Selects: John Lennon and the FBI

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If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body, but no one will find it. He acted friendly, he talked friendly, he sounded friendly. And he won't knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and this is maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw a bomb, a backhander, a bow. Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 in the Bone Valley Feed on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, Christmas is in the air, because 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, some of Big Beatles fan, and Josh is not, but he indulges me occasionally. The episode's 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan out there, Jerry's here, special guest, Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know, the super subversive edition, yeah. Which is, I mean, 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. Yes, Hoover and Nixon, right? Yes, Herbert Hoover and Charles J. Nixon. No. No, no, not those two, was it J. Eger Hoover and Richard Nixon? Richard Millhouse, I think it's right, Millhouse. That's right. So you picked this one, right? Yeah. I think we got help from our buddy, was it, oh, it was a grabster article, right? This is a grabster. So why did you choose this one, Chuck? 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 know I know more. What are you thinking about the Beatles right now? I think they could write a song. Like they could, like they're really good at writing songs, you mean? I think so. I know you're not a Beatles guy, but they're regarded as good songwriters. Sure. I'm willing to concede that at least. I'm a grown person, I can concede when I'm wrong or when I've been bested. I think we differ on Yoko, oh no, though, so that'll be, you know, that's where the tables are turned. Okay. So you like her singing, isn't that right? I appreciate it. I don't like it's a pretty strong word, but I definitely appreciate it. There's some songs, like have you ever heard I love you Earth? Sure. That's a pretty sweet song. I like her singing on that, but have you ever heard her cover of Katy Perry's Firework? No, I bet that's something. She did it at maybe MoMA or the mat or something like that and she just stand in 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 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? I appreciate her as a human and it's always fun to look back at performances, live performances with Lynn and when she would do a full like four or five songs in the row in the middle of like Madison Square Garden concert and you could kind of see his backing band just kind of like, oh boy, I can't believe we're doing this. I can't believe she's really doing this. 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 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 got 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 influence or help causes that kind of thing. And by the time 1971-72 rolled around, Richard Millhouse-Nixon was actually running for re-election 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. 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. And he definitely sort of jumped and sort of leaned into that as Noel Brown would say. As far as his persona, and I think a lot of people that don't dig deep kind of think that John Lennon grew up with a very hard scrap of life. They're in Liverpool, which is not the case. But as a result of that, he championed the working man. 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 not shy about war. 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 pacifist, there was a lot to be upset about in the 60s and early 70s because of Vietnam alone, you know? Yeah, for sure. One of the ways I think they got the most press that when people think about John and Yoko's activism is the bed ends that they had, that is B-E-D-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. Right. And 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, I got to do a stay in bed and not go and start wars, and this is a pretty ridiculous way to drive that point home. 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, lending your hair grow, I think is what they were saying. Sure. Which is pretty awesome, and the thing is, is it's John Lennon, and 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 pressed. 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, 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 oppose to Vietnam or war in general. 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 re-elect, and then J. Eger 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? 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 co-intelpro, the whole program to basically undermine and smear the black panthers in the public's mind. Like the J. Eger 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. - 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 gonna 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. - Right. - But they knew that they had a lot of leverage over Lennon because if they deported him, he would be without his wife who was gonna stay there. So they had this leverage, Lennon loved living in New York City. That's where he wanted to make his permanent home. - That was so much so that that was also a leverage that they had too. - Yeah, absolutely. And so Nixon's up for re-election in '72. He would go on to win in a big, big way against him a govern. But they were, it was about to come in an organization and 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. 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. - Yeah, so Strom Thurmond, the horrible segregationist senator from South Carolina, right? He actually kicked this whole thing off 'cause I guess he noticed that John Lennon 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 was passed, but it was between '68 and '72 because '72 was the first election, those younger kids were gonna 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 as 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 note from Strom Thurmond was very well received in the Nixon administration. - Yeah, I think what I wanna know is who told Strom Thurmond. - That's what I wanna know, too. 'Cause that's the biggest mystery here. - 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 "strategic countermeasure." - Right. - 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. - It's pronounced Weiner's slave. - Oh, it is? - No, do you remember, there was a 30-rock episode where there's like an HR mediator and he's like this very soft, rosy, cheeked, very calm, mild-bannered man. And Liz Lemmon says, "Well, Mr. Weiner's slave." And he goes, "No, it's pronounced Weiner's slave." - I miss that show. - It's like, that was a really good moment. - They had such great fun with dumb jokes like that and Bob, blah, blah. - Yeah, right. No, that was a rest of development. - Oh, that's right, that was a rest of development. They kinda had the same DNA though. - Yeah, for sure. - So Weiner's slave was a writer and or is a writer and historian still and he is why we know so much of this. He was writing a lot about John Lennon, writing a lot about the Beatles. He decided to file Freedom of Information Act request to get a lot of these documents uncovered over the years and eventually was successful in a big dump in 1997 than 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 to because in the end, it's not the most interesting story in the world. - This is true. - 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 whisper rooms of the White House. - Well, you know, I think that's really true and that's a really good point is that like, if you just look at it on his face, like, you know, the FBI followed around John Lennon and 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 sitting president could get reelected. That's the real story here and that the FBI acted as, you know, this, basically a Gestapo type agency on behalf of Nixon. That's 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. - 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 of chance and we all know about that song. - Right. - And they would take notes on song lyrics and stuff like that. So it's all just kind of silly. But yeah, I definitely agree that it's, it's just an example of the links that Nixon would go to to be a dirty thief. - Yes. Well Chuck, I think we should demonstrate the links that we'll go to to bring everyone a message break. What do you think? - By just shutting up for two minutes. - Yep. (upbeat music) - If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. - I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Derio Amade, Alex Carr, Fefe Lee, Palmer Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel, and where they think this is all headed. - Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. - Well, yeah, it's up to us. - But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? - They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, who's imagination do we want to live in? - This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. - Listen to The Builders, on the iHeart Radio App Apple Podcast, or ever get your podcasts. - I'm Hamza. - And I'm Martin, and we're the host of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen hours? - Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world, and we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had, or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious. 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Real cases, real families, real killers. This is Bloodline Crimes. Listen to the black-of-x Bloodline Crimes every Thursday, starting October 8th from the Black -of-x podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, so the whole thing started eventually. It wasn't clear what was going to 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 a possession of narcotics. I'm making aircoats, you can't see, because he was busted with some pot. I think maybe some hash and rolling paraphernalia. It's some really BS beef that they got him on in London. There was some true believers, Zealous, Anti-drug cop named Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, who was later jailed actually for committing perjury as a police officer, but he was alleged to have planted the evidence that may or may not be true. But it was like a wrap that Lennon shouldn't have had on him or Yoko shouldn't have had on her that they just wanted a high-profile bust. 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. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't even doing heroin at this point, I don't think. No. So they should have waited if they wanted a real case. 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, ticking them out of the game like that. Yeah, I think Lennon never shot heroin. That was his jam. Okay. 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. Yeah. 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 Johnson Claire in support and did a tribute or not tribute, but a concert in, I don't know if they were raising money or just awareness. Both. Okay. For Johnson Claire, 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, Johnson Claire, which is a cool song and very rootsy and bluesy, not like very linen at all. It's 10 for two, 10 for two is what they keep saying 10 years for two joints. Yeah, that he sold to a undercover cop, right? Yeah, but it worked. He actually was sprung from prison shortly after this concert. Yeah, like two days after and some people say, I think that indicates he was already going to be sprung that the Michigan Supreme Court knew this this is a trumped up charge, but other people say, no, the concert surely had some impact. But the point about Sinclair and John Lennon is John Lennon performed the song. He was the headliner at this concert in Ann Arbor. And he had been coordinating with other people in Johnson Claire'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 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 Jager Hoover and Richard Nixon, you're watching the people on the new left and you don't know which way they're going to break violent nonviolent. Who knows? But you're treating all of them with suspicion. And all of a sudden, John Lennon, one of 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 going to 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 Johnson Claire or like Bobby Seale. Like Johnson Claire founded the White Panther Party, which they had a 10 point platform like the Black Panther's platform and the first platform and the White Panther platform is that it's fully in support of the Black Panther's 10 point platform. So he's hanging out with a bunch of people that had proven themselves as as as died in the wolf foes of the Nixon administration that definitely caught the FBI's attention. Yeah, and they had big plans. They got together and I think their first meeting was at the alamuki township. That's how I'm going to pronounce it. The Scaramucci township in New Jersey and initially called themselves the alamuki 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 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. 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 Beo at the time wooing the youngsters. Bob blah blah. To the right. Oh, he was blah blah, wouldn't he? That's funny. 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 got to 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, what are there any illegal ones that you're not going to tell us about? 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 FBI responded and said they found no evidence of illegal wire tapping by the FBI or no legal wire tapping by the FBI. So so whiners like, okay, does that mean they were doing illegal wire tapping? Or does it mean that they didn't look very hard for evidence? It doesn't mean that they weren't tapping his phone as what he's saying. Right. At least made linen paranoid enough. 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 linen use his phone and 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 bus 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 NYCPD narcotics division is aware of the subject's recent use of narcotics, which is like every day. And our attempt to obtain enough info to arrest both Subject and White Yoko based on PD in investigation. Yeah and by this time I'm thinking he was using heroin I think that's what they were referencing is his recent use. Oh really I didn't think that started till later. I thought it was the early 70s. I thought it happened during his lost weekend but I'm maybe wrong in that. I'm not that far along. I'm gonna air toward you then because I'm just surmising here I'm not the one who has a big old book of Beatles history. 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. I don't think he was arrested in the United States was he? 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 gonna split you guys up by deporting John because we know that Yoko is 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 into the story are like they were going to assassinate John Lennon and John Wiener Wiener 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. 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. So that makes sense because I did see that guys like Jerry Rubin and I think Rene Davis a couple of like the Chicago seven like they didn't even like hang out with them because he was doing too many drugs and I'm guessing that it wasn't like he was smoking so much pot who can't even talk with them any more like I think he was shooting dope and they weren't yeah well he never shot it he always smoked it or smoking dope but he and I think he and Yoko were doing heroin actually before the Beatles broke up at the end okay when they were sort of estranged not the with the Beatles not John 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-aggrand a grandizing rock stars yeah 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 Linton he's not much of a threat yeah kind of one of the funny things about this investigation was when and Linton 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 Oh no and the FBI passes around a sheet with Linton'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 Linton yeah it was a street busker from the West Village named David Peale so funny who had a record that I guess John Linton helped produce or something and he'd looked vaguely like John Linton but that was the that was the picture that the FBI passed round the cops of the wrong guy they also the FBI also put out an all-points bulletin searching for John Linton and said that he's at the St. Regis at 150 Bank Street St. Regis landscapes supply it's right I guess that's what they meant because the St. Regis hotel is on Central Park and John Linton 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 that the FBI was conducting you know trying to get John Linton all right well let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about Lenin's official defense right after this if there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario I'm Walter Isaacson host of the new podcast The Builders right now living through an AI arms race so I went directly to the people shaping that future Elon Musk Derio Amadeh Alex Carl Thaife Lee Palmer Lucky because I wanted to understand with the most consequential builders believe what they feel and where they think this is all headed so the Cavali is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it well yeah it's up to us but when you say us who's us is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley is it me down here in New Orleans they're brilliant controversial and they're already shaping the future the question is who's imagination do we want to live in this is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity listen to the builders on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or ever get to podcast I'm Hamza and I'm Martin and we're the host of out of character it's a podcast I know there's a lot of them going around but why should you listen hours well we're only the best podcast in the entire world and we talk about pretty much everything under the sun for example music we're listening to underground music trending music drama in music worlds yes sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives like the cool Uber driver we just had or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious or we'll talk about the Med Gala and the looks that they wore are they awesome are they trendy come find out because our opinion matters and so does yours and this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect so what are you waiting for come connect with us listen out of character from Will Ferrell's big money players network on the iHeart Radio app Apple pods or wherever you get your podcasts they shared the same name the same home the same DNA the same blood but behind closed doors blood isn't always thicker than water and family loyalty can turn deadly from shocking betrayals to carefully planned murders the black of ex new original podcast series bloodline crimes hosted by me Morgan Wood explores the darkest and bizarre cases where family became the most dangerous threat of all because sometimes the person you should fear most is not a stranger but rather someone sitting at the dinner table with you real cases real families real killers this is bloodline crimes listen to the black effects bloodline crimes every Thursday starting october eight from the black effects podcast network on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast all right so John Lennon is not going to take this line down he was he was paranoid he was going on like the Mike Douglas show and talking about the FBI coming after him 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 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 but he was also kind of instrumental in kind of letting Lennon know that this was a real situation that he was involved in right the thing is if you are a 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 or 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 a upstanding person who's never posed any sort of threat to the United States and maybe you in a business or your 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 legally 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 and they posed no threat most of them are going to college or college boundary they're in the military so we're going to not deport them and what what Lennon'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 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 you - 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, 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 John Baez and Joyce Carol Oats, Leonard Bernstein, John Uptike, 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 little was known back then at least. Like you can't let just, there's tremendous value to letting John Lennon stay in this country. - 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? 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 has ever heard of you. - Yeah, probably so. - 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 ask 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 us, you have 60 days to leave the country order and his lawyer kept getting it extended and extended and extended. 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's single-matter that it all came down to stromthurmin 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 gonna take part in that series of concerts that was gonna culminate at the Republican National Convention or engage in any kind of activist activities any longer. He was just gonna go back to being a musician again. - Yeah, and by this point, Hoover was dead. El Patric 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 gonna 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 gonna basically settle this case and close this case after Nixon wins the election. And like we said earlier, a couple of times by a landslide said this was all sort of for not anyway. Gerald Ford ended up overturning Lennon's deportation order in 1975 that was already filed. 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. And I've said on that at some point, maybe in a couple of years, once this one is well in the rear view mirror. - You bet. - That'd be a good one. So if John Lennon apparently, before he died, he gave a couple of interviews and he said of this time like that it nearly ruined him as an artist, you know? Like you said, 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 at the time was journalism, not poetry as he put it. 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? - Yeah, he was like, I had to let Yoko sing a lot. - I have something I have to say. I don't want to forget it. And one of the FBI notes at that Johnson Claire concert, the FBI informant reported that the song Johnson Claire was not up to Lenin's usual standards and Yoko can't even remain on key. That was an FBI informant. - Yeah, he had a good ear. But, you know, I like this song. It doesn't like belong up there with his greatest songs. But 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 sort of, it fits in with the great folk songs of all time, I think. But not necessarily one of the great Lenin or Beatles songs. - Is it as good as John Henry was a steel driver, man? - I think it's better, I like it better. - Really? - Yeah, and, you know, like we mentioned earlier, the reason we know all this was because of Wiener'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 gonna be in there? 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 Lenin, 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. Not because there were some big revealing documents, but they were just like, can we just sort of act like this didn't happen? - 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 British Secret Service file on Lenin that the US said 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 gonna bomb the US for releasing their document or their file on John Lenin. And that's why the FBI held onto it until 2006 and then they lost a court case. So like if there's a hero of the 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 Lenin, but for the first amendment. And people's ability to be politically active without the threat of being intimidated. So good for him. - Totally. - You got anything else about this? - Got nothing else. - I have an article that direct everybody to is on pop matters. John Lenin, Colin, 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 a listener mail. - This is in reference of our haunted real estate. I guess that was a short stuff, right? Had to be. - Yeah, yeah, it was. - Like please tell me we didn't do 45 minutes on that. - We could. 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 the 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 did no, 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 who he tortured until she was luckily able to escape for weeks. That's like almost worse than just a regular person dying. - Did somebody dying of natural causes it's a million times worse? - Well no, I was about to say worse than a murder. I guess they're on par. - Yeah, well it's to beat that at length. - I don't want to rank awful crimes. But I think that might creep me out just as much. Let's just say that. - Sure. - 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? - Uh, that is from Andy, Andy, I. - Oh, okay, well thanks a lot, Andy. Is there a heart over the eye? - No, but it's typed. - Is it, um, it could be Andy McDowell. I think she spelled her name like that. - I don't know. - I could see something like this happening to Andy McDowell. - Sure, I love Andy McDowell. - 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. He asked me. - Totally. If you wanted 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]. (upbeat music) - Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. 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