-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Blacklisted News, Secret History . . . From Chicago, '68, to 1984
©1983 Youth International Party Information Service
Bleecker Publishing
POB 392
Canal St. Station
New York, NY 10012
ISBN 0-912873-00-0
-----
FBI HAD
LENNON
MARKED
FOR BUST
Nixon wanted him deported
By ROXANE ARNOLD Los Angeles Times
THE NIXON Administration so feared John Lennon's anti-war activities that FBI
agents trailed him for months before the 1972 Republican Convention — hoping
to nail him on drug charges so they could "neutralize" and deport him.
Agents attended his concerts, studied his song lyrics and kept tabs on his
private life.
The FBI strongly suggested at one point that The late British singer "be
arrested. if at all possible, on possession of narcotics charges" so he might
be "immediately deportable."
The bizarre story of a relentless campaign to catch Lannon in some illegal
activity was revealed in FBI and immigration files unearthed under the Freedom
of Information Act.
Some FBI memos on Lennon were sent to Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. He
refused comment yesterday.
California historian Jon Wiener — who obtained the files for a book on Lennon
— said:
"The government feared John Lannon, and Nixon devoted an incredible amount of
government resources to try mid get rid of him."
Officials thought the former Beatle might lead a demonstration against Nixon
at the Miami convention that nominated him for a seoond term — even though
Lennon never showed up in Miami.
An FBI spokesman declined comment on the Lannon file but said investigations
of such celebrities were "not uncommon" during the early '70s.
"People have forgotten the riots, the burnings that transpired in those days,"
said spokesman Jim Hall.
Entire passages of the released files were blocked out with heavy black ink
for what the FBI called national se security reasons.
Lennon's widow. Yoko Ono, was asked to join a lawsuit by the American Civil
Liberties Union seeking to declassify more material, but family friend Elliot
Mintz said the experience would be too painful for her.
Mintz, close to Lennon from 1971 until the singer's death in December 1980.
said he believed Lennon knew he was being monitored.
According to the files, the government first took serious note of Lennon in
late 1971 after he attracted 16,300 to a Michigan rally to free political
activist John Sinclair
In March 1972, deportation proccedings were launched against Lennon —
allegedly for a minor marijuana arrest in England four years before — and he
spent most of the year in a successful fight to stay in this country.
=====
HOOVER'S HIT
LIST, The
CONCERT that
almost was,
& The ORIGIN
OF ZIPPIE,
Just before Mayday, in the spring of '71, Tom Forcade began working with Dana
Beal, who though still underground, was increasingly at large. Forcade was
already talking up a new group, the Zippies.
Their collaboration soon produced the most theatrical of anti-war protests:
Representing "the potsmokers of America," 3,000 marched from the 1971 D.C.
smoke-in to the same steps on the east side of the Capitol Bldg. where Vietnam
Vets had thrown their medals a few months earlier, and smashed huge
rhinocerous hypodermics-"to show Nixon what pot people think of the CIA
bringing in heroin from S.E. Asia." It made CBS National news.
Ten days later Nixon's Justice Dept. tracked Beal down to Madison, Wisc.,
through federal agent "Reverend" Theo. Wagner. But before dropping him off to
be picked up by Madison detectives, Wagner discovered Beal was also working
with Abbie Hoffman, having accepted an assignment to organize mid-western
Yippies for a national conference on protests at the Republican convention, at
that time slated for San Diego. [Madison detectives had, four months earlier,
in fact missed pinching fugitive Beal at the WERM{Wild-Eyed Revoluitionary
Movement} house by minutes, after he'd hosted a "New Nation" conference of
midwestern organizers with the East Coast leadership, including Judy Gumbo and
Jerry Rubin.]
Beal's incarceration, which confered upon him a certain minor celebrity after
2,000 people massed at a smoke-in outside the jail in Sept., '71, provided the
feds with a priceless 'in.' Beal's "radical priest," Wagner, was smuggling out
(and turning in) all confidential political communication. The [Gordon] Liddy
'protest countermeasures' group under John Mitchell not only had an insider's
view of what was going on, but a chance to anticipate and exploit splits
within the coalition Beal was trying to bridge.
At one point in late '71, half the people (there were still only 8) working
for Liddy were in Madison. Two of them were Rev. Ted and "Fat" Julie Meynard.
While Abbie and Jerry began to move ahead in New York with John Lennon, Bob
Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg, to bring a million people to San Diego, the Madison
conference kept getting postponed.
After Lennon drew 13,000 people to the Chrysler Arena in Ann Arbor and the
State of Michigan freed pot prisoner John Sinclair a few days afterwards, with
seven years yet to go on his sentence, Nixon's people sat up and took notice:
Prison isn't much of a deterrant when an ex-Beatle just flies in, does a
concert, and frees the political prisoner.
Recognizing that the Yippies involved were innured to police harassment, the
feds shifted their focus to the weak link: the big draws for San Diego, like
Lennon. Harassment of Lennon became so bad even Abbie and Jerry thought he was
paranoid. Effects were felt within weeks, when John and Yoko backed out of
doing a second concert, in Madison, for the Dana Beal defense soviet.
At the Madison conference that finally convened, in January, 1972,
disappointment over Lennon turning down a Madison gig was palpable. To the
longstanding feud between Abbie and Forcade over STEAL THIS BOOK were added
new charges that Rubin, as the contact with Lennon, had been less than
supportive of a Madison gig. It was felt people around Rubin (who had not
bothered to send a representative) considered Beal, with his background of
organizing the big provo smoke-ins on the Lower East Side in 1967 against the
advice of the Tribal elders, to be a destabilizing force. This rumor, true or
not, provided fertile ground for a new group: the Zippies.
But Hoover's orders vis-a-vis Lennon—shadow the suspect as long as it takes to
find 'em doing something illegal—became standing policy for all principal
organizers, celebrity or not. Early fallout included Abbie and Jerry's
controversial endorsement, in early May, of McGovern at the MORE (Columbia
Journalism Review) conference at the Hotel Diplomat in New York, which may
have represented a strategic move to shield the movement behind a winning
liberal, but was the kiss of death for McGovern's chances to win convincingly
in the California primary.
The Zippies said as much, and in the subsequent recriminations with Yippie
regulars, headquartered at the Albion Hotel, the thing that rankled most about
being baited by those who knew Forcade couldn't explain his money came from
weed, not CREEP, was that by alienating potential liberal support, the Albion
group were betraying the other Yippie group who had organized Miami to the
full force of the FBI 'shadow and bust' routine.
When Miami police couldn't get a pot bust on Beal because, for
2 months, he never carried a smidgeon of weed, they planted 31/2
joints on him the last night of the GOP Convention. He was acquitted, only to
be busted 10 times in the next ten years, often at the overt instigation of
the feds.
Watergate might eliminate Liddy and Nixon. But 1973 FBI documents obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act, terming "Beal and Weberman the ...
spokesmen around which the remnants of the Yippies have re-grouped," suggest
Hoover's list, never rescinded, had been programed into the Justice Dept.
bureaucracy, giving the principal actors from Miami three choices: Go
underground, like Abbie, or into seclusion, like Lennon. Get religion, like
Rennie Davis, or recant, as Rubin eventually did. Or like the man with the
tiger by the tail, continue organizing Yippies against gov't. repression. That
could involve being arrested so many times the gov't. would argue you were a
"felonious habitual offender." Having radical pressure brought to bear on your
radical lawyers to drop your Miami bombing case. Or suicide.
pps. 16-17
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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