Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files

By Jon Wiener

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520222466
• ISBN13: 9780520222465
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

I'm curious... What do you think?

Did the government have something to do with the assassination of John Lennon? Click yes if you think so or no if you don't.

The Woodstock Nation revisited

It did bring me back "...to those thrilling day's of yesteryear." I was 18 and in the Army in 1972. I have forgoten most of the events unfolding that year, and this book brought back those scene's, as well as the THEN famous people who are just "faded memories" now. John and Yoko, Abby and Jerry, The other Chicago seven members, all of them are here and live again in these declassified FBI files. You would think some of the printed report's on the coming's and going's of the counter-culture leaders were written by old busy-bodies. Most documents are just plain nonsense and gossip. Why the Government tried to supress these for so long is a wonder. I would like to know what the British sent over to the FBI in the way of documents. These are shown to the reader as still being blacked out, and some dated beyond the date the FBI stopped watching Lennon's movements. A well done book by the Prof. and well worth the time if you like to read book's of a more political theme. Not for the four mop top's type of Beatle's fan. If you lived through the Day's of rage and wish to take a walk down those paranoid paths of the Hippie era then buy this book (I did not say "Steal This Book.")

A Legal Mystery Tour

First a simple test. To whom was FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover referring when he wrote to President Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, "[He is]...a paradox because he is difficult to judge by the normal standards of civilized life....His main reason for being is to destroy, blindly and indiscriminately, to tear down and provoke chaos...."? Adolf Hitler maybe, or some seminal Osama bin-Laden? Of course not, as you already know it was none other than our friendly, pudgy-faced, mop-headed, evil genius, that heinous John Lennon, composer of such bellicose anthems as "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance." Reason enough to warrant the FBI's surveillance of the man for 24 hours a day, for years on end? Well, not really, but they did it anyway. This book details the efforts by the author, Jon Wiener, and two ACLU attorneys, Mark Rosenbaum and Dan Marmalefsky, to obtain the 200 odd pages of documents held by the FBI on Mr. Lennon, that the agency had refused to release, (typically on grounds of either national security or ostensibly to protect confidential sources). To this end the attorneys employed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as their basis to obtain these documents. The run-around that they were given by the government should be nothing new to students of previous such encounters, and the fact that it took 15 years to achieve it should not prove too surprising either. But without doubt the central point of this book, and one that cannot be overemphasized, is that it was the FBI (acting outside of its own charter and the explicit instructions contained in the FOIA) that violated the law, while finding no criminal activity on the part of Mr. Lennon. Possibly I'm too old, too jaded or just plain too cynical to be surprised to find out that the government, or its representatives, are capable of lying, placing illegal wire-taps, harassment, obfuscation and underhandedness. Certainly all of that happened here, and it is hats off to Rosenbaum and Marmalefsky for uncovering much of the skullduggery. Although most of the information on Mr. Lennon that was unearthed as a result of this effort was largely already known to any diligent reader of, for example, "Rolling Stone" magazine, following the trail of the hearings and legal arguments is a fascinating and worthwhile one, and the book's final chapter was (for me, at least) an eye-opener.