crew and Lockerbie residents—and now it boiled down to an incident. I remembered when we heard the news in Cyprus. The entire Embassy was devastated. We all thought about the grief the victims’ families would be going through. The embassy staff gathered in the Ambassador’s residence for a memorial. It was a very sad time for all of us having lost Dan O’Connor on that flight. He was my friend. He was one of our own.

My thoughts turned quickly to Dan’s eyes. I had seen fear there. Fear was showing in his eyes, but he was determined. He was going diving. We were at the swimming pool at the International School in Nicosia, Cyprus, when I took Dan by the vest used to control buoyancy underwater, and gave him the okay signal. After he responded okay I indicated with another hand signal that we were going down. But Dan’s eyes were telling on him. He was afraid, as are most new students when they are being taken to a depth underwater for their first time, where they have to remember to equalize their ears, to breathe continuously and not to hold their breath. Remembering to breathe underwater was perhaps one of the most difficult of fears for all new divers, since most had been practicing breath-hold diving for years before taking up scuba diving.

Dan was no different from the rest. He was anxious and that anxiety showed clearly in his eyes. As we exhaled and started our descent I saw Dan’s eyes talking to me through his mask. They were saying Micheal, please don’t let me drown. As we settled to the bottom and re-established our neutral buoyancy Dan’s eyes gave me another very clear message. His eyes were gleaming. Dan was hooked on scuba diving.

Later, I saw that same gleam of anticipation and happiness in Dan’s eyes when he and I discussed the prospect of him becoming a DEA Agent. But it was the fear that I saw in his eyes on that first underwater dive that has stuck with me through the years. There would have been fear in Dan’s eyes and there would have been no happy ending. That is the image I see every time I think of Pan Am 103 being blown out of the sky at 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland. I cannot imagine the brutal horror that Dan and the 258 other innocent people on board Pan Am 103 must have gone through in the eight to ten seconds, after the explosion, that they could have remained conscious. Sometimes, I count out the seconds, 1001 through 1008, and wonder what would have been going on in my mind if I had been one of those unlucky passengers or crewmembers. Those eight to ten seconds must have seemed like an eternity after being thrust, unsupported, into open airspace at 31,000 feet.

Did Dan in those split seconds wish he had been married?…Did he wish he had had children?…Was he looking forward to working with DEA?…Did he think of God?…Jesus?…His Mom and Dad?…Did he think of us at the embassy?…

All major newspapers on December 22, 1988, headlined the Pan Am jet crash in Scotland and for several days, thereafter, speculated on what brought down the Boeing 747 Jumbo jet. On December 31, 1988 London’s Daily Express newspaper even went so far as to headline Khalid Jaafar, a young Lebanese/American who had died in the crash as the Bomb Carrier. That was the beginning of another very long an unwarranted nightmare for Khalid’s family.

Yes, Linda, I remember. I had a friend on Pan Am 103.

I have grieved for Dan but it is the image of fear in his eyes that I can never forget. Was it with him then? Sweet Jesus. The floodgates of memories had been opened.

Dan and I had talked at length, shortly before the bombing that ended his short life, at one of those required embassy functions where you sought out a friend with common interests. Dan was stationed in Cyprus for the U. S. State Department as the Regional Security Officer responsible for overseeing the security in the construction of a new American Embassy in Nicosia. He was young and so clean cut he could have passed for one of the marine security guards assigned to the embassy. He had decided that he wanted to be a DEA Agent. I was very pleased with the prospect and I had encouraged him. I considered it a compliment that he would want to work for the DEA and I was very selective in whom I thought should join our ranks. I thought Dan would fit in well and would be a great asset. He was the low-key, soft-spoken type who was also a self-starter. He hit the deck running when it came to getting his mission accomplished. Dan was going back to the States after the first of the year for more in-service training.

I had Dan’s recruitment package on its way when he died on Pan Am Flight

103. Dan’s death was doubly tragic for he had left Cyprus early to get to his father who had been admitted to the hospital. I felt the floodgates closing. Goodbye again, Dan, an ordinary-appearing, extraordinary person.

And now Linda Mack had asked if I recalled the incident?

Why would ABC News be calling me, at this time of morning, to talk about the bombing of Pan Am 103? I was just a drug cop, I cogitated. But I did have vast experience in the Middle East. Maybe they found a Middle East connection and wanted to do some fact checking on Middle East culture. Enough cogitating, I cogitated. Why not just ask?

What can I do to help, Linda?

I was finally pulling myself out of my sleep and getting better situated on the floor. But my mind was racing trying to figure out why ABC News had called me. About that time Carol walked into the darkened living room, found the light switch, and flicked on the overhead light. It was blinding. Following her was Raggs, our poodle terrier mix that had adopted us in Cyprus. Raggs came over and curled up beside me on the floor. Carol, her neck length red hair looking as if she had just brushed it, was dragging a bed cover behind her. Her brow was lowered as she looked quizzically at me lying, half naked, on the carpet with my Slim Line Princess phone next to my ear and Raggs vigorously scrubbing my face. After 10 years of marriage I knew that Carol’s hands turned palms up meant she was asking, What is the phone call about, Micheal? She didn’t seem to notice that I was lying scrunched in between the wall and boxes and was not in the most comfortable of positions to be talking on the phone. I gave her the old I’ll—tell—you—after—I—get—off—the—phone signal (index finger in the air) as she settled into one of the dining chairs that had become our living room furniture. I also gave her the, I—need—a—pillow signal, patting the back of my head. She was sleepy and didn’t get it.

I’ve got a few questions for you if you don’t mind, Micheal, Linda said in her noticeable British accent.

Not at all, I replied still wondering what they could be.

We are working on a story and have a source that said the DEA was involved in controlled deliveries and that was how the bomb made it onto the plane.

I sat bolt upright, my mouth opening and closing trying to grab some suitable words in response. None came to me. Some thoughts take a person by such surprise they are oxygen depriving. I had heard, of course, some previous rumor the press had put out alleging government involvement in Pan Am 103’s bombing but I had dismissed it as pure fantasy. I knew how the government worked and I knew that, if it were true, there was not a chance they could keep something like that under wraps. I was now wondering what Linda Mack was doing. Was she saying that DEA blew up the plane? Did she think I knew something that would confirm her source? Where was this coming from, I wondered. Finally, words formed in my mouth.

Let me tell you, Linda, that’s extremely doubtful, simply because the conduct of a controlled delivery is such that a DEA agent would have accompanied any controlled delivery and, since we didn’t lose a DEA agent on Pan Am 103, there was no controlled delivery. It’s that simple.

I hoped that I was getting through to her, but something in her voice made me think otherwise.

Well, our source seems to be reliable. He has worked for DEA and we may have a means to get official confirmation of his information.

My brain kicked into high gear, as I thought, oh no, not him again. Is Lester Coleman up to his vicious media mischief again? It would not be the first time Coleman had tried to pass himself off as a DEA employee. Not only did he do so in Cyprus, when he used the same ploy to worm his way into an apartment rental, but he had also used it to try to get out of a simple traffic ticket in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Or could it be that Coleman was working on a more serious scheme? Was he upset because he had been blacklisted and could no longer be an informant for DEA? He had threatened DEA that he would expose secrets about DEA operations in the Middle East if he were not helped with his legal problems in Chicago. He had also told me before he fled Cyprus, with the Cyprus Police hot on his tail, that when he writes his book he would get even with me for blacklisting him. I had already had some experience with that when I had to respond, in July 1988, to a terse memorandum from my boss who had received some bogus Coleman stories. Fortunately, by the time my boss received my response he also had been given the correct story by the two Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters who had originally fallen for one of Coleman’s fabricated stories. I wondered if maybe Coleman was not only trying to somehow lay blame for Pan Am 103 on DEA but on me as well.

Linda, you aren’t per chance talking to Lester Knox Coleman III, are you? This sure sounds like one of his outlandish tales. If you are, I think you should be aware that he has a very serious credibility problem.

My mind shifted again. I pictured Coleman. His 5’ 8" 175 pound body sported a face with a ruddy complexion and a thinning flock of reddish brown hair. What was Coleman up to now? Coleman had been a registered informant for the DEA during 1987 and 1988 and previously was a registered source for the

U. S. Department of Defense. He was found by both agencies to have a serious problem as a master fabricator and was dismissed by both. He had the distinct privilege of being one of only two informants whom I had blacklisted during my previous twenty-three years with DEA. In layman’s terms that meant that Coleman was not fit to be an informant. It must have been a terrible blow to his ego. I didn’t take pleasure in blacklisting an informant. It was necessary at times, but once they were then no matter what information they brought in you weren’t allowed to give them the time of day. He could have been prosecuted for his misdeeds but the DEA lawyers found a way to let him slide because of problems establishing jurisdiction. I had to admit Coleman was one of the best con men I had ever encountered. Even at that it still didn’t take much to scrape through the veneer of his façade. When it came time to produce the goods, Coleman always seemed to fall short.

I had previously been through some very strange calls from the media when Coleman had tried selling other tall tales. I would receive telephone calls from various news agencies wanting me to verify some concocted yarn that he had spun for them. Maybe he was the original spin-doctor or a quack pretending to be one. On one occasion it was a bogus story about Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist and former presidential candidate, being involved in trading arms for cocaine in Lebanon under cover of the Christian Broadcast Network’s television station in Southern Lebanon. When that story didn’t fly he reported massive cocaine production in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. Later, it was big time money laundering in Lebanon by the Columbia drug cartels and narco-terrorists in the Middle East. All of what he was trying to sell was very tantalizing for the media, but I couldn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, support any of his non-stories. My job in Cyprus called for me to find out what was happening in Lebanon with the drug traffickers and drug trade but I hadn’t heard any supporting information on any of Coleman’s sensational fantasies. I would ask the media representatives to please share their information with DEA if they were able to verify any of it. DEA would certainly want to know all about the drug issues that they were investigating. The media never did.

Coleman had managed to sell a couple of his stories to Soldier of Fortune magazine. Some of the information and pictures he used were stolen from the DEA and the two Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative reporters that he had conned into coming to Cyprus on his story of narco-terrorism in the Middle East. The theft of DEA information was a part of the basis for the request I made for his prosecution in the U.S. at the time I blacklisted him.

In the spring of 1990, the FBI, in Chicago, charged Coleman for trying to obtain a US passport with a false application. He had fled Cyprus in the late spring of 1988 and had known that he was wanted by the Cyprus Police Force for obtaining goods and services by false pretenses. It was possible that an Interpol red alert was out for his arrest and, if he were to travel in Europe, he could have been detained for the Cyprus Police. On the passport application he was using the name Thomas Leavy and provided the birth certificate of a baby that had been born and died in July 1948, at the St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, where his ex-wife Jocelyn had worked as the assistant director of medical records.

While Coleman was out on bail on that charge, he had called on the DEA Office in Birmingham, Alabama, and asked for DEA’s help in getting him out of his legal troubles. He even threatened that if DEA didn’t help he would expose DEA’s operations in the Middle East. My office in Cyprus was queried and my response was simple: Do not believe Coleman. He was a blacklisted informant. I was not worried about him exposing any sensitive DEA information. As is standard operating procedure for DEA, its files contained mostly unclassified law enforcement information, which is geared for introduction into a court of law and which, eventually, become open public records. We had nothing to hide or to be ashamed of, except maybe engaging Coleman as an informant in the first place. Little did I know, at the time, how much the DEA and I would rue the day he had been given informant status. I thought about Coleman smirking to himself as he was feeding Linda Mack his line. Coleman was a master of the con, but it didn’t take a genius to eventually figure out that he lacked credible evidence for most of his tales. In 1987 when he worked for DEA in Cyprus we finally relegated him to the principal job of tape editor since he seemed to have excellent technical skills for packaging the field tapes.

While in Cyprus, Coleman spent considerable time trying to cozy up to various members of the Cyprus Police Force by buying their lunches and fiddling with their marine band radios. His short stocky frame, reddish brown hair and reddish gray beard were becoming a common fixture around the port city of Larnaca. He had several cops referring to him as professor or doctor. Many of them also believed he was a full-fledged DEA agent, a mistake I am sure he did not try to correct and most likely promoted since he did get into the habit of totally misrepresenting his position with DEA for personal gain. I have often pictured Coleman as the type who should have been standing behind a fold up card table on a New York street, decked out in a loud vest, pork pie hat, red pants and a deck of cards in his hands hawking the passersby to join him in a game of Three Card Monty.

The DEA, at times, used some pretty ragtime informants. Most would not be considered choirboy material nor would we invite them home to meet the family. But most of them were able to clean up their acts long enough for us to be able to use them and get them into a court of law where their testimony was subject to the brutal poundings of defense lawyers. Coleman simply didn’t make the cut. There was no way he could get his act together to undergo that type of scrutiny.

And, Linda, let me emphasize that, if it is Lester Coleman you are talking to, you really need to do some heavyweight fact-checking before you run with his story. I have been down this road with him before and it has all been garbage.

She was listening, although I do not think she really wanted to hear what I was saying. She seemed to be sincere and I was convinced that she would check further into the story before ABC ran it—at least, to the extent that she would have any say in it. I believed at the time she was working for Pierre Salinger and he seemed to be somewhat of a loose cannon when it came to these types of stories.

Well, Micheal, you know I can’t reveal our source, but he is in a position to know, and there are other facts that tend to support the story, Linda continued.

I wondered what they could possibly be.

I am sorry, Linda, but I don’t buy into it and I suggest that if you really dig into it you’ll find out it is only hot air. There is nothing I can say to add credence to the story. I am simply cautioning you to get to the bottom of it before you publish because I am sure you will find there is no truth in it. I am at a strict disadvantage because I do not know the full details you are being told, but I can assure you that it is utterly impossible that a bomb could have found its way onto Pan Am 103 by a controlled delivery. Something you need to understand is that in a controlled delivery the drugs are tested before they go onto an airplane and they go on with a DEA official in control of them. They are controlled because they will be evidence in court and we must maintain a chain of custody for all evidence. You should also know that there is a significant paper trail behind each one since we have to get all kinds of approvals in advance.

Okay, Micheal, I’ll do some more checking. Do you mind if I call you back? Is this a good time to call you?

I had hoped she would call back. Many times when a conversation with a reporter ended like this it meant that the next thing I would hear about the issue discussed was when it was in print and someone was calling me wanting to know what I knew about it. Usually, it was one of the bosses from Washington wanting to know Hey, Hurley! What did you tell those people? And, man, was I ever getting tired of responding to all the nonsense reported in the media. It was overwhelming and seemed to be the ultimate driving force behind an already overtaxed bureaucracy.

Not at all, call anytime. I am more than glad to help, but at this point from what you have told me, I don’t believe you have a legitimate story.

Okay, thanks, Micheal, and bye for now. She hung up just as I was about to ask her to call a little later. I said good-bye to the dial tone and mumbled to myself, I guess I know when you will call again and looked up to see Carol with eyes wide open, palms up.

When so much relating to a person’s work can occur at 4:30 a.m. in his living room, I could not even begin to imagine the utter joy awaiting me at the office.

Suddenly, a vision of a bumper sticker, which I had never understood before, flashed before me with perfect clarity. It read, Onward thru the Fog!

3

Official Confirmation

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

—Margaret Mead

Carol, wrapped tightly in the bed cover, was sitting in one of the dining chairs still looking curiously at me. Lack of sleep showed in her eyes. I was trying to get up off the floor but decided to lie back for a moment and contemplate the so-called news story I had just heard. Surely, ABC News was not taking this seriously, or was there something more sinister going on that I didn’t know about?

What was that all about? Carol asked while looking at me with that stern look on her face that sometimes started her day, particularly after a short night of sleep. The serious look would last only until I was able to cheer her up.

Boy, you sure are beautiful this morning, I praised. She was beautiful, even in the mornings when she first got out of bed. She was born with a natural beauty that defies the need for make-up. I recalled the first time I saw Carol. I was a newcomer to Arkansas and was attending a traveling criminal seminar in Hot Springs. Carol was an Arkansas State Trooper at the time and was pulling duty at the conference when we were introduced. Her 5’ 3’ 120 lb body was fully decked out in her Arkansas State Police uniform and her brown eyes sparkled under her big brimmed Smokey the Bear hat which only bolstered my feeling of mystic. I knew right then and there that I was going to work hard to ensure that I had a good relationship with the Arkansas State Police. All of the other troopers I had met up to that time required me to tilt my head up to have eye contact.

From the floor I shot her my most inviting smile.

Cool it, Hurley! It’s too early in the morning. She yawned as she stretched her arms straight out in front of her. I knew we were up to stay.

It is morning, isn’t it? What time is it, anyway? Carol looked around for the clock that was no longer there.

Wow, and such a sweet disposition, I spoofed. It must be close to five. I looked around for a clock or a watch but none were handy.

And what the hell are you doing on the floor? she asked, her brow scrunched up in wonderment with a smirk spreading across her face.

Honey, I always lie on the floor in my underwear when I talk on the phone. It makes me feel like a teenager again.

Just settle down now. I don’t want you getting teenager frisky, Carol said as I propped myself up on my elbow and gave her my best smile. She smiled back and winked.

Now, what would make you say something like that? I mused.

Well, you look as if you’re posing for Playgirl magazine. Come on, I’ll make some coffee while you clue me in on what that was all about. She tossed the bed cover over the back of the chair and started making her way to the kitchen. Raggs followed. As she entered the kitchen she announced that it was quarter to five. It was later than I had thought.

Sounds good to me. I’ll just get up and make myself presentable. I headed for the bedroom and put on a pair of sweat pants that had not made it into the moving boxes yet. I had kept them out just in case I wanted to visit the gym or racquetball courts in the complex. We had chosen that apartment complex for all of its amenities—pool, recreation room, gym and racquetball courts—but never had we managed to use them. Typical, I thought. All of those neat things and there was no time to take advantage of them. I made my way over to the counter that separated the kitchen from the combination living-dining room area and found a seat at the service bar.

Okay, so tell me!

She said it so matter-of-factly that it got me to thinking. If only it had been that easy in my profession, but it was not, and this was my sweet wife, my life’s partner, and we shared everything we possibly could. I spared her the down and dirty but she was an ex-cop and wanted to hear the nitty gritty.

That was ABC News in London and they are trying to put together a story on DEA’s alleged involvement in the downing of Pan Am 103. I am sure it won’t go anywhere, but I have been wrong before. We will just have to wait and see, I guess.

It sounds like Lester Coleman is up to his old tricks again, Carol announced.

Carol had met Lester Coleman in Cyprus when he tried to worm his way into our lives. In the summer of 1987 Carol and I had been having dinner at an outside café with NBC investigative reporters Brian Ross and Ira Silverman, at Ayia Napa, a village that catered to tourists, when Coleman and his wife just happened down the street and ran into us. At the time I didn’t think it was a coincidence since he knew Brian Ross. Ross and Silverman were investigating reports of money laundering by the Columbian Drug Cartels and thought that somehow their drug money was finding its way into Lebanon, then back out and into numbered bank accounts in Switzerland. I wondered how much NBC had paid Coleman for his help on their story.

Ross and Silverman’s suspicions were fueled when the head of the Cyprus Police Force Narcotics Squad took them to meet the ferryboat as it arrived in Larnaca, Cyprus, from the Lebanese port of Jounieh, which at the time was controlled by the Lebanese Forces’ Christian Militia. Lebanon at the time was a nation divided by turmoil due to their civil war that had raged since 1975. On the day Ross and Silverman met the ferryboat, the first passenger off the boat—with much assistance—was a legitimate money courier on his way from Lebanon to Switzerland. He was dressed in casual clothes and had a cart, which he rolled off the ramp of the ferryboat. On the cart were several cartons, each filled with several million dollars’ worth of currency from several different countries. The courier was checked by police and videotaped by Ross and his crew. What they would do with the footage, or whether it would enable them to add a twist of journalistic slight-of-hand to their story, I had no way of knowing, but the courier had declared his currency with customs and was on his way. He then hailed not one but two taxis. He put part of the money in one cab and the rest of the boxes full of money in the other and made his way to the Larnaca Airport. He did not have to worry about a robbery on the way. Cyprus was simply too small. There was no place to run.

Carol had warned me that she thought Coleman was bad news, but I had to learn for myself. Because of Carol’s law enforcement background she was recruited to work at the embassy’s mailroom. Her most important function in the mailroom was to make sure that no suspicious packages made it into the embassy mail system. The embassy was a prime terrorist target and every piece of mail coming and going was meticulously inspected. Any unauthorized or questionable mail was brought to the attention of the embassy security officer. Carol had caught Coleman trying to use the embassy’s postal system when he was not entitled. The embassy used the military’s mail system and only official Americans assigned to the embassy were allowed to use it for personal mail. Coleman had obviously given someone in the states the embassy’s address and when he received several pieces of mail there Carol brought it to the attention of the embassy security officer and was instructed to return it to the sender. Coleman had apparently been misrepresenting himself as a DEA employee to some of his creditors back home.

Carol informed me, as head of DEA, Cyprus, of the incident and relayed others’ cautions regarding Coleman. She had also heard from Cypriots working at the embassy that Coleman had