#the bit about the miami file being destroyed coupled with the denial nondenial bit about the wiretapping is most interesting

[get-back-homeward]

October 8, 2010: NPR Fresh Air revisits a 2000 interview with Jon Wiener about his book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files [listen] [full transcript]

GROSS: Did you find anything in the FBI files that were released to you that indicated that the FBI went beyond surveillance - that they ever tried to set Lennon up?

Prof. WIENER: You know, there's like a couple of documents. Their concern was that Lennon would participate in some kind of concert, rally, anti-war demonstration outside the Republican National Convention. And there's a memo from J. Edgar Hoover to the head of the Miami FBI office that suggests that if Lennon could be arrested on possession of narcotics charges he would become more immediately deportable. Now this seems to me an effort to set Lennon up for a drug bust. The FBI doesnt enforce possession of narcotics charges, that's a state offense, this is not part of what the FBI is supposed to be doing. I then filed a Freedom of Information request with the Miami FBI office, asking for their files on Lennon, to see what their response to this was. They replied to me that their John Lennon file had been destroyed as a part of a routine file destruction procedure.

GROSS: Hmm.

Prof. WIENER: Now I have to note that - know that Lennon files were collected in five other cities and none of those places destroyed their Lennon file, so we wonder what was in the Miami Lennon file that was destroyed.