Selects: John Lennon and the FBI

Did you know that Richard Nixon had a FBI case file open on Beatle John Lennon? Well he did! Why? Listen to this classic episode to find out. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:44Speaker 01

  Hi, everybody. Christmas is in the air because it's December 3rd, 2020. And you know what's also in the air? COVID, SARS-19, is that what it was called? I can't even remember. I think I got that wrong. And I'm glad that I got that wrong because it's not something that I care to remember in that kind of detail. I'm just going to call it the Cove. So we are in December with the Cove at this point. And we did a very fun episode, for me at least, because I'm a big Beatles fan, I know Josh is not, but he indulges me occasionally, with episodes like this. And this one is not just on the Beatles. In fact, it is on John Lennon and the FBI because he was under surveillance by the FBI for a lot of reasons and had a pretty dodgy relationship here in the United States at times. So check out this episode right now. I think you'll enjoy it.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:44Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant out there. Jerry's here, special guest Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know, the super subversive edition.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Josh Clark?

  Which is, I mean, it's a, it's subversive, but not coming from who you'd expect. In this case, the subversive people, Chuck, are two of the crookedest, worst Americans to ever take a breath of life in the United States.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yes, Hoover and Nixon, right?

• 3:22Josh Clark?

  Yes, Herbert Hoover and Charles J. Nixon.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Hmm, no.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  Oh, no, not those two. Was it J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Richard Milhouse, I think is his name.

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  Milhouse, that's right. So you picked this one, right?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:41Josh Clark?

  And I think we got help from our buddy, was it? Oh, it was a Grabster article, right?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  This is a Grabster.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  So why did you choose this one, Chuck?

• 3:52Speaker 01

  I'm just a Beatles nut. I'm reading a massive Beatles book and just, I'm always thinking about the Beatles. So this isn't something I knew a ton about. So now I, now I know more.

• 4:04Josh Clark?

  What are you thinking about the Beatles right now?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  They could write a song.

• 4:12Josh Clark?

  Like they could, like they're really good at writing songs, you mean?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  I think so. I know you're not a Beatles guy, but they're regarded as good songwriters.

• 4:19Josh Clark?

  Sure, I'm willing to concede that at least. I'm a grown person. I'm, I can concede when I'm wrong or when I've been bested.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I think we differ on Yoko Ono though. So that'll be, you know, that's where the tables are turned.

• 4:32Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Because you like her singing, isn't that right?

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  I appreciate it. I don't know, like is a pretty strong word, but I definitely appreciate it. There's some songs, like have you ever heard "I Love You Earth"?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:45Josh Clark?

  That's a pretty sweet song. I like her singing on that. But have you ever heard her, um, her cover of Katy Perry's Fireworks?

• 4:54Speaker 01

  No, I bet that's something.

• 4:56Josh Clark?

  She did it at maybe MoMA or the Met or something like that. And she's just standing there wailing. She's not singing words or anything like that, just wailing. And it was her cover of Katy Perry's Firework. And it's, it's pretty great to see. I'm sure if you look it up on YouTube. But I appreciate a lot of her stuff. How about that?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  I appreciate her as a human. And it's always fun to look back at, uh, at performances, live performances with Lennon when she would do a full, like four or five songs in a row in the middle of like Madison Square Garden concert. And you could kind of see his, his backing band just kind of like, oh, boy, I can't believe we're doing this. Can't believe she's really doing this.

• 5:38Josh Clark?

  Right, right.

• 5:41Josh Clark?

  And she's actually pretty strongly implicated in this whole thing. We're talking about John Lennon being pursued and surveilled and basically harassed by the FBI in the, in 1972, actually, 1971, 72, I believe, for a very specific reason. And it was at a time when John Lennon and Yoko Ono had just gotten married. They got married like two, two, three years before and were a very famous couple. The Grabster argues that they may have been like the first genuine celebrity activist couple who actually used their celebrity as a way to help, help influence or help causes, that kind of thing.

• 6:25Josh Clark?

  And by the time 1971, 72 rolled around, Richard Milhouse Nixon was actually running for reelection again. And he decided that he didn't like people like John Lennon running around conceivably swaying the vote, particularly among newly minted voters in the 18 to 21-year-old block.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he and Yoko had been contributors to causes, working-class causes. It's sort of the notion that Lennon was always known as the working-class hero. But of all the Beatles, he grew up more solidly middle-class than any of the rest of them. And not to say that that was a false persona, but he definitely sort of, sort of jumped and sort of leaned into that, as Noel Brown would say, as far as, as his persona. And I think a lot of people that don't dig deep kind of think that John Lennon grew up and with a very hard scrap of life there in Liverpool, which is not the case. But as a result of that, he championed the working man.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  He and Yoko contributed to causes. He became, along with Yoko, very much pacifist activists. And if you're a pacifist activist in the early 70s, you're not going to be a big fan of Richard Nixon and he's not going to be a big fan of you because he was, uh, he was not shy about war.

• 7:49Josh Clark?

  No, he really wasn't. He'd even campaigned, I think in 68, on ending the Vietnam War and then actually went the exact opposite direction with that. There was a lot, if you were a pacifist, there was a lot to be upset about in the 60s and early 70s because of Vietnam alone, you know?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. One of the ways I think that got the most press that when people think about John and Yoko's activism is the bed ins that they had. That is B-E-D-dash-I-N-S. And that is, if you don't know what those are, that's when you lay around in bed and you invite the press to come to your room and talk to you while you lay around in bed and while you're, while you're laying around in bed. And it looked kind of ridiculous to a lot of people, especially people on the right. But John Lennon's whole kind of point, and he was very tongue-in-cheek, kind of had a great sense of humor. But I think it all sort of stemmed from that, which is like, hey, all you gotta do is stay in bed and not go and start wars. And this is a pretty ridiculous way to drive that point home.

• 8:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. Like rather than having to like go out and oppose violence, you could oppose violence just by laying around in bed and doing nothing, letting your hair grow, I think is what they were saying.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:00Josh Clark?

  Which is pretty awesome. And the thing is, is it's John Lennon and, you know, Yoko Ono, and they're sitting around in bed with the press in their hotel room. And like that in and of itself is getting press. And then if you say, well, what is all this about? And you read a little further into the article, I don't know, maybe it kind of gets you in just the right way. And all of a sudden, you start thinking that way, too. And to the people who were, you know, running the whole military-industrial complex, that, I mean, that's a threat. Even if it's just a threat of, the threat of saying like, just don't, you don't even have to oppose war. Just don't do anything. And that opposes war in and of itself. And that was like, kind of the way things were at the time.

• 9:42Josh Clark?

  Like there was a lot of, a lot of people in power who were really... Opposed to that kind of thinking, who were opposed to people who were opposed to Vietnam, or war in general, or violence of any kind. There was a big opposition to that, and the people who were running the show in the United States were chief among those people. Like we said, Nixon as president and then running for reelection, and then J. Edgar Hoover, who was not shy at all about doing whatever he needed to, to quiet dissent. Like, he would generate dossiers on elected officials, especially ones who were more liberal, to basically keep them in line by threatening them with blackmail, or even the threat of blackmail, you know?

• 10:27Josh Clark?

  There were plenty of hippies who got their heads cracked in. There were people who were surveilled. We did an episode on the Black Panthers, if you remember. We talked about COINTELPRO, the whole program to basically undermine and smear the Black Panthers in the public's mind. Like, J. Edgar Hoover was a vicious, terrible human being. And he ran the FBI for decades and was still running the FBI when they started to target John Lennon.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, to set the stage here of kind of how this all worked out was, John Lennon had, he was able to enter, the whole thing kind of boils down to whether or not he would be allowed to live in the US, or whether or not, if he was eventually allowed to live in the US, if they could legally deport him. So, he was able to enter the US on a work visa in 71. And concurrent with this, Yoko Ono had a custody battle going on. She had a daughter from a previous marriage in the early 70s, and she wasn't going to leave at all. She was legally there. They did try and deport her. They didn't know that she had a green card already, which was sort of the first foible in this thing.

• 11:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  But, they, they knew that they had a lot of leverage over Lennon, because if they deported him, he would be without his wife, who was going to stay there. So, they had this leverage. Lennon loved living in New York City. That's where he wanted to make his permanent home.

• 11:54Josh Clark?

  So much so, that that was also leverage that they had, too.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And, so Nixon's up for reelection in 72. He would go on to win, you know, in a big, big way against McGovern. But, they were, you know, they were, I was about to call them an organization, they were an administration that was very paranoid. They would, obviously, with Watergate, they showed that they were willing to do anything to ensure their victory.

• 12:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  And that included being really worried about people like John Lennon. I don't think he was at the top of their list of things to worry about, but he was on their list, thanks to Strom Thurmond, of all people.

• 12:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so Strom Thurmond, the horrible segregationist senator from, what, South Carolina, right? He, he actually kicked this whole thing off, because I guess, he noticed that John Lennon was, was, you know, he was a left-leaning rock star activist. He seems to have been one of the first people to notice the activism that was developing among John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and to perceive it as a threat to the establishment, because all those recently enfranchised 18, 19, and 20-year-old voters, who hadn't had the right to vote until the 26th Amendment had been passed, I don't remember exactly when it

• 13:18Josh Clark?

  was passed, but it was between 68 and 72, because 72 is the first election those younger kids were going to be able to vote in. And he apparently saw Lennon as among a group of people who could speak to those kids and sway them to the left, and potentially unseat Richard Nixon, which it would turn out is just a total laugh, because Nixon beat McGovern in a landslide. But at the time, they didn't know this, and Richard Nixon wasn't going to take any chances. So, his, the note from Strom Thurmond was very well-received in the Nixon administration.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, what I want to know is who told Strom Thurmond?

• 13:55Josh Clark?

  That's what I want to know, too.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Because I doubt-

• 13:58Josh Clark?

  That's the biggest mystery here.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I doubt if Strom Thurmond was too hip to any of this, but somebody probably got in his ear, and he said, he sent a note that specifically said they try and get him deported as a, quote, "strategic countermeasure."

• 14:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  And that's really kind of what got the ball rolling. We should also mention this other guy, John, I don't know if it's Weiner or Weiner in this case.

• 14:19Josh Clark?

  It's pronounced Weiner Slave.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it is?

• 14:22Josh Clark?

  No. Do you remember, there was a 30 Rock episode where there's like a HR mediator, and he's like this very soft, rosy-cheeked, very calm, mild-bannered man, and Liz Lemon says, "Well, Mr. Weiner Slav." And he goes, "No, it's pronounced Weiner Slave."

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I miss that show.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  It's like, that was a really good moment.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  They had such great fun with dumb jokes like that, and blah, blah, blah.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right. No, that was Arrested Development.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right, that was Arrested Development. They kind of had the same DNA, though.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  So, Weiner Slave was a writer, or is a writer and historian still, and he is why we know so much of this.

• 15:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  He was writing a lot about John Lennon, writing a lot about the Beatles. He decided to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get a lot of these documents uncovered over the years, and eventually was successful in a big dump in 1997, and then in another smaller one in 2006. And if it not been for his tenacity, I don't know if anyone else would have picked up this mantle, because, you know, in the end, it's not the most interesting story in the world.

• 15:35Josh Clark?

  That's true.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I say that in a whisper. It's not like some huge, like, "Oh, my God" revelations. It's sort of one of those things, it's like, just another example of the small things that authoritarians do in this country, under, you know, in the back rooms, and in the whispered rooms of the White House.

• 15:53Josh Clark?

  Well, you know, I think like, that's really true, and that's a really good point, is that, like, if you just look at it on its face, like, you know, the FBI followed around John Lennon, kept tabs on him, and like, if you read the files, it's really pedestrian, boring stuff. You might miss like, the real story here. And the real story here is that a sitting president directed the FBI to get dirt that he could use against a political rival, an activist rock star, to help get him deported, or to figure out what leverage he could use against him, so that that, that sitting president could get reelected. That's the real story here. And that the FBI acted as, as, you know, this, basically a Gestapo-type agency on behalf

• 16:37Josh Clark?

  of Nixon. That's the, the real story, that I think kind of gets covered up by John Lennon and Yoko Ono's celebrity, and the, you know, the FBI kind of wackily following him around.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is funny, because if you look at some of the files and some of the reports, like, they would go to his concerts, and undercover agents would go to the concerts and report things like, you know, he, for his encore, he's saying, "Give peace a chance", and we all know about that song.

• 17:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  And they would take notes on song lyrics and stuff like that, so it's all just kind of silly. But, um, yeah, I definitely agree that it's, it's just an example of the lengths that Nixon would go to, to be a dirty thief.

• 17:17Josh Clark?

  Yes. Well, Chuck, I think we should demonstrate the lengths that we'll go to, to bring everyone a message break. What do you think?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  By just shutting up for two minutes?

• 17:26Josh Clark?

  Yep.

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• 21:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, so, the whole thing started eventually. It wasn't clear what was gonna happen, but the real thing that kicked all of John Lennon's big problems off was that he was arrested in 1968 in London for possession of narcotics. I'm making air quotes, you can't see, because he was busted with some pot, I think maybe some hash, and like, rolling paraphernalia. It was some really BS beef that they got him on in London. There was some true believer, zealous, anti-drug cop named Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, who was later jailed, actually, for committing perjury as a police officer.

• 22:07Josh Clark?

  But he was alleged to have planted the evidence that may or may not be true. But it was like a rap that Lennon shouldn't have had on him, or Yoko shouldn't have had on her, that they just wanted a high-profile bust. And that happened in 1968, and it turned out that that would follow Lennon for years to come, and really kind of be the fulcrum that the US government had on him to try to keep him from staying in the US.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he wasn't even doing heroin at this point, I don't think.

• 22:39Josh Clark?

  No.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  So they should have waited if they wanted a real case?

• 22:42Josh Clark?

  Well, it makes you wonder. Like, I remember hearing in our, I think, our Black Panther episode, that the FBI was not above, like, addicting activists and dissidents with heroin, like, turning them on to heroin, and then getting them addicted, and then just, you know, taking them out of the game like that.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Lennon never shot heroin. That was his jam.

• 23:05Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  So, early 71, like I said, he was able to enter on a tourist visa. And then, when Nixon and his cronies get going on the deportation, the whole thing was based on the fact that he had overstayed his visa. But along with that, it was very valuable to them that he had a drug conviction under his belt at that point.

• 23:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  So, they were surveilling him, they were surveilling other artists around the country too, who they thought were subversive and sending messages. Lennon, speaking of getting busted for pot, Lennon very famously wrote a song called John Sinclair in support, and did a tribute, or not tribute, but a concert in, I don't know if they were raising money?

• 23:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Or just awareness?

• 23:52Josh Clark?

  Both.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Okay, for John Sinclair, who was a poet, he was the manager of the MC5, great, great rock band. And he offered two undercover cops a couple of joints, and went to, and he had already had a couple of minor pot offenses, but he went to prison for 10 years for this. And a big refrain in that song, John Sinclair, which is a cool song, and very rootsy and bluesy, not like very Lennon at all, is "10 for 2, 10 for 2," is what they keep saying, "10 years for 2 joints."

• 24:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that he sold to undercover cop, right?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it worked. He actually was sprung from prison shortly after this concert.

• 24:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like, 2 days after. And some people say, eh, I think that indicates he was already going to be sprung, that the Michigan Supreme Court knew this was a, this is a trumped-up charge. But other people say, no, the concert surely had some impact. But Sinclair is, so, the point about Sinclair and John Lennon is, John Lennon performed this song, he was the headliner at this concert in Ann Arbor. And he had been coordinating with other people in John Sinclair's orbit that were prominent figures in the new left. And at this time, in the early 70s, the 60s had ended, it had become clear that flower power hadn't worked, the evil people were still in charge.

• 25:16Josh Clark?

  So what was next? Maybe nonviolent coordination and resistance wasn't the way to go. Now, Lennon and Yoko were dedicated pacifists. They didn't want anything to do with violence, they didn't condone violence, they didn't like violence in any way, shape, or form. But there were elements in the new left who weren't necessarily convinced that that wasn't the only way to change the course of the United States and get rid of people like Nixon and his cronies. And so, if you're watching this from the outside, like you're J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, you're watching the people on the new left, and you don't know which way they're gonna break, violent, nonviolent, who knows? But you're treating all of them with suspicion, and all of a sudden, John Lennon, one of

• 26:01Josh Clark?

  the most recognizable and popular people on the planet, is suddenly hanging out with some of these new-left cats that you don't know which way they're gonna go, violent or nonviolent. And that really drew the attention of the FBI to John Lennon. It wasn't necessarily he and Yoko and their pacifist stuff. Some people think that it was his involvement with genuine, bona fide, new-left activists like John Sinclair, or like Bobby Seal. Like, John Sinclair founded the White Panther Party, which, they had a 10-point platform, like, the Black Panthers platform, and the first platform, and the White Panther platform, is that it's fully in support of the Black Panthers 10-point platform.

• 26:46Josh Clark?

  So, he's hanging out with a bunch of people that had proven themselves as dyed-in-the-wool foes of the Nixon administration. That definitely caught the FBI's attention.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they had big plans. They got together, and I think their first meeting was at the Alamokey Township, that's how I'm gonna pronounce it.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  The Skaramucci Township.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  In New Jersey, and initially called themselves the Alamokey Tribe, but wisely changed their name to the Election Year Strategy Information Center. And their plan was, in 1972, is to host, and Lennon gave them money, he gave them like 75 grand to kind of get going, and said, "Here, let's do a bunch of concerts with the help of John Lennon," all across the country in 1972. We can have different artists performing, different speakers, you know, like pounding home the anti-war message. And then, as these concerts roll closer and closer to the election, it'll culminate in a big protest at the RNC in Miami. This is all very legal stuff. It wasn't, they weren't staging riots or anything.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  These were just concerts, awareness, trying to keep Nixon from winning. And Nixon got worried, and he knew that, like you said, the influence that someone like John Lennon could have was, like, he didn't have anyone on his side. There was no Scott Baio at the time wooing the youngsters.

• 28:13Josh Clark?

  Bob Blah-Blah?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  To the right. Oh, he was Bob Blah-Blah, wasn't he? That's funny.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  So this is all going on, and this is kind of what ramps up the pressure to get Lennon out of there. This custody battle's going on, they know about that. And so, their first step was to instruct immigration and naturalization to try and say, "Hey, you've overstayed your visa, you gotta get out of here." And Lennon knew this was coming, this is no secret. He had gone on TV shows, talking about being followed by the FBI, being, having his phone tapped, which we still aren't sure if that really happened. I think it says officially that there was no legal phone tapping in the FBI documents, but that, throwing that word "legal" in there, just kind of makes you think like, well, were there any illegal ones that you're not gonna tell us about?

• 29:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I read, I read an interview, so this is like the depths of my depravity. I didn't even listen to the interview. I read a Fresh Air interview with John Weiner, or Weiner, about this, and he said that in the, the FBI responded and said, "They found no evidence of illegal wiretapping by the FBI," or no, "legal wiretapping by the FBI." So Weiner's like, okay, does that mean they were doing illegal wiretapping? Or does it mean that they didn't look very hard for evidence? It doesn't mean that they weren't tapping his phone, is what he's saying.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Right. It at least made Lennon paranoid enough.

• 29:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Like, he wasn't just, he wasn't not sweating this, he was, this made him very paranoid, and with good reason. But he took to going next door at the Dakota Building. So he would let Lennon use his phone in his apartment to make phone calls, and I guess, you know, assist with the calls at the same time a little bit. And then, the FBI said, "You know what could really help? Is if we could bust them currently for narcotics in the United States. If we have an active charge, drug charge against them." And Hoover sent it out himself. He said, quote, "For info on a bureau, NYPD Narcotics Division is aware of the subject's recent use of narcotics," which is like every day, "and are attempting to obtain enough

• 30:29Speaker 01

  info to arrest both subject and Yoko based on PD investigation."

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and by this time, I'm thinking he was using heroin. I think that's what they were referencing, is his recent use.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Oh, really? I didn't think that started till later.

• 30:42Josh Clark?

  I thought it was the early 70s.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  I thought it happened during his lost weekend, but I may be wrong in that. I'm not that far along in the book yet.

• 30:49Josh Clark?

  I'm gonna err toward you, then, because I'm just surmising here. I'm not the one who has a big old book of Beatles history.

• 30:58Josh Clark?

  So I don't know, they never, they never actually busted him, right? This was all just like they were planning on doing this, but they never needed to?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  I don't think he was arrested in the United States, was he?

• 31:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't get that impression, but, but it seemed like everything was kind of barreling toward that. And even like you were saying, the FBI was like, we've let the NYPD know to, to, to go do this. So, and if you take a step back, like, this is some heat, this is some pressure that they're putting on John and Yoko. They're basically saying, we're going to split you guys up by deporting John because we know that Yoko's not going to leave the country because of this custody battle. She can't afford to, so she has to stay here. So if we threaten deportation to John Lennon, it might actually keep him in line. And the FBI used the word neutralized, that they were seeking to neutralize Lennon. And I guess some people who don't dig very deeply

• 31:54Josh Clark?

  into the story are like, they were going to assassinate John Lennon. And John Weiner Weiner has pointed out like, that's not at all what they meant. They meant like basically making him ineffective, like taking him out of the game, basically, one way or another. But not killing him, just convincing him through putting this undue unfair, undemocratic pressure on him to drop his activities with the new left.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they, and by the way, I think, I think he probably was using heroin in the late 60s and had an on again, off again. But either way, he-

• 32:29Josh Clark?

  So, so that makes sense because I did see that guys like Jerry Rubin and I think Rennie Davis, a couple of like the Chicago Seven, like they didn't even like hang out with him because he was doing too many drugs. And I, I'm guessing that it wasn't like he was smoking so much pot, we can't even talk with him anymore. Like, I think he was shooting dope and they weren't.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he never shot it. He always smoked it.

• 32:53Josh Clark?

  Or smoking dope.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  But he and, I think he and Yoko were doing heroin, actually before the Beatles broke up at the end.

• 33:00Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  When they were sort of estranged, not the, with the Beatles, not John and Yoko. But at any rate, these, like I said, these investigations are going on and they're going to his concerts. And they're not even sending back information that really means much. They're even saying, some of these informants, like, you know what, they're, they're not even really down with, like, the new left isn't even down with them because they think they're just, quote, self-aggrandizing rock stars.

• 33:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Or there's little chance that they'll accomplish anything because they spend all their time doing drugs. They're kind of sending the message like, you really don't need to worry so much about John Lennon. He's not much of a threat.

• 33:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Kind of one of the funny things about this investigation was when, and Lennon was one of the most famous people in the world, one of the most recognizable faces in the world on planet Earth, along with Yoko Ono. And the FBI passes around a sheet with Lennon's picture on it so they can recognize him. But it was the wrong photo. It was of a different human being. It wasn't even John Lennon.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was a street busker from the West Village named David Peele.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  So funny.

• 34:07Josh Clark?

  Who had a record that I guess John Lennon helped produce or something. And he looked vaguely like John Lennon, but that was the, that was the picture that the FBI passed around to the cops of the wrong guy. They also, the FBI also put out an All Points Bulletin searching for John Lennon and said that he's at the St. Regis at 150 Bank Street.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  St. Regis Landscape Supply?

• 34:31Josh Clark?

  That's right. I guess that's what they meant because the St. Regis Hotel is on Central Park. And John Lennon was indeed living on Bank Street at the time, but he was at 105 Bank Street. So that All Points Bulletin was all kinds of wrong. But this is the level of like, coppery that, that, that the FBI was conducting, you know, trying to get John Lennon.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about Lennon's official defense right after this.

• 35:12Josh Clark?

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• 35:34Josh Clark?

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• 35:50Speaker 01

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• 36:12Speaker 04

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers, producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of the group Chic. A great song has a way of defining a moment, a moment of joy, heartbreak, or anything in between. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel-

• 36:46Speaker 05

  That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life, regardless of how everyone else buys into this. I believe in this and I'm gonna push.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  To rising stars like Alex Warren.

• 37:01Speaker 06

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• 37:19Speaker 04

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• 38:56Speaker 01

  All right. So John Lennon is not going to take this lying down. He was, he was paranoid. He was going on like the Mike Douglas Show and talking about the FBI coming after him.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  The first thing he did was probably what any really, really rich person would do is he hires a top-rate bulldog attorney to try and defend this, or at least delay this. And this guy's name was Leon Wilds. And he really did delay this. He was sort of a master at filing these motions and getting it extended and extended. And Lennon was able to stay in the country longer and longer and longer. But he was also kind of instrumental in kind of letting Lennon know that this was a real situation that he was involved in.

• 39:37Josh Clark?

  Right. The thing is, is if you are an immigration prosecutor for the federal government of the United States, you know that there is not a ton of resources allocated to your division, right?

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:51Josh Clark?

  Traditionally, there hasn't been. And so, customarily, the Justice Department has, or I guess INS, has left it up to each prosecutor to determine how hard they want to prosecute the case. And so, if you are an upstanding person, who's never posed any sort of threat to the United States, and maybe you own a business, or you're a productive member of society, there is a chance that the INS is going to look the other way and not actually deport you, even if you are here illegally. You have overstayed your visa, or you came to the country illegally, who knows? And that's actually where the Dreamer Program came from, DACA. It basically said, like, these particular immigrants were brought here as children,

• 40:36Josh Clark?

  and they pose no threat. Most of them are going to college, or college bound, or they're in the military, so we're going to not deport them. And what Lenin's lawyer told him was, like, all of this is true, and yet, they're putting the heat on you like I have never seen. This is clearly coming down from on high. Like, they want to get you out of the United States, and it's not just this prosecutor.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the other thing that happens when it comes to a case like this is, they have to weigh, or they can be decided, basically, on the value that an immigrant might bring to the US by being an American, or living in the United States. And so, there was, you know, it's kind of funny to look back now and think that there had to be a case made that John Lennon brings any kind of value. But they did, and there was a series of letters written by Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, and Joyce Carol Oates, Leonard Bernstein, John Updike, just a series of very famous artists, kind of arguing in favor of John Lennon being allowed to live here. It was sort of a flood of public outcry, like, what, you know, what little was known

• 41:46Speaker 01

  back then, at least. Like, you can't let, just, there's tremendous value to letting John Lennon stay in this country.

• 41:53Josh Clark?

  Right, and don't forget, John Cage wrote a letter, too. And I'm sure it was kind of like, well, you know, do you want me to write a letter for you, John? And he's like, yeah, sure, I'm sure that would help a lot, John Cage, because I'm sure no one in the Nixon administration's ever heard of you.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably so.

• 42:10Josh Clark?

  So, the one, kind of, the upshot, I'm just going full-on using this word now, the upshot of that letter-writing campaign was not even just so much to demonstrate the value of John Lennon remaining in the United States, it was, if you kick him out, like, there's going to be a public outcry, and you're going to be held to account and asked to explain why you guys kicked him out. So it did have a bit of that, combined with his attorney's tenacity. It kept John Lennon in the country. He was actually never deported, even though they were, he had a, he lived for, I think, two or three years with a, you have 60 days to leave the country order. And his lawyer kept getting it extended, and extended, and extended.

• 42:55Josh Clark?

  But for three years, that was the threat that he was living under. And again, if he was deported, he would leave without his wife, who had to stay in the country for her own custody battle. So that was, that was a lot of strain on him, actually. And the worst part about this whole thing is not that the FBI did this, and that the Nixon administration seemed to know that, that it all came down to Strom Thurmond writing this memo to kick things off. It was that it worked. Like, they sought to neutralize John Lennon and his political activism, and he stopped. He actually did. He gave in in August of 1972, by announcing that he was not going to take part in that

• 43:35Josh Clark?

  series of concerts that was going to culminate at the Republican National Convention, or engage in any kind of activist activities any longer. He was just going to go back to being a musician again.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and by this point, Hoover was dead. L. Patrick Gray was the acting director of the FBI, and in that same month, that August, before the election in November, the FBI's New York office reported to Gray that he's no longer going to be involved with these concerts. He's no longer with the new left. We don't really need to worry about him anymore. We're going to basically settle this case, and close this case after Nixon wins the election. And, like we said earlier a couple of times, by landslide, so this is all sort of for naught, anyway. Gerald Ford ended up overturning Lenin's deportation order in 1975, that was already filed.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And in 76, he got his green card, and lived in New York very famously in the Dakota for the last four years of his life, before he was murdered in the street, which, I think we should do an episode on that at some point, maybe in a couple of years, once this one is well in the rearview mirror.

• 44:46Josh Clark?

  You bet.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  It'd be a good one.

• 44:49Josh Clark?

  So if, John Lennon, apparently, before he died, he gave a couple interviews, and he said of this time, like, that it nearly ruined him as an artist, you know? Like, you said, he wasn't, he wasn't just not sweating it, like, he sweated it every day. It was a big, hairy problem in his life, all the time, and a source of great stress. So in addition to the stress, it stole his focus, like, it made him think about that, and like, how much he hated the Nixon administration, and how terrible the FBI was for how they were harassing him, and possibly tapping his phone. And it just took his mind from his art. And he later said that it almost ruined him as an artist, because the work he was producing

• 45:33Josh Clark?

  at the time was journalism, not poetry, as he put it.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:38Josh Clark?

  Which is a very sad effect, but it's a really real-world effect, when you've got something just looming in the front of your mind, that you can't get out of your mind, especially if it's dealing with badness, that has a terrible effect on you, and your life in general. It can produce an entire bad period of your life, you know?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was like, I had to let Yoko sing a lot.

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  I've got, I have something I have to say, I don't want to forget it. In one of the FBI notes at that John Sinclair concert, the FBI informant reported that the song, John Sinclair, was not up to Lenin's usual standards, and, get this, Yoko can't even remain on key. That was an FBI informant.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had a good ear, but, you know, I like the song, it doesn't, like, belong up there with his greatest songs.

• 46:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  But it was very, it was very clear, it was sort of in the tradition of protest songs, it's got this acoustic slide Dobro guitar, and, you know, it's sort of, it fits in with the great folk songs of all time, I think. But not necessarily one of the great Lennon or Beatles songs.

• 46:49Josh Clark?

  Is it as good as John Henry was a Steel-Driving Man?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  I think it's better, I like it better.

• 46:54Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, like we mentioned earlier, the reason we know all this was because of Weiner's reporting, and he eventually got those documents released, and there was, you know, in his circle, there was a big hubbub, like, what's going to be in there? What, what secrets will be revealed? And really, not much. What was revealed was embarrassment for the FBI, embarrassment that they released a picture that wasn't even John Lennon, embarrassment that they had a very unethical, and perhaps even illegal, motivation behind trying to get this person deported. And it was just egg on the face, and that's why they tried to keep it under wraps for so many years, hoping that it would not get out.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Not because there were some big revealing documents, but they were just like, can we just sort of act like this didn't happen?

• 47:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so we'll classify everything as a national security risk. And they did, and actually, that last trove of documents, the little handful that trickled out in 2006, was a MI5, a kind of a British Secret Service file on Lenin, that the US said, if they, it was, that that last bit of document contained a file from a foreign government that had trusted the US to keep it, and that it could result in economic, diplomatic, and military action if they were to release it. Like, the UK was just going to bomb the US for releasing their document or their file on John Lennon. That's why the FBI held on to it until 2006, and then they lost a court case.

• 48:30Josh Clark?

  So, like, if there's a hero of this story, it's John Weiner, or John Weiner, I don't know how he says his name, and I'm sorry, either way, because he was the one that really stood up, not just for John Lennon, but for the First Amendment, you know?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:45Josh Clark?

  And people's ability to be politically active without, you know, the threat of being intimidated. So, good for him.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  You got anything else about this?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Got nothing else.

• 48:58Josh Clark?

  I have an article to direct everybody to, it's on Pop Matters, John Lennon, colon, Revolutionary Man as Political Artist. And it's about all this sorry history, but also, just a pretty good critical evaluation of him as an activist, and it's just a really good, interesting article, so check it out. And since I said, "check it out, everybody," it's time for Listener Mail.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  This is in reference of our haunted real estate. I guess that was the short stuff, right? It had to be.

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, it was.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Like, please tell me we didn't do 45 minutes on that.

• 49:36Josh Clark?

  We could've.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Hey, guys, been a listener for years and finally have a good reason to write you. I was listening to the episode on whether you're supposed to disclose whether a house is haunted or not, and it hit close to home. Two years ago, we bought our first house and I made a point to run a report to see if anyone died in the house. The previous owner had just died within a year, but it didn't say where. I wasn't really worried about someone actually dying in the house. I was really just trying to get a big discount. However, the agent said he didn't know, so no big discount. Cut to two years later, I found out from neighbors and research that the previous owner did not die. However, he was a creep who actually had multiple abuse charges. In fact, I found an article stating that he had a woman tied up in our basement.

• 50:19Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Who he tortured until she was luckily able to escape for weeks. That's like almost worse than just a regular person dying.

• 50:29Josh Clark?

  Just somebody dying of natural causes? It's a million times worse.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Well, no, I was about to say worse than a murder. I guess they're on par.

• 50:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, let's debate that at length.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I don't want to, I don't want to rank awful crimes.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  But I think that might creep me out just as much. Let's just say that.

• 50:45Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  The police searched the house and found oodles of weapons. The charges were eventually dropped. Apparently, he had money and he redid the entire basement, which is beyond creepy. I don't know if this qualifies as info that should have been provided to us at purchase, but it sure seems like it, huh?

• 51:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  That is from Andy, A-N-D-I.

• 51:05Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. Well, thanks a lot, Andy. Is, is there a heart over the I?

• 51:11Speaker 01

  No, but it's typed.

• 51:13Josh Clark?

  Is it, um, it could be Andy McDowell. I think she spells her name like that. I could see something like this happening to Andy McDowell, can't you?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I love Andy McDowell.

• 51:22Josh Clark?

  Well, whether it's from Andy McDowell or not, we appreciate the email. Thank you. And yes, I agree. I think the Realtor should have disclosed that, if you ask me.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 51:32Josh Clark?

  If you want to let us know about some way a Realtor wronged you or anybody did, we want to hear about it. You can send us an email to [email protected].

• 51:46Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 52:01Josh Clark?

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• 53:05Speaker 01

  My fresh detector.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Uh, your what?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  There it is.

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  What is it detecting?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Fresh produce, fresh meat.

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  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

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  Apparently, we celebrate.

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• 53:31Speaker 07

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.