Synopses & Reviews
When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Nixon White House in 1972 about the Bureau's surveillance of John Lennon, he began by explaining that Lennon was a "former member of the Beatles singing group." When a copy of this letter arrived in response to Jon Wiener's 1981 Freedom of Information request, the entire text was withheldand#151;along with almost 200 other pagesand#151;on the grounds that releasing it would endanger national security. This book tells the story of the author's remarkable fourteen-year court battle to win release of the Lennon files under the Freedom of Information Act in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. With the publication of
Gimme Some Truth, 100 key pages of the Lennon FBI file are availableand#151;complete and unexpurgated, fully annotated and presented in a "before and after" format.
Lennon's file was compiled in 1972, when the war in Vietnam was at its peak, when Nixon was facing reelection, and when the "clever Beatle" was living in New York and joining up with the New Left and the anti-war movement. The Nixon administration's efforts to "neutralize" Lennon are the subject of Lennon's file. The documents are reproduced in facsimile so that readers can see all the classification stamps, marginal notes, blacked out passages andand#151;in some casesand#151;the initials of J. Edgar Hoover. The file includes lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges.
Fascinating, engrossing, at points hilarious and absurd, Gimme Some Truth documents an era when rock music seemed to have real political force and when youth culture challenged the status quo in Washington. It also delineates the ways the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations fought to preserve government secrecy, and highlights the legal strategies adopted by those who have challenged it.
Synopsis
Fascinating, engrossing, and at points hilarious and absurd, "Gimme Some Truth" documents the FBI surveillance of John Lennon in 1972 when the war in Vietnam was at its peak. 157 line drawings.
Synopsis
"A strident and impermissable effort to second-guess the wisdom of the FBI. . . . A potpourri of conjecture, supposition, innuendo and surmise."and#151;from the FBI's court documents
"Jon Wiener has put together a remarkable compilation of documents. I know of no keener annotations to any documents illustrating government surveillance. Wiener's commentary is as sprightly as the documents are foolish. He is thorough, appropriately droll at times, and rightly focused on the question of whether the FBI and the CIA were keeping to their lawful mandates during the years of abandon and evasion."and#151;Todd Gitlin author of The Sixties
"The book sheds light on many issues far broader than John Lennonand#151;the Nixon administration for example, and, not less importantly, the particular machinations of Clinton, Blair, and other current world leaders. Very few people know how the process of seeking and retrieving documents supposedly available under the Freedom of Information Act really works; Wiener's book makes this all very clear."and#151;Eric Foner, Columbia University
"A classic case study. There is humor here and mystery, too. But most of all, there is hard evidence--in the FBI's own words--of what happens when government substitutes paranoia for law." and#151;Floyd Abrams
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-332) and index.
About the Author
Jon Wiener is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, author of Come Together: John Lennon and His Time (1994), and a contributing editor of The Nation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I. HISTORY
1. Getting Started
2. From District Court to the Supreme Court
3. Deposing the FBI and CIA
4. The Clinton Administration Takes Action
5. After the Settlement
Conclusion: The Culture of Secrecy
PART II. THE FILES
Guide to FBI File Pages
The Files
Notes
Glossary
Chronology
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
Photographs