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How the FBI tried to nail John Lennon

Maev Kennedy

John Lennon

A man who sang "Imagine all the people/Living life in peace" was a subversive, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation could not nail John Lennon. An American historian has won his 25-year campaign to expose the FBI's pursuit of the ex-Beatle — but the last 10 pages are not quite spy thriller reading.

The Lennon files show American intelligence followed him, photographed him, monitored his activities, and logged his support for anti-war and radical movements.

In the early 1970s the FBI had a cunning plan. It recruited two "prominent British leftists" to befriend him. Having won his trust, they made him an offer he could not refuse: would he like to fund their "leftwing bookshop and reading room in London?" But Lennon turned them down flat. The report concluded sadly that there was "no certain proof" that Lennon had provided money "for subversive purposes."

The surveillance report of the least successful operation since the plot to poison Fidel Castro's cigar has finally been released to a U.S. historian.

Jon Wiener applied for the documents under freedom of information law in 1981, when he decided to write a book about Lennon, shot dead in 1980. The FBI responded with a barrage of excuses for not releasing the files, arguing that national security would be compromised.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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