Purchase
The John Lennon FBI Files
University of California Press
February 2000
On Sale: January 21, 2000
344 pages
ISBN: 0520222466
EAN: 9780520222465
Paperback
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Nixon
White House in 1972 about the Bureau's surveillance of John
Lennon, he began by explaining that Lennon was a "former
member of the Beatles singing group." When a copy of this
letter arrived in response to Jon Wiener's 1981 Freedom of
Information request, the entire text was withheld--along
with almost 200 other pages--on the grounds that releasing
it would endanger national security. This book tells the
story of the author's remarkable fourteen-year court battle
to win release of the Lennon files under the Freedom of
Information Act in a case that went all the way to the
Supreme Court. With the publication of Gimme Some Truth, 100
key pages of the Lennon FBI file are available--complete and
unexpurgated, fully annotated and presented in a "before and
after" format.
Lennon's file was compiled in 1972, when the war in Vietnam
was at its peak, when Nixon was facing reelection, and when
the "clever Beatle" was living in New York and joining up
with the New Left and the anti-war movement. The Nixon
administration's efforts to "neutralize" Lennon are the
subject of Lennon's file. The documents are reproduced in
facsimile so that readers can see all the classification
stamps, marginal notes, blacked out passages and--in some
cases--the initials of J. Edgar Hoover. The file includes
lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the
daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House,
transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a
proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug
charges.
Fascinating, engrossing, at points hilarious and absurd,
Gimme Some Truth documents an era when rock music seemed to
have real political force and when youth culture challenged
the status quo in Washington. It also delineates the ways
the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations fought to
preserve government secrecy, and highlights the legal
strategies adopted by those who have challenged it.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy