John Lennon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover helpfully explained in a 1972 memo to Nixon's White House, was a former member of the Beatles singing group. Hoover's FBI had Lennon under surveillance from December 1971 to December 1972 while the singer was living in New York, a fact that the world and his wife must know now following last month's media claims of links between Lennon and the IRA. The surveillance was not because the singer was suspected of crime, but because Nixon feared he might disrupt his re-election campaign by rallying support against the Vietnam War.
Jon Wiener, history professor at the University of California, has been engaged in a 14-year legal battle to have the files made public. This book now shows why the FBI was so desperate to hide its role in harassing Nixon's critics and keeping its surveillance secret. Gimme Some Truth contains much to make the agency squirm.
First there is the quality of the top-secret information collected by crack FBI informers - vital intelligence that Yoko Ono couldn't even remain on key when singing, that one of Lennon's friends was growing a full beard, and that someone Lennon knew owned a parrot that interjected "Right On" whenever the conversation got rousing. There's also the fact that the FBI persevered with the spying for a year, even though there was no evidence to show Lennon was involved in any crime. The files, as quoted in this book , indicate that Lennon was only interested in peaceful, legal protest against the war.
Wiener has not managed to wring out every last memo from the FBI, and a few documents still remain closed, but there is nothing in this book remotely connecting Lennon to any fundraising for the IRA. There is a chapter on Lennon's links with Irish civil rights activists the week after Bloody Sunday, which includes an informant's report that the former Beatle had offered entertainment at a Troops Out demonstration and was in contact with the Committee Against Internment. Lennon's contacts were with Irish civil rights activists, not IRA fundraisers, although the FBI supersleuths seem to have missed his financial support for the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and even his performance at a Bloody Sunday rally in New York.
Unfortunately for the FBI, Wiener publishes the Lennon documents verbatim, making the agency look more the Keystone Cops than the Gestapo. Agents fired off confused and contradictory memos to Washington about Lennon's whereabouts almost daily. The most valuable historical data in the files are the unique transcripts of speeches given by New Left leaders at various rock concerts (who else but FBI informants bothered to stop dancing to take notes on the anti-war rhetoric?).
Things became more frenzied in the run-up to the Republican Convention in Miami in August 1972, when agents feared Lennon might appear in the city to disrupt Nixon's nomination. The FBI drew up a Wanted poster for Miami police to encourage them to arrest him, but managed to slap someone else's photo on it. In fact, Lennon never appeared in Miami or anywhere else to rally support against Nixon.
The FBI's constant focus on Lennon for 12 months reveals nothing more exciting than that their agents needed to be sent to spelling school. Although Wiener's account of the intricacies of the legal battle is not as fascinating for the general reader as it obviously was for him, it does highlight the absurd lengths the FBI was prepared to go to keep its secrets hidden, claiming that to declassify the Lennon files could lead to foreign military retaliation against the US.
A month after Nixon was safely reelected, the FBI closed its files on the exBeatle and stopped the surveillance. Wiener's excellent commentary, explaining the politically-motivated secret documents, and their codes and context, shows why the FBI, and not John Lennon, were the ones who had much to hide.
Brian Dooley's latest book is Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America