John Lennon and his 5 Year FBI Fight
On this day in 1972, John Lennon along with then wife Yoko Ono, went on a talk show and shocked the world by revealing that they were under surveillance by the FBI
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On this day, in 1972, John Lennon shocked the world, by revealing on The Dick Cavett Show that he was being followed by the FBI and that his phones had been tapped.
It was a monumental event in history, as up until then, pop stars and how they lived their lives was never meant to be something of a National Security subject, at least to the knowledge of the general public.
But how did arguably one of the greatest musicians ever get entangled with the FBI in a battle that lasted well over 5 years?
It all started in December 1971, when Lennon and Yoko decided to perform at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, which was held as a sign of protest against Sinclair’s imprisonment for 10 years in lieu of possession of two joints of marijuana.
Sinclair was an American writer and political activist who was the founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group. He was eventually released a few weeks after the Freedom Rally, which saw rock legends such as Bob Seger and Stevie Wonder also perform, and was eventually converted into a documentary called ‘Ten for Two’.
However, this marked the entrance of the FBI involvement in Lennon’s life, as the then ruling president, Richard Nixon, saw him as an influential figure amongst the youth. His popularity owing to The Beatles gave him a platform to strongly voice his opinions and soon after moving to New York in 1971, he along with Yoko Ono got involved in radical left-wing American politics. ,
The 1972 US Presidential elections were the first time that 18-Year-Olds were allowed to vote, with the previous elections seeing the age limit of 21 years. Nixon saw this as an opportunity for Lennon to harm his re-election chances, with his rising popularity among the youth, and being an outspoken critic of the American Government’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the Nixon Administration in general.
The final alarm bells rang in the government when Lennon decided to embark on a tour across the US and to follow Nixon’s campaign rallies, attempting to mobilize the new youth vote against the administration, which would end with a 3 day festival in Miami.
Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was on the Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to the White House in early February 1972 apprising them of Lennon’s plans. He proposed that the best way to stop Lennon would be to have his visa terminated.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service delivered a letter to the Lennons on March 1 requesting that they leave the country within two weeks or face deportation hearings. They had used Lennon’s 1968 conviction for marijuana possession – a misdemeanor – as the reason for the deportation.
With his involvement in the left-wing radical politics becoming too risky now, Lennon bowed out and ended up not being involved in the Presidential Election run-in, which ended with Nixon winning in a landslide victory against the Democrat George McGovern.
Historian Jon Wiener spent 14 years trying to get the Bureau to release its files on Lennon under the Freedom of Information Act. His book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files, uncovers the minute details of the same, as Weiner pointed out after Nixon’s victory:
“What this really is saying here is that the Immigration Service and the FBI have succeeded in pressuring Lennon to cancel his plans for this national concert tour and to withdraw from anti-war activity. His lawyers told him that his case for fighting deportation was a pretty weak one. In fact, they'd never seen anyone win a case under these terms, and therefore, the legal advice was [to not] do anything more that would further provoke the Nixon administration. He really wanted to stay in the United States. Yoko was involved, at that point, in a custody dispute over her daughter from a previous marriage -- her daughter Kyoko. So John, if he had been deported, Yoko would've stayed behind. He didn’t want to be separated from Yoko [Ono already had a green card], so he canceled the plans for the concert tour. He dropped out of movement activity and the FBI is reporting that they have accomplished their job.”
However, even after Nixon had been re-elected by a landslide, Lennon continued to receive deportation notices from the INS, which would be appealed to by Leon Wildes, Lennon’s lawyer.
In their typically satirical way, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on April Fool’s Day 1973 announcing the formation of Nutopia, a “conceptual country” with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people.” Citizenship was granted by “declaration of your awareness to Nutopia,” and all citizens were granted ambassadorship. Therefore, they were entitled to diplomatic immunity.
While Lennon was having fun with this, his lawyer Wildes got serious. He turned the tables on the government, suing Attorney General John Mitchell and other high-level officials for their conspiratorial attempts to throw Lennon out of the country. Their investigation turned up documents to H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s Chief of Staff informing him of the FBI’s progress. This ultimately proved that Nixon’s political motives were the reason for the deportation attempts, rather than the belief that Lennon was a threat to the American way of life.
As this was going on, Nixon became embroiled in the infamous Watergate scandal. His resignation in August 1974 effectively ended the fight against Lennon.
In October 1975, the New York State Supreme Court overturned the deportation order. Judge Irving Kaufman said:
“The courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds. Lennon’s four-year battle to remain in our country is testimony to his faith in this American dream.”
The victory coincided with the birth of Lennon and Yoko’s son Sean. Eight months later, their green card finally arrived. On the steps of the courthouse, Lennon held an impromptu press conference to “thank all the kids and the fans who wrote to all their senators, and their petitions and all the rest […] who were working behind the scenes for five years with no pay.”
It took 5 long years, embroiled in controversy, but Lennon was finally given permanent residency in the US and remained to live there, until he was assassinated outside his house in New York on Dec 8, 1980, one of the most shocking events in world history.
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