President Nixon and the FBI saw John Lennon as a threat, and the former Beatles' FBI files
were not released for decades. So what exactly did the Bureau have on Lennon and why did
they go after him? Here are John Lennon's FBI files explained.
You could say John Lennon officially entered the political sphere during 1969's Summer
of Love, when he and his new wife, Yoko Ono, spent their honeymoon in bed and invited the
press to join them.
"Stay in bed and grow your hair. Thank you."
Lennon's rationale for the "bed-in" was simple:
"We knew whatever we did was going to be in the papers. We decided to utilize the space
we would occupy anyway, by getting married, with a commercial for peace."
As expected, their call for world peace made international headlines. They also caught
the eye of the American government. President Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated, and
had promised to end the Vietnam War. However, peace negotiations in Paris were slow-moving,
and the public continued to put pressure on the U.S. to end the war more quickly.
Meanwhile, at their hotel rooms in Amsterdam and in Montreal, Lennon and Ono entertained
their own peace negotiations with everyone from rabbis and Hare Krishnas, to conservative
media figures. Lennon told the press during his and Yoko's "bed-in,"
"In Paris, the Vietnam peace talks have got about as far as sorting out the shape of the
table they are going to sit round. Those talks have been going on for months. In one week
in bed, we achieved a lot more."
President Richard Nixon became increasingly concerned that John Lennon would use his influence
to complicate the U.S. government's efforts and reputation. At Nixon's request, the FBI
began a file on Lennon, which they would later refuse to declassify, claiming that releasing
the Lennon files could cause international military retaliation due to Lennon's leftist
ties.
It took historian and professor Jon Wiener 14 years to finally convince the Bureau to
release the secret documents, according to an extensive NPR radio interview. Wiener later
wrote a book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files, about his findings. Soon after
the documents were released in 1997, Mark Rosenbaum, Legal Director of the ACLU of Southern
California, had this to say:
"The release of these final documents, concealed from public view for nearly a quarter of a
century, reveals government paranoia at a pathological level and an attempt to shield
executive branch abuse of civil liberties under the rubric of national security."
From 1971 to 1972, the FBI tracked John Lennon's activities not only due to his ties with anti-Vietnam
War activist leaders, but for his songwriting. As stupid as it may sound, Nixon and many
of his allies were afraid that Lennon was preaching radical ideas through his music
that could lead to the downfall of America - or at least their administration. When "Give
Peace a Chance" was released, it became a protest staple and rallying cry. Lennon began
directly associating with certain left-wing activists, and Immigration and Naturalization
Services moved to deport him on a bogus past drug charge.
The Nixon administration claimed that Lennon had, quote, "been admitted to the country
improperly" and that he had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of marijuna possession
in London in 1968. Immigration law at that time banned anyone who had a drug offense
on their record from entering the U.S.
Many powerful allies came to Lennon and Yoko Ono's aid, including musician powerhouses
like Bob Dylan, movie stars like Tony Curtis, and bestselling authors like John Updike.
Still, extradition proceedings ensued until the end of Nixon's Watergate Crisis. Fortunately
for Lennon and Ono, Nixon was deported from the White House before he was successful in
deporting them.
John Lennon became friends with key Vietnam protesters who were part of the Chicago Seven:
Bobby Seale, Abby Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin. The Chicago Seven were a group of anti–Vietnam
War protesters who were charged with conspiracy and the intention of inciting riots at the
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In 1971, the protestors convinced Lennon and Yoko Ono to headline a political concert/rally
to shine a light on writer and poet John Sinclair's arrest for possession of marijuana, and to
criticize Nixon's policies. Sinclair was an activist from Detroit who had been part of
forming the White Panther Party, a socialist group designed to support the goals of the
Black Panther Party in the midst of the civil rights movement.
The Free John Sinclair rally was an eight-hour long show full of political speeches and performances
by activists and artists including Allen Ginsberg and Stevie Wonder. 15,000 people attended
the show. The event also featured Sinclair himself via phone. Lennon even wrote an original
song, titled "John Sinclair," specifically for the concert.
The most important thing to note about that night's events was that its organizers were
ultimately successful in their goal. 48 hours after the rally, Sinclair was released from
prison, and the Michigan legislature even reformed the state's marijuana laws in order
to free him.
Jon Wiener told NPR that he eventually obtained John Lennon's FBI files thanks to the Freedom
of Information Act. He also discussed the agents on the investigation's incompetence,
referring to them as more, quote, "Keystone Cops than the Gestapo."
For example, a Wanted poster of Lennon was produced at some stage, but the photo the
FBI used wasn't even his. It was actually an image of David Peel, a folk singer and
street performer in the East Village. The photo was from an album cover that Lennon
had produced titled "The Pope Smokes Dope." Lennon, who was undoubtedly one of the most
recognizable faces in the world at the time, was ultimately mistaken for a local busker.
Perhaps it was fortunate for Lennon that the Bureau's investigation was less than sophisticated.
Once the threats of deportation began, John Lennon quickly realized they were politically
motivated. He publicly spoke about how many people were coming to, quote, "fix his phones,"
and that there were, quote, "strange men outside in suits" who he caught following him.
Lennon would eventually sue the FBI for claims of illegal wiretapping. The FBI collected
a lot of nefarious information that could have presumably been used to threaten and
intimidate Lennon and Yoko Ono. They knew the whereabouts of Ono's daughter, Kyoko,
for example, according to the New York Times.
Unfortunately, when President Richard Nixon was re-elected, the deportation threats continued,
and Lennon became more and more paranoid. But documents unearthed years later would
prove that he had good reason. Correspondence from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to Nixon's
chief of staff confirmed that the White House was directly involved in Lennon's surveillance.
There was never any proof that John Lennon was a communist, or a marxist. But that didn't
stop the FBI from trying to label him as such. It probably didn't help that Lennon related
his song "Imagine" to the Communist Manifesto. The song was released in 1971, at the peak
of the FBI's investigation. "Imagine" became a revelation, known worldwide. In Rolling
Stone, David Fricke writes,
"In twenty-two lines of lullaby rhyme, Lennon combined pungent social argument — imagine
a world without artificial divisions of faith, politics and greed — with a solace and promise
in his voice and piano that could cut through utter gloom."
Now Lennon hadn't just released "Give Peace a Chance" and touted the message "war is over"
around a dozen cities during Christmas 1969, but he had released "Imagine," a deeper, more
meaningful manifesto of sorts. Yoko Ono said,
"It's not like he thought, 'Oh, this can be an anthem,' It was just what John believed
— that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out."
John Lennon was very outspoken about government tyranny and a capitalist system he felt exploited
workers, as well as socioeconomic inequality. These beliefs played right into giving the
FBI justification for their covert ops. In 1971, Lennon gave a notably candid interview
to Red Mole, which is now Socialist Resistance, in which he told Tariq Ali,
"I've always been politically minded [...] and against the status quo."
He also mentioned that he was, quote, "very conscious of class." In the interview, which
also includes Yoko Ono, the couple discuss world politics, including in Europe and Russia,
as well how intellectual revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladmir Lenin were able to,
quote, "to get through to the workers." He also relates his political views back to his
song "Working Class Hero." Lennon's unapologetic, public rhetoric endangered his chances for
U.S. citizenship and continued to make him the target of surveillance from the FBI and
the Nixon administration.
John Lennon was accused of funding what the FBI coined the Allamuchy Tribe, a protest
organization run by a handful of the former Chicago Seven. It turns out that Lennon donated
$75,000 with the goal of helping the group form a demonstration against the 1972 Republican
National Convention.
People who have analyzed the FBI's actions have since noted that Lennon's antiwar, pro-worker's
rights rhetoric had been going on for years, but the FBI investigation began on the cusp
of the convention in January 1972, where President Richard Nixon was a favorite to become re-elected.
At this time, not only were Lennon and his family put under surveillance, but deportation
proceedings also started.
The New York Times also notes that once Nixon was re-elected in November of the same year,
the FBI closed its investigation on Lennon. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that Nixon's
goal was to keep Lennon from swaying voters. During the deportation process, Lennon and
his lawyers argued that the action was a direct result of his comments that were critical
of Nixon. His lawyers also made appeals that caused a significant enough delay to allow
Lennon to stay in New York.
Ultimately, the FBI couldn't pin John Lennon down on anything concrete. Most of the 300-page
documents they created simply involved speaking of Lennon as someone with, quote, "revolutionary"
and "proletarian'" leanings. Additionally, some of Lennon's song lyrics were included
as examples of his politics, such as those from "Power to the People."
The Bureau outsourced informants, paying them to spy on Lennon by attending his concerts
and speeches, according to SFGate. This tactic had been used on cultural icons in the past,
including Charlie Chaplin and Pablo Picasso. Unfortunately, the FBI's plan to catch Lennon
revolved around a mere theory that Lennon and his friends and family were planning a
get-out-the-vote concert tour to recruit newly of-age voters.
"If you're registered to vote, it doesn't say you have to vote, at least you have it.
And then if somebody comes, if there's somebody around that you believe in, you got that vote."
Interestingly, this never happened because of President Richard Nixon's deportation obsession,
meaning Nixon got what he wanted. The declassified documents suggest a level of unnecessary paranoia
by the U.S. government concerning Lennon. In his 1983 suit to retrieve the documents,
Jon Wiener was represented by ACLU of Southern California attorney Dan Marmalefsky. According
to an ACLU press release, Marmalefsky built his case on the absurdity of it all. Marmalefsky
said in the release:
"From the beginning the FBI treated John Lennon as if it were a crime to sing 'Give Peace
a Chance.'"
Jon Wiener's book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files was finally published in
2000, after he was able to retrieve and dissect the portion of declassified documents the
FBI had released to him. The final 10 files were only released in 2006, the same year
that a documentary that specifically focused on John Lennon's war with the U.S. government
called The U.S. vs. John Lennon was released. It discusses the FBI files at length. In his
review of the documentary, New York Times critic A.O. Scott writes,
"What distinguished Lennon and Yoko Ono from many of their contemporaries was their ability
to capture and make use of the absurdities of their fame. They come off as canny self-satirists
in earnest devotion to the cause [...]"
Perhaps this talent of theirs acted as a saving grace during their turbulent experience in
early 1970s America. The FBI's bizarre and out-of-touch tactics didn't hurt either.
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