Beatlemania

The FBI was taking notes

When History Professor Jon Wiener made a Freedom of Information request to the Federal Government for the late John Lennon's file, he could hardly have hoped for a richer payoff. "Every month or so I would get a little package of documents from the FBI," said Wiener, who is with the University of California at Irvine and is writing an admiring book about Lennon and the politics of the 1960s. "Then one day 26 lbs. of material arrived: the entire Immigration Service file." Heavily censored, the FBI's records, as well as the hefty Immigration documents, told quite a story: details of widespread Government surveillance of Lennon and his wife Ono, especially in the months before the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami.

In April 1970, according to the file, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover instructed some offices to watch Lennon and fellow Beatle George Harrison, who were then visiting the U.S. He advised his agents to look "for information indicating they are using narcotics." The bureau's wariness of Lennon mounted in December 1971 when he and Political Radical Jerry Rubin drew a crowd of 15,000 to a University of Michigan rally. Not long after that, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee suggested in a report to Attorney General John Mitchell that Lennon be deported. "If Lennon's visa is terminated, it would be a strategic countermeasure," the committee wrote.

Lennon successfully fought deportation proceedings that the U.S. Government brought against him on the ground of a 1968 hashish conviction in London. The files indicate FBI concern that Lennon might put together a politically embarrassing anti-Nixon demonstration in Miami. Says an FBI memo of April 21, 1972: "Subject's activities being closely followed, and any information developed indicating violation of federal laws will be immediately furnished to pertinent agencies in an effort to neutralize any disruptive activities of the subject." The bureau even stuffed into its dossier lyrics from Lennon's antiwar songs.

Lennon suspected Government surveillance, says Elliot Mintz, a long time family friend, but "I'm not sure anyone was aware of the degree." When, for example, the Lennons did not show up in Miami for the G.O.P. Convention, the FBI, according to a memo dated Sept. 28, 1972, photographed the arrest records of all 1,200 people taken into custody during the convention "to make sure John Lennon wasn't arrested." Says Wiener, "It's unbelievable. As if John Lennon could be arrested in Miami and nobody would know about it." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.