FBI Must Open Lennon Files to UCI Professor

A UC Irvine professor has scored a major victory in a 12-year legal battle to unseal a cache of FBI surveillance records on ex-Beatle John Lennon that he believes will prove the government harassed and illegally spied on the ‘60s icon.

U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi in Los Angeles ordered the FBI to answer 13 questions and requests that are expected to reveal why the federal agency monitored Lennon in the months before the 1972 presidential election. The decision, which gives the FBI 30 days to comply, was made Dec. 7, but ACLU attorneys representing the professor did not receive word of it until late Wednesday.

“It’s the first time the FBI has been called on the carpet to answer under oath why they were obsessed by a Beatle,” said ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum, part of a team representing professor Jon Wiener.

Wiener and ACLU attorneys cheered the ruling that moves them substantially closer to obtaining about 50 pages of FBI documents they contend will show the federal agency illegally monitored and harassed the musician, who was murdered by a deranged fan in December 1980.

Said Rosenbaum: “We want the FBI’s collection of Lennon memorabilia.”

Based on documents already released sporadically over several years, Wiener argues that Lennon was targeted for deportation by the Nixon administration in order to prevent him from staging a rock concert protesting the Vietnam War.

“Lennon was one of many people who were subjected to these dirty tricks,” said Wiener, 51, who wrote the biography “Come Together: John Lennon in His Time” in 1984.

“Nixon wanted Lennon out of the country before he could mobilize young people--who just received the right to vote--against the Vietnam War.”

FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said that “we are currently reviewing the judge’s order” and declined to comment further.

During the long court battle, however, the FBI has argued strenuously that the sealed Lennon documents are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act because their release could endanger national security.

But Wiener and his attorneys dispute that claim. They say the FBI used a similar argument to withhold other Lennon papers, which when later released included documents criticizing Yoko Ono’s singing and outlining plans for “a love-in on a giant bed.”

“Lennon was never a threat to national security,” said Wiener, on UCI’s faculty for 20 years. “He urged people to register, vote and vote against the war.”

Wiener is particularly angered that the federal government continues to conceal what he considers abuses of power by the Nixon administration and then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

“I think it’s a ridiculous waste of the taxpayers’ money that the Clinton administration is going to court to protect this information,” Wiener said.