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Activism See other Activism Articles Title: Lennon FBI Files Put California Professor on Long, Winding Road Jon Wiener's 25-year magical mystery tour of the Nixon administration's worries about the late John Lennon boils down to 10 pages. That's all that remains secret in a 281-page report compiled by the FBI in the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon feared that the former Beatle might galvanize the youth vote and thwart his re-election, Wiener said. The journey by Wiener, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, has taken him through the courts and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The story he unearthed will be told in a documentary, ``The U.S. vs. John Lennon,'' that is scheduled to be shown in theaters this month. While a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who has been working with Wiener says the case may be drawing to a close, the historian says it has echoes for today. ``It's the principle of the thing,'' said Wiener, 62. ``It's about what limits there are on the White House's arguments that it's acting in the interest of national security.'' Wiener, whose previous research focused on post-Civil War history, began his quest for the FBI files after Lennon was assassinated in New York City in December 1980. He wanted to write a book on Lennon's work against the Vietnam War. Wiener sent his first Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1981. He got about a third of the 281 pages the FBI said it had on Lennon, with the rest blacked out under a ``national security'' exemption to the law. Trickle of Documents After enlisting the ACLU to help, Wiener lost his first battle in 1988, when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the FBI didn't have to disclose any more. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision three years later, denying the FBI's claim that release of the documents would lead to ``military retaliation'' and other harm against the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1992, and in 1997, the FBI settled with the ACLU and agreed to release 81 more documents to Wiener. Among the revelations in a March 16, 1972, memo was the assessment that Lennon wasn't a real revolutionary because he was ``constantly under the influence of narcotics.'' A federal judge ordered the FBI almost two years ago to release the remaining 10 pages. The FBI argued that unveiling the documents would jeopardize the U.S.'s relationship with foreign governments. Wiener said he thinks the remaining 10 pages contain information from Britain's MI5 intelligence service about Lennon's support for the U.K. Workers' Revolutionary Party. Coming to a Close The FBI, under its fourth director since the case began, may decide this month whether to appeal or to supply the remaining documents, said Dan Marmalefsky, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster in Los Angeles who has been representing the ACLU pro bono in the case for 23 years. ``We're basically at the end of the line,'' Marmalefsky said. ``I anticipate they are going to make up their mind by the end of September, and the expectation is that the government will not pursue the appeal.'' FBI spokesman William Carter declined to comment amid the pending litigation. The Lennon files are part of a larger collection of FBI files that show the agency's focus on celebrities. Dossiers accessible over the Internet in the FBI's Freedom of Information Act ``reading room'' include reports on stars ranging from Elvis Presley, who wanted to meet then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to Walt Disney, whose 1962 movie ``Moon Pilot'' made light of a government agent. Looking for Plot Wiener said the file on Lennon, opened to determine whether Lennon was scheming to disrupt the 1972 Republican convention in Miami Beach, Florida, instead was mostly made up of routine scraps about Lennon's fight with the Immigration and Naturalization Service over efforts to deport him and his association with protest groups, along with newspaper clippings. Those snippets cost the ACLU and its lawyers an estimated $400,000, about half of which was reimbursed by the FBI in a settlement, Wiener said. He wrote a book about the case, ``Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files,'' in 1999. Federal government secrecy efforts have expanded since the Sept. 11 attacks. The number of government ``classification actions'' has soared 75 percent to 14 million since 2001, while the total number of declassified pages dropped to 29 million last year from 100 million in 2001, according to a June report by the Congressional Research Service. The government spent $7.1 billion stamping ``confidential,'' ``secret'' or ``top secret'' on documents in 2004, up 58 percent from 2001. ``The issue is, who gets to decide what is in the interest of national security?'' Wiener said. To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net . Last Updated: September 1, 2006 02:24 EDT
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#6. To: Eoghan (#0)
National Security is anything that may undermine the two-party fraud's reign of corruption.
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