FBI SOUGHT TO 'NEUTRALIZE' JOHN LENNON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303620004-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: March 23, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Disrupt Nixon's:12 Convention
WASHINGTON POST
-~~ 23 WAPCH 1983
FBI Sought
To `Neutralize
Sohn Lennon
Agents Feared Ex-Beatle Would
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By Roxane Ardold,
Los Angeles Times
House special assistant H.R. Halde-
man, immigration authorities, State
Department officials and the CIA
also received communications.
Much of the FBI material, which
was requested by University of Cal-
ifornia, Irvine, history professor Jon
Wiener for a book he is writing on
Lennon and the politics of the '60s,
is heavily censored.
Entire passages are blocked out
with heavy black ink for what the
FBI calls national security reasons.
Wiener also received 26 pounds of
immigration data detailing Lennon's
three-year fight with immigration
authorities to stay in the United
States.
But because the FBI material rep-
resents only about a third of the 300
pages believed to be in Lennon's file,
Wiener and the American Civil Lib-
erties Union filed a lawsuit yesterday
in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles
challenging the federal government's
right to keep its files secret.
"What is most disturbing in all of
this," Wiener said, "is the dimensions
of what the government was. doing.
The government feared John Len-
non, and Nixon devoted an incred-
ible amount of government resources
to try and get rid of him."
An FBI spokesman in \Vashington
would not comment Monday specif-
ically on the Lennon file but did say
investigations of such celebrities
were "not uncommon" during the
early '70s.
"People have forgotten the riots,
the burnings that transpired in those
days," said Jim Hall, chief of the
FBI's Freedom of Information office.
"Because of our concern for riots and
any similar related activity in 1970
to '72, we did have a considerable
number of those types of investiga-
tions going on."
Hall stressed that the decision to
withhold the bulk of the Lennon file
does not necessarily mean it holds
volatile information. He said the in-
formation may have been classified
simply to protect the identity of
sources and, in that way, national
security.
But Wiener calls the FBI expla-
nation "outrageous."
ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum
said the government appears to he
"invoking national security to avoid
political embarrassment," adding
that national security is not sup-
posed to be'used "cavalierly."
"The case raises two sets of is-
sues," Rosenbaum said. "Why did
the [Nixon] administration keep sur-
veillance on John Lennon and indi-
cate it wanted to take action to neu-
tralize his. political effect? And why
did this [Reagan] administration,
which is an outspoken foe of the
peace movement, shield the prior
administration's actions?"
Although Lennon's widow, Yoko
Ono, was asked to join the lawsuit,
longtime family friend Elliot Mintz
said Monday that the experience .
would be too painful for her.
According to the files, the govern-
ment first took serious note of Len-
non as a potential security threat in
late 1971 after he attracted 16,000
people to a University of Michigan
rally to free political activist John
Sinclair. Sentenced to 10 'ears in
prison for selling two marijuana cig-
arettes to an undercover officer, Sin-
clair was freed two days later.
In early March 1972, deportation
proceedings were launched against
him, allegedly because of his mari-
juana conviction in England. But
subsequent press reports linked the
move to deport Lennon to a Feb. 4,
1972, memo written to then-Attor-
ney General .John Mitchell by Re-
publican Sen. Strom Thurmond of
South Carolina.
By then Lennon was listed on FBI
documents along with antiwar activ-
ists Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin and
others who were going to "direct.
New Left protest activities during
the 1972 election year." All, accord-
ing to an FBI report, were associated
with a group known as the Election
Year Strategy Information Center
(EYSIC). The group's purpose was
to disrupt the Republican Conven-
tion, then scheduled for San Diego
but eventually held in Miami, the
report said.
With the August convention date
nearing, the FBI again urged a pos-
sible Lennon drug bust.
.IRVINE, Calif.-FBI ; agents,- fearing that
former Beatle John Lennon was about to lead a
demonstration against Richard Nixon, followed
the late British musician' for months before the
1972 Republican convention, hoping to arrest him
on drug charges or otherwise "neutralize" him so
that he could be deported, according to previously
unreleased government documents.
In a bizarre story of a widespread govern-
ment effort to catch Lennon in some illegal activ-
ity, FBI agents monitored the singer's public ap-
pearances, kept tabs on his private life and strong-
ly suggested at one point that Lennon "be arrested
if at all possible on possession of narcotics
charges" so "that he would become more likely to
.be immediately deportable."
Although no evidence exists of any Lennon
plan to disrupt or even attend the political con-
vention, the government's campaign was relent-
less, according to FBI and immigration files re-
leased under the U.S. Freedom of Information
Act.
The files comprise a virtual log of Lennon's
life in the early '70s, a time when his records, such
as "Imagine," were selling in the mil-
lions, his rhetoric was increasingly
antiwar and he was fighting depor-
tation because of a minor marijuana
arrest in England four years before.
Included in the FBI file are some
of Lennon's more controversial anti-
war song lyrics, fliers from peace
marches he attended, concert re-
views, copies of counterculture pub-
lications that linked his name to
1972 Democratic presidential can-
didate George McGovern, and copies
of secret memos and FBI reports
that were distributed to bureaus
across the country. Then-FBI direc-
tor .J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon White
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Although records show that copies
of the memos were sent to Nixon
aide H.R. Haldeman, he refused to
comment Monday other than to say
he "didn't remember it at all."
On July 27, 1972, a top New York
FBI agent suggested that agents in
Miami, where the Republican con-
vention was to be held three weeks
later, should be made aware of Len-
non's drug use.
The agent said if Lennon was ar-
rested in Miami, his immediate de-
portation was likely. But Lennon,
involved in fighting his deportation,
never went to Miami.
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