Did you know that Richard Nixon had a FBI case file open on Beatle John Lennon? Well he did! Why? Listen in to find out.
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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 the Stuff you Should Know, the Super Subversive Edition. Yeah, 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. Yes, Hoover and Nixon. Right, Yes, Herbert Hoover and Charles J. Nixon. M hmmm, no, no, no, not those two. Was it Ja Egger Hoover and Richard Nixon? Richard mill House. I think it's sa middle House, that's right. So you picked this one, right? Um? Yeah, I think we got help from our buddy, was it? Um? Oh, it is a grabst article, right, this is a grabster So? Um, 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 is something I knew a ton about. So now I know I know more. What are you thinking about the Beatles right now? 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. Yeah, I'm a grown person. I'm 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, because you like her singing, isn't that right? 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? Sure, that's a pretty sweet song. I like her singing on that. But have you ever heard her her cover of Katie Perry's Fireworks? No, I bet that's something she did it at um maybe MoMA or the Mad or something like that. And she's just standing there whaling. She's not singing words or anything like that, just whaling. And it was her cover of of Katie 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. I appreciate her as a human. And it's always fun to look back at at performances, live performances with Lennon when she would do a full like four or five songs on the row in the middle of like Madison Square Garden concert and you could kind of see his his backing band just kind of like a boy. I can't believe we're doing this right right, Um. And she's actually pretty strongly implicated in this whole thing we're talking about John Lennon um being pursued and and surveilled and basically harassed by the FBI UM in the nineteen seventy two actually seventy two, I believe um for a very specific reason. And it was at a time when John Lennon and Yoko had just got married. They got married like two to three years before, and um, we're a very famous couple. The grab star 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. Um and by the time two rolled around, Richard Milhouse 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 eighteen to twenty one 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 uh, of all the Beatles, he grew up more solidly middle class than any of the rest of him. And not to say that that was a false persona, but he definitely sort of, um, sort of jumped and sort of leaned into that, as Noel Brown would say, as far as is his persona. And I think a lot of people that don't dig deep kind of think that John Lennon grew up in with a very hard scrap of life they're in Liverpool, which is not the case. But um, as a result of that, he championed the working man. He and Yoko contributed to causes. Uh, he became him along with Yoko, very much pacifist activists. And if you're a pacifist activist in the early seventies. 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. He was not cry about war, No, he really wasn't. He'd even campaigned, um, I think in sixty eight on ending the Vietnam War and then actually went the exact opposite direction with that. Um, there was a lot if you're a pacifist, there was a lot to be upset about in the sixties and early seventies because of Vietnam alone, you know, yeah, for sure. One of the ways I think that got the most pressed that when people think about John and Yoco's activism is the bed ends 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 why are why you're laying around in bed? And it looked kind of ridiculous to a lot of people, especially people on the right. But um, John Lennon's whole kind of point, and he was a 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, are you gotta 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, letting your hair grow, I think is what they were saying, which is pretty awesome. And 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 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 that, I mean, that's a threat, um, 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 Warren 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 were opposed to Vietnam or war in general, or violence of any kind. Um, there was a big opposition of 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, then JEdgar Hoover, who was not shy at all about doing whatever he needed to to quiet dissent, Like he would generate dossier's on elected officials, especially ones who were more liberal, to to basically keep them in line by threatening them with blackmail or even the threat of blackmail. You know. Um, there were plenty of hippies who got their heads cracked in there were people who were surveilled. Um, we did an up as it on the Black Panthers, if you remember, we talked about um co intel pro the whole program to basically undermine and smear the Black Panthers in the public's mind. Like the Jake Er Hoover was a vicious terrible human being. Um, 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 have this all worked out, was, um, John Lennon had uh, 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 U s if they could legally deport him. So he was able to enter the US on a work visa in seventy one. And concurrent with this, Yoko Ono had a custody battle going on. She had a daughter from her previous marriage in the early seventies 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. 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 have this leverage. Lennon loved living in New York City. That's where he wanted to make his permanent home so much so that that was also leverage that they had to Yeah. Absolutely, And so Nixon's up for re election in seventy two. Um, he would go on to win, you know, in a big, big way against McGovern. But they were, you know, they were and it was about to comm an organization. They were an administration that was very paranoid. Um. 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 thurm of all people. Yeah. So strom Thurman, the horrible segregationist senator UM from what South Carolina? Right, Uh. He he actually kicked this whole thing off because I guess, uh, he noticed that John Lennon was was you know, he was left leaning rock star activists. He's he seems to have been one of the first people that notice the activism that was developing among John Lennon and Yoko on No and to perceive it as a threat to the establishment because all those um recently enfranchised eighteen, nineteen and twenty year old voters who hadn't had the right to vote until the twenty sixth Amendment had been passed. I don't remember exactly when it was past, but it was between sixty eight and seventy two, because seventy two was 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 way them to the left and potentially unseen 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 his the note from strom Thurman was very well received in the Nixon administration. Yeah, I think, Uh, what I want to know is who told strom Thurman. That's what I want to note too, because that's the biggest mystery here. Yeah. I doubt of strom Thurman 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. Uh, 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 Weener or Winer. In this case, it's pronounced weener slave. Oh it is no. Do you remember there was a thirty Rock episode where there's like an HR mediator and he's like this very soft, rosy cheeked, very calm, mild bannerd man and um Liz Lemon says, well, Mr Weiner's slav and he goes, no, it's pronounced weener slave. I missed that show. It's like that was a really good moment. They had such a great fun with dumb jokes like that Bob blah blah. Yeah right, No, that was the rest of development. Oh, that's right, that was the rest of development. They kind of had the same DNA though. So Weener slave Uh 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. Um he decided to file uh Freedom of Information Act requests to get a lot of these documents uncovered over the years, and eventually he was successful, um in a big dump in n then another smaller one in two thousand and six. And if it not been for his tenacity, UM, I don't know if anyone else would have picked up this mantel too, because you know, 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 that'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. Well, you know, I think that 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, kept tabs on him, and like if you read the files, it's really pedestrian, boring stuff. UM, you might miss like the real story here. In the real story here is that a sitting president directed the FBI to get dirt that he could use against a political rival and 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 um basically a get Stapo 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 up 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 Piece of Chance and we all know about that song, 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 links that Nixon would go to to be a dirty thief. Yes, well, Chuck, I think we should demonstrate the links that will go to to bring everyone a message break. What do you think by just shutting up for two minutes? Okay, so the whole thing um 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 ninety eight in London for possession of narcotics um and making air quotes you can't see because he was busted with some pot I think maybe some hash um and like rolling paraphernale. Is there's 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 Um who was later jailed actually for committing perjury as a police officer. Um. But he uh, 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. Um that they just wanted a high profile bust, and that happened in nine 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 so they should have waited if they wanted a real case. Well, it makes you wonder, Like I 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 him onto Heroin and then getting him addicted and then just you know, taking him out of the game like that. Yeah, I think Lennon never shot Heroin. That was his jam. Okay, so early seventy one, 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. UM. But along with that, it was very valuable to them that he had a drug conviction under his belt at that point, so they were surveilling him. They were surveilling other artists around the country to who they thought were subversive and sending messages UM Lennon speaking of getting busted for Pott, Lennon very famously wrote a song called John Sinclair Uh in support and did a tribute or not tribute but a concert in UM I don't know if they were raising money or just awareness both. Okay. For John Sinclair, who was a poet, he was the manager of the m C five great great rock band UM and he offered to undercover cops a couple of joints and went and he had already had a couple of minor pot offenses. But he went to prison for ten years for the US and a big refrain in that song John Sinclair, which is a cool song and very um roots and bluesy, not like very linen at all. Uh is tin for two? Tin for two is what they keep saying. Ten years for two joints. Yeah, that he's sold to 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 was a this is a trumped up charge, but other people say not. The concert surely had some impact, but Sinclair is UM. So 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 John Sinclair's Orbit UM that were prominent figures in the New Left. And at this time, in the early seventies, the sixties had ended UM the the it had become clear that flower power hadn't worked. The evil people were still in charge. So what was next? Uh, maybe non violent coordination and UM 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 before. But there were elements in the New Left UM who weren't necessarily convinced that that wasn't the only way to to change the course of of the United States and get rid of people like Nixon and his cronies UM. And So, if you're watching this from the outside, like your Jacker 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, non violent, 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 gonna go violent or non violent, And that really drew the attention of the FBI to John Line. It wasn't necessarily he and Yoko and their pacifist stuff. It was some people think that it was his involvement with genuine bona fide new left activists like John Sinclair or like Um, like Bobby seal Um like John Sinclair founded the White Panther Party, which they had a ten point platform like the Black Panthers platform, and the first platform in the White Panther platform is that it's fully in support of the Black Panthers ten point platform. So he's hanging out with a bunch of people that um had proven themselves as as as died in the wool 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 that the Alla Ala Mooki Township and so I'm going to pronounce it the Scaramucci Township in New jery Z. And initially called themselves the Alamouki Tribe, but wisely changed their name to the Election Year Strategy Information Center. And their plan was in nineteen seventy two is to hosted and Lennon gave them money. He gave him like seventy grand to kind of get going and said, here, listen to a bunch of concerts with the help of John Lennon, all across all across the country in nineteen seventy two. We can have different artists performing different speakers, um, 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. Um, this is all very legal stuff. It wasn't. They weren't staging riots or anything. These were just concerts awareness, um, 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 Bayo at the time, wooing the youngsters blah blah to the right. Oh he was blah blah blah, wouldn't he That's funny? Um, So this is all going on, and this is kind of what ramps up the pressure to get Lennon out of there. Uh, this custody battles going on, they know about that, and so there 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 uh 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 going to tell us about? Yeah, I've read I read an interview, so this is like the depths of mind, depravity. I didn't even listen to the interview. I read a Fresh Air interview with John Weener or winer Um about this and he said that in the FBI responded and said they they found no evidence of illegal wire tapping by the FBI or no legal wire tapping by the FBI. So so Winer's 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, is what he's saying. Right. Uh, at least made Lenin paranoid enough, Like he wasn't just not he wasn't not sweating this. He was this made him very paranoid, um and with good reason. But he took to going next door at the Dakoda building so he would let Lennon use his phone in his apartment, uh, to make phone calls and I guess, you know, assist with the cause 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 n y CPD Narcotics Division is aware of the subject's recent use of narcotics, which is like every day, and are attempting to obtain enough info to arrest both subject and wife Yoko based on p D investigation. Yeah, 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 until later. I thought it was the early seventies. I thought it happened during his lost weekend. But I may be wrong in that. I'm not that far long. I'm gonna air towards you then, because I'm just surmising here. I'm not the one who is a big old book of Beatles history. M so. Um, 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 uh in the United States? Was he? 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, um 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 threatened deportation to John Lennon, it might actually UM keep him in line. And the FBI used the word neutralized that they were seeking to neutralize Lennon. UM, and I guess some people who don't dig very deeply into the story or like they were going to assassinate John Lennon and UM John wiener Weiner UM has pointed out like this is not at all what they meant. They meant like basically making him ineffective, like UM, taking him out of the game, basically one way or another. UM, but not killing him, just convincing him through putting this undo 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 heir when in the late sixties then headed on again off again, but either way, so so that makes sense because I did see that guys like Jerry Rubin and UM, I think Renny 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. We can't even talk with them anymore. Like I think he was shooting dope and they weren't. Yeah, well he never shot it. He always smoked it, smoking dope, but he and I think he and Yoko were doing here when actually before the Beatles broke up at the end, when they were sort of a strange not with the Beatles, not John and Yoko, but um at any rate, they, like I said, these investigations are going on and they're going to his concerts and they're not even sending 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 aggrandizing rock stars or there's a 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. Uh. Kind Of One of the funny things about this investigation was when um the 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 oh No, and the FBI, it 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. Yeah, it was a street busker from the West Village named David Peel, so funny, 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 of the cops of the wrong guy. They also the FBI also put out at All Points bulletin UM searching for John Lennon and said that he's at the St. Regis at one fifty Bank Street, UM landscape. Sup. That's right. I guess that's what they meant, because the St. Regis Hotel is on Central Park UM and John Lennon was indeed living on Bank Street at the time, but he was at one oh five Bank Street, so that All Points bulletin was all kinds of wrong. But this is the level of like um copery that that that the FBI was conducting, you know, trying to get John Lennon. 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. Alright, 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. Um. The first thing he did was probably what any really really rich person would do, is he hires a top rate bulldog attorney UM to try and defend this or at least delay this. And this guy's name was Leon Wilde's 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 UM kind of letting Lennon know that this was a real situation that he was involved in. Right. UM. The thing is is, if you UM are a immigration prosecutor for the federal government of the United States, you know that there's 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 i n S has left it up to each prosecutor to determine how hard they want to prosecute the case. And so if you are a UM, upstanding person who's never posed any sort of threat to the United States, and maybe you own a business or your productive member of society, there's a chance that the I n S 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. Um. And that's actually where the Dreamer program came from, docca uh. It basically said, like, these particular immigrants were brought here as children and they pose no threat. Most of them are going to college or college bounder there in the military, so we're going to not deport them. Um. And what what Lennon's um 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. 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 um by Bob Dylan and John Baya's and Joyce, Carol Oates, Leonard Bernstein, John Updike, just a series of very famous artist 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 back then at least, like you can't just there's tremendous value to letting John Lennon stay in this country, right, And don't forget John Cage wrote a letter to 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. So, um the one kind of the up shot, I'm just going full on using this word now. The upshot of of that letter writing campaign was not even just so much to demonstrate the value of 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 gonna be held to account and asked to explain why you guys kicked him out. Um So, it did have a bit of that, combined with um, his 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 sixty days to leave the country order, and his 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 he was deported. He would leave without his wife, who had to stay in the country for her own custody battle. Um So that was that was a lot of strain on him. Actually, And UM, the worst part about this whole thing is not that the FBI did this and that the Knickson administration single mounter, that it all came down to strom Thurman 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 uh in August nine seventy two by announcing that he was not going to take part in that series of concerts that was going to culminate at the Republican National Convention, or engage in any kind of activist activities any longer. He's just going to go back to being a musician again. Yeah. And by this point, Hoover was dead. Uh L. Patrick Gray was the acting director of the FBI, and in that same month at August before the election, in November, UM, 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. Um, we don't really need to worry about him anymore. UM, 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 landslide. So this is all sort of for not anyway, um Gerald. Ford ended up overturning Lennon's deportation order in nineteen five that was already filed, and in seventy six 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 rear view mirror. You bet it would be a good one. Um So if 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. Um So, in addition to the stress that 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, um which is a very sad effect, but it's 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, it's that has a terrible effect on you and 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've got I have something I have to say. I don't want to forget it. And one of the FBI notes at that John Sinclair concert, the FBI informant reported that the song Johnson Claire was not up to Lennon's usual standards. And you get this, Yoko can't even remain on key. That was an FBI informat. Yeah, he had a good hear, but you know, I like the song. It doesn't like belong up there with his greatest songs. But it was very it was very clear. It was sort of in the tradition of protest songs. It's got this acoustic slide dough Bro guitar and uh, 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 Lenin or Beatles songs. Is it as good as John Henry was a steel driving man. I think it's better. I like get better really, Uh yeah, And you know, like we mentioned earlier, the reason we know all this was because of Wieners reporting and uh 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? Um, what what secrets or will be revealed? And really not much. What was revealed was um embarrassment for the FBI, embarrassment that they released a picture that wasn't even John Lennon, Embarrassment that they had a very unethical um and perhaps even illegal um motivation behind trying to get uh 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 we'll classify everything as an national security risk and they did, and actually that that last trove of documents, the little handful that trickled out in two thousand and six, was an m I five kind of British Secret Service UM file on Lennon that the U S 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 gonna gonna bomb the US for releasing their document or their file on John Lennon. That's why the FBI held onto it until two thousand and six, and then they lost a court case. So like, if there's a hero of the story, it's John Weener 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, and people's ability to be politically active without you know, the threat being intimidated. Um, so good for him, totally. Uh, you got anything else about this? Got nothing else? I have an article to direct everybody too, is 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 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 forty five minutes on that. We could have. 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 to 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 didn't know, so no big discount. Cut to two years later, I found out for 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, man who he tortured until she was luckily able to escape for weeks. That's like almost worse than just a regular somebody dying of natural causes. It's a million times worth. Well, no, I was about to say, worse than a murder. I guess they're on bar. Yeah, well, let's debate that at point. I don't want to. I don't want to rank awful crimes, but I think that might creep me out just as much. Let's just say that 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 that is from Andy? Andy? I okay, Well, thanks a lot. Andy. Is is there a heart over the eye? Uh No, but it's typed is it? Um? It could be uh Andy McDowell. I think she spelled her name like that. I can see something like this happening to any McDowell came. Well, whether it's from Andy McDowell or not, we appreciate the email. UM, thank you, and yes, I agree. I think the realtors should have disclosed that if you asked me totally. 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 stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M h m hm