Published Thursday, March 16, 2000, in the Herald-Leader

Did defendant pass fraudulent checks? Jury to decide case filled with twists, turns By Valarie Honeycutt HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

The court testimony sounds like it came straight out of a spy novel, sprinkled with references to Syria and Pan Am Flight 103, Tom Brokaw and Oliver North.

But the issue on trial in Fayette Circuit Court is whether former government informant and local radio talk show host Lester Coleman passed fraudulent checks in Lexington.

The trial, which focuses on 36 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, second degree, and one count of being a persistent felony offender, continues today.

In the 1990s, Coleman made international news with his claim that a government drug agent allowed a bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. Two Libyans were charged in the bombing, which killed 270 people.

Coleman's story that American agents were allowing deliveries of drugs on trans-Atlantic flights in a sting operation that allowed terrorists to switch a case containing drugs for one holding a bomb was widely discredited and he was eventually charged with perjury.

He also co-wrote a controversial book about the bombing called The Trail of the Octopus.After the perjury charges were filed, he and his family were granted political asylum in Sweden, then moved to Spain, he said.

Coleman testified yesterday that even before the perjury charges he had faced charges of applying for a passport in a false name. The passport application, he said, had been made under orders from his bosses at an organization called the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In 1996, Coleman, who's in his mid-50s, decided to return to the United States to face charges. Alabama Gov. Fob James was criticized for paying for the airplane trip that brought Coleman and his family back to the United States.

A year later, Coleman pleaded guilty to five counts of perjury in New York federal court, admitting that he lied in an affidavit in the Lockerbie civil trial, in part, to get even with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for firing him. Yesterday, Coleman testified that he doesn't remember entering the guilty plea due to a mental condition.

After his guilty plea, he completed community service and paid a fine. He then took a job at WLXG-AM in Lexington.

When that job ended, he worked in Lexington as a private investigator until last July, when Lexington police received a complaint that at least $5,000 in fraudulent checks had been deposited into Coleman's bank account, a court document said.

Coleman told authorities that he had received checks from his children's school in Spain for book royalties and computers he donated, court records say.

Coleman told police that unknown people had sent him checks and he had cashed them, according to a court affidavit in support of a search warrant. In an interview yesterday, Coleman's attorney, Michael Meehan, explained that a Web site on the Internet solicits funds to help support Coleman's struggles with the U.S. government and the checks were from those donations.

Upon his arrest, Lexington police found seven false identification cards in the name of Coleman and Graham Kirkland Yost with Coleman's picture on it. He also had a large amount of check stock paper in his briefcase the same type as the fraudulent checks, court documents said.

According to a September Fayette Circuit Court indictment, Coleman had dozens of forged checks from banks, a forged British West Indies passport, a forged Barbados birth certificate and a forged letter claiming to be from the federal witness protection program.

Yesterday, Coleman testified that he didn't know the checks were fraudulent and he didn't intend to defraud anyone.

He described yesterday how, as an intelligence operative, he transported a child's toy called a Speak and Spell overseas that contained coded messages about Col. Oliver North's role in the Iran-Contra scandal. He told the jury about an interview with NBC-TV's Tom Brokaw that he gave following the Pan Am 103 crash and mentioned a meeting with CNN correspondent Peter Arnett.

Coleman testified yesterday that before his Lexington arrest, he hid his family in a Swiss refugee camp because they feared retaliation from the American government.

Court documents show that after Coleman's arrest, his wife suffered from extreme depression, which resulted in their three children being placed in foster care in Lexington.

Coleman himself is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, court records said, because of the treatment he suffered in a Brooklyn, N.Y., jail while awaiting court action on the Pan Am perjury charges.

Coleman has been in the Fayette Detention Center since July because he is unable to pay a $10,000 full cash bond, Meehan said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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