The Last Lennon File

After twenty-three years of litigation, on December 19 the FBI agreed to release the last ten documents in its file on John Lennon. The Bureau had withheld them on the grounds that they contained "national security" information and that releasing them could cause "military retaliation against the United States."

The Lennon FBI files, which I requested under the Freedom of Information Act in 1981, shortly after Lennon's murder, document the Nixon Administration's attempt to deport him from the United States after he said publicly that he planned to campaign against Nixon in the 1972 election.

The newly released documents contain only well-known information about Lennon's ties to New Left leaders and antiwar groups in London in 1970 and 1971. The information was provided by a foreign government, obviously Britain, whose name remains classified. These reports describe an interview with Lennon published in 1971 in the Red Mole, a London underground newspaper, in which, according to the document, "LENNON emphasized his proletarian background and his sympathy with the oppressed and underprivileged people of Britain and the world." Not exactly a national security threat--and not really secret; the interview was published in the United States as a cover story in Ramparts magazine under the title "The Working Class Hero Turns Red."

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