UCI Author of Lennon Story Wins FBI Fight : Courts: History professor wins key Supreme Court victory in battle to view documents that bureau withheld.

A UC Irvine history professor who authored a biography on John Lennon won a key victory Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court in his fight to view secret FBI files on the late singer.

The court rejected an appeal aimed at killing Jonathan Weiner’s 1983 lawsuit seeking the release of about 69 pages of documents the bureau collected on the rock star during the Nixon Administration.

The decision, with only Justice Byron R. White dissenting, upholds a 1991 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the FBI failed to support its claim that the documents were exempt from the federal Freedom of Information Act. The FBI said the documents shouldn’t be made public on the grounds of national security, the need to protect federal informants and intelligence methods and possible harm to relations with foreign governments.

Weiner said he believes if the files are released they will expose more about FBI misconduct than anything about Lennon, the former Beatle who was murdered in December, 1980.

The case now returns to federal District Court in Los Angeles, giving the FBI one last chance to provide adequate reasons why the bureau should not release the files. If that fails, the bureau must turn over the documents.

Mark Rosenbaum, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California attorney who represented Weiner, said he believes the files will eventually be released.

“They really got their knuckles rapped on this one,” Rosenbaum said.

“The message here is that they were trying to take the restrictions of the Freedom of Information Act way beyond what Congress intended,” he said. “They were too far-fetched in their reasons why the documents can not be released. They treated the Freedom of Information Act like it was Mad magazine.”

Weiner said he was delighted with the Supreme Court’s decision, saying it takes him one step closer to discovering what is in the Lennon files and “finding out why the government has fought so hard for the last nine years.”

“The FBI has maintained for nine years that these files contain national security material. I’m confident that nothing that Lennon did back in 1972 threatened the national security of the United States. He hoped to threaten the reelection of Richard Nixon, but that’s not a crime.”

The FBI started files on Lennon beginning in 1971 and ended a year later after Richard M. Nixon was reelected to his second term, Weiner said.

Nixon was trying to get Lennon deported, claiming he should never have been allowed into the United States because of a misdemeanor marijuana charge in England in 1968, Weiner said. Lennon claimed the move was politically motivated because of he was protesting against the Vietnam War, Weiner said, adding that the files that have been released support that.

Nixon was unsuccessful and Lennon was granted a green card and permanent status in the United States after Nixon resigned in 1974.

In 1983, after litigation, the FBI turned over more than 100 of its Lennon documents to Weiner, 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 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.