20 Years later, John Lennon a threat to national security

More than two decades after his death, John Lennon is apparently still a threat to national security--or so the FBI still contends.

Now, at the behest of Jonathan Wiener, a California professor and author of several books on the murdered icon, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the FBI to turn over Lennon's disputed files to Weiner. The good professor has been doggedly pursuing the late Beatle's files under the Freedom of Information Act for 20-plus years.





"The issue has become government secrecy and the absurdity that, today, when the FBI should have better things to do they are still trying to keep secret 34-year-old documents about the antiwar activities of a dead rock star," Wiener said of his victory.

The Department of Justice has 60 days to announce whether it will appeal the ruling to fork over the 10 classified files. Lawyers for the agency are "reviewing the court's ruling and no determination has been made as to what our next step will be," U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said.

The FBI famously followed the former Beatle in the early 1970s, amassing a thick file on Lennon after he moved to New York with wife Yoko Ono in 1971. Lennon, the most overtly political of the Beatles, protested the Vietnam War, staged bed-ins for peace, recorded the anthemic "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" and publicly supported such counterculture figures as Abbie Hoffman, all while ingesting large quantities of drugs.

The enemies-obsessed Nixon government, along with the rest of the country, took notice. According to Wiener, there is a 288-page file on Lennon in the FBI's "domestic security" section, of which 199 pages are still classified "in the interests of defense of foreign policy."

Wiener, along with a little legal help from his friends at the American Civil Liberties Union, procured nearly 200 pages from the file in 1997. The professor culled the most interesting findings from the files into a book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI File, published five years ago.

Among the top-secret revelations: Lennon hung out with, yes, a subversive parrot (actually, the bird belonged to one of Lennon's activist buddies who trained the parrot to squawk, "Right on!" during political debates).

The files also confirmed the long-suspected belief that Lennon was targeted by Nixon, who used the FBI to try and gather dirt on the rock star in an effort to deport him. Nixon is on record as having feared Lennon as an influential antiwar activist who was a threat to the former President's political clout.

According to Wiener, Lennon wanted to do a political Woodstock-like tour in the spring of 1972. "Nixon got wind of it," says Wiener, "and ordered Lennon deported." As a result, Lennon was only able to perform one show of his proposed tour.

The icon was drawn into a three-year battle with U.S. Immigration. "He faced a deportation order," continued Wiener, "but because he had good lawyers, he managed to fight and delay the order." Lennon never complied with the deportation and was eventually issued a green card after Nixon resigned as President.

Lennon was gunned down Dec. 8, 1980 in New York's Upper West Side at age 40 by crazed fan Mark David Chapman.

His son Sean once insinuated that the U.S. goverment was behind his father's death, but few believe any Federal agency was involved with Chapman, who remains in a New York prison.

Despite Thursday's court ruling, Wiener isn't expecting to see the documents any time soon. "The wheels of justice turn slowly," he says. "It could be six months, it could be a year."