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The FBI released on Wednesday the last
documents dealing with the surveillance of John Lennon after tenaciously
holding onto them for the past 25 years. (File Photo)
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LOS ANGELES, Dec. 20
(Xinhua) -- The FBI released on Wednesday the last documents dealing with the
surveillance of John Lennon after tenaciously holding onto them for the past 25
years.
The 10 documents were posted on the Internet, thanks
to a historian at the University of California (UCI) in Irvine.
Despite the battle the government waged to keep the
documents secret, saying that releasing them could trigger "military retaliation
against the United States," the files contain nothing shocking -- just new
details about Lennon's ties to New Left leaders and antiwar groups in London in
the early 1970s, UCI historian Jon Wiener told the Los Angeles Times.
In one memo, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote
to H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon's chief of staff, that "Lennon had taken an
interest in 'extreme left-wing activities in Britain' and is known to be a
sympathizer of Trotskyist communists in England."
Another document had been blacked out on the grounds
of national security when Wiener obtained it more than 20 years ago through
litigation brought under the Freedom of Information Act, according to The Times.
It is now known the document said British leftists
Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn had courted Lennon, hoping he would "finance a
left-wing bookshop and reading room in London" -- something he apparently never
did.
Wiener and his attorneys told The Times the documents
reveal no sign that government officials considered Lennon a serious threat.
They said they were mystified that several administrations resisted making the
material public.
"The content of the files released today is an
embarrassment to the U.S. government," Wiener, 62, the author of two books on
the murdered Beatle, told The Times.
Related:
NBC says to air tapes of John Lennon's
killer
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| Rock icon John Lennon was shot dead outside
the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980. (file
photo) |
BEIJING, Nov. 17
-- The man who murdered John Lennon says in newly released audiotapes of
interviews he gave more than a decade ago that his compulsion to kill the rock
icon was like a "runaway train" and that "nothing could have stopped me."
NBC said on Tuesday it would present excerpts of the
taped interviews with Mark David Chapman as part of a two-hour documentary set
to air on Friday, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s death. Full story>>
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