Talk:Lester Coleman/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Lex Coleman, Lester Coleman, Lester K. Coleman, Lester Knox Coleman, Lester K. Coleman II, Lester K. Coleman III...and, Thomas Leavy, and Thomas O'Leary

There is something very peculiar (and fishy) here about Lex Coleman and his twin brother, Lester Coleman, who has used the following aliases: Thomas Leavy, Thomas O'Leary, and Lex Coleman [1]. That peculiarity seems to center around their shared interests: writing, Lebanon, Pan Am 103, and various periods of "lost time". Reliability, verifiability, and truth hopefully will prevail because I'm not buying the twin brother biography until some substantial and credible documentation is presented quickly. See pages 163-183 of Michael T. Hurley's I Solemnly Swear [2] (use Riconosciuto in search to isolate pages) Anne Teedham (talk) 21:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

proposed merger

It is quite apparent to me that the two articles Lex Coleman and Lester Coleman are about the same man ... who seems to want his readers to believe that he is dead. I have proposed this merger in order to combine everything, and to get to the truth. I assure you: unless someone can produce a death certificate (properly notorized—and by this I mean something much better than a false document published on American Budda Online Library), or a highly-reliable mainstream death announcement, Lester Coleman is trying to pull the wool over his readers eyes. Yet before we attempt to complete the merger, I suppose we should discuss exactly why I believe that Lex and Lester are one and the same, eh. As soon as someone appears, I will be happy to explain. Anne Teedham (talk) 19:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please tell us why you think the two people are the same person? This would not be the first time someone has two articles on Wikipedia; I spotted Hj. Nortamo and Hjalmar Nordling on the Finnish Wikipedia. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Trail of the Octopus, The Untold Story of Pan Am 103 as a source

I don't think that ethically we can use Trail of the Octopus, The Untold Story of Pan Am 103 as a source. It was written and published during a time when Coleman was clearly lying about his connection with the events in question. The accuracy of its content is therefore highly questionable. By extension the article by Paul Foot is somewhat suspect, although less so, since its basically a reciew of the book. Nrswanson (talk) 09:21, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Paul Foot's 1994 review of the book did lend some credence to the Coleman 'drug-running' theory. But, ten years later, Foot had moved well away from that theory when he wrote "Lockerbie's dirty secret" in The Guardian:

"There is, in my opinion (not necessarily shared by the families), an explanation for all this, an explanation so shocking that no one in high places can contemplate it. It is that the Lockerbie bombing was carried out not by Libyans at all but by terrorists based in Syria and hired by Iran to avenge the shooting down in the summer of 1988 of an Iranian civil airliner by a US warship. This was the line followed by both British and US police and intelligence investigators after Lockerbie. Through favoured newspapers like the Sunday Times, the investigators named the suspects - some of whom had been found with home-made bombs similar to the one used at Lockerbie.

"This line of inquiry persisted until April 1989, when a phone call from President Bush senior to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned her not to proceed with it. A year later, British and US armed forces prepared for an attack on Saddam Hussein's occupying forces in Kuwait. Their coalition desperately needed troops from an Arab country. These were supplied by Syria, which promptly dropped out of the frame of Lockerbie suspects. Libya, not Syria or Iran, mysteriously became the suspect country, and in 1991 the US drew up an indictment against two Libyan suspects. The indictment was based on the "evidence" of a Libyan "defector", handsomely paid by the CIA. His story was such a fantastic farrago of lies and fantasies that it was thrown out by the Scottish judges.

"In Britain, meanwhile, Thatcher, John Major and Blair obstinately turned down the bereaved families' requests for a full public inquiry into the worst mass murder in British history.

"It follows from this explanation that Megrahi is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice. This explanation is also a terrible indictment of the cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit of the British and US governments and their intelligence services. Which is probably why it has been so consistently and haughtily ignored."

We can, in my view, keep the Trail of the Octopus in the Lester Coleman biography as a matter of record (since it advocates one of the Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories) but I agree we can't use it as a reliable source.---PJHaseldine (talk) 12:45, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

• Yes I certainly agree that a mention of the book should remain in the article. I just don't think we can use the book directly as a source about the life of Lester Coleman. He could have easily misrepresented his activities with the DIA etc. within the work. A better treatment of addressing the book would be to find some post-1997 trial criticisms of the work by reputable people (hopefully they exist). Otherwise, only a brief overview of his position in the book should be given within the context of his later admission of deception.Nrswanson (talk) 13:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Trail of the Octopus, is now published in Kindle form by Amazon, so the credibilty of Lester Coleman's claims are back on the front burner. It seems this new publication of the book as caused the latest round of mis-information and effort at discrediting Coleman, including allegations he was two persons, not deceased, guilty of perjury ( his detractors failed to include the TORT settlement Coleman reached with the U.S. Justice Department for maltreatment and false imprisonment. If Coleman is alive, where is he? If he did not have a brother, where is the evidence? If he was imprisoned for ten years, where is the proof? Has anyone checked online prison records for his name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.250.12.246 (talk • contribs) 15:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• A few points. First, a re-issue of a book already available at google books online is not likely to cause much notice. (Apparently it didn't because the media ignored it) Second, no source ever produced here has claimed that Coleman had a twin brother and a search has yielded no such source ever refering to a twin. Proof isn't needed to deny a twin's existence but to prove that the twin existed in the first place. Third, no source has been produced or been found in a search which indicates that Coleman has died. Fourth, if a TORT settlemnet does exist than reliable sources should be easily found. You must know something about it, so produce these sources and add the content to the article. There is no censorship at wikipedia, just a requirement that the facts presented come from reliable published sources. Finally, your last questions are a matter of conjecture which falls under WP:Original Research. Wikipedia is not interested in what is true but what is "verifiably true". Just because certain information is not easily available, doesn't mean that we can assert opinions based on lack of information. The answer is we simply don't comment about his whereabouts, etc. We present the verified information that we have and that is all. What is in evidence is that he received a ten year sentence, etc. The article doesn't state where and when he went to prison because no evidence specifies this information. Find content in reliable sources and we can add info. But everything in the article stays because its supported by reliable evidence.Nrswanson (talk) 20:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)