FBI Loses Lennon Papers Battle : Courts: Appellate judges say the agency hasn’t justified the need to withhold secret documents compiled about the ex-Beatle.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Friday that the FBI has failed to justify why it should not be compelled under the Freedom of Information Act to give a UC Irvine professor documents it gathered nearly 20 years ago in an investigation of singer John Lennon.

Although the decision does not guarantee that the professor, Jon Wiener, will immediately get the documents he has been seeking for a decade, it substantially increases the likelihood that he will get the material, according to Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of Wiener’s lawyers.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed a 1988 decision by a Los Angeles federal district court judge that the government was not obligated to release 69 documents to Wiener, about one-third of its file on Lennon, the onetime Beatle who was murdered in December, 1980.

The FBI had said the materials were exempt from the Freedom of Information Act on grounds of national security, the need to protect federal informants and intelligence methods and possible harm to relations with foreign governments.

But the appeals court said the FBI had failed to describe specifically how any of these consequences would occur and in several occasions the opinion ridiculed FBI assertions.

For example, the decision states that “no explanation is given why seemingly far-fetched harms such as the FBI’s claim that release of the withheld information will lead to . . . military retaliation against the United States” have any relevance to the documents withheld.

The appeals court also chided the government for a “particularly scanty” explanation as to how intelligence activities could be compromised by turning over some of the Lennon materials.

“Is it realistic to expect disclosure of a 20-year-old investigation to reveal the existence of a current intelligence investigation?” Judges James R. Browning, Mary M. Schroeder and Warren J. Ferguson asked in the opinion.

They also asked, “Why is it reasonable to expect that the disclosure of documents from the investigation of John Lennon would reveal the objectives or priorities of current intelligence operations?”

Rosenbaum said he is pleased because “the decision says the government can’t shout ‘national security’ and shut down the Freedom of Information Act.”

Wiener’s other lawyer, Dan Marmalefsky, said: “This decision reaffirms the obligation of a government to describe with particularity any portion of a government document it seeks to withhold from disclosure under the FOIA.”

Wiener said he, too, is delighted by the decision. “The federal government has put an immense amount of time and energy into keeping these records a secret. I’m confident that nothing John Lennon did threatened the national security of the United States and that makes me think the government must have some other reason for withholding these documents.”

In fact, the decision provided an inkling of what is in some of the documents. The decision noted that without compromising privacy interests, the FBI could have stated that one document “describes a series of meetings between a third person and various activists, discusses contests over the leadership of activist groups and complaints that activist leaders receive more publicity than the groups themselves, and reports tangential information about activist leaders, such as their habits of personal hygiene and even the peculiar behaviors of their pets. Lennon’s name appears only in the final paragraph, in which it is stated that Lennon was willing to perform at a benefit concert if his appearance were not announced in advance.

Another document, the decision noted, described a conversation with an FBI informant about the possibility that Lennon would organize a series of concerts to raise money to finance protest activities at the 1972 Republican convention.

The appeals court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi for further hearings, during which the FBI would be required to justify why it continues to withhold the information Wiener is seeking.

In 1983, after litigation, the FBI turned over more than 100 of its Lennon documents to Wiener, who used them in writing his 1984 book “Come Together: John Lennon in His Time.”

The material released earlier showed that the FBI closely monitored Lennon’s activities in 1971 and 1972. The documents indicated concern that Lennon would support a Democratic presidential candidate against incumbent Republican President Richard M. Nixon in 1972. The files also revealed that government officials were worried that Lennon might participate in protests at the Republican National Convention in Miami that same year.

The files included transcribed lyrics of Beatles songs, photocopies of album covers and newspaper articles on Lennon’s anti-war activities. The files revealed that copies of some surveillance reports were sent to former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and to H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, then Nixon’s chief of staff.

A Justice Department spokesman said the department knew of the decision but had no comment.