Beatles Fans Celebrate John Lennon's 70th Birthday

BRADLEY BLACKBURN - If John Lennon hadn't been gunned down in New York in 1980, the global icon of youthful rebellion could have celebrated his 70th birthday this Saturday. Fans around the world are marking the date with what his widow, Yoko Ono, has called an explosion of sentiment.

Nearly 30 years after Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside The Dakota, the apartment building where he lived, admirers of all ages gathered right across the street today in a part of Central Park called "Strawberry Fields," honoring his memory by singing his songs.

Watch "World News with Diane Sawyer" for more on this story tonight on ABC.

Lennon's life and work are still drawing plenty of fresh interest and new fans.

Today, Google honored the musician on its home page with an animated doodle set to his solo song, "Imagine."

His solo albums are all being re-released together in a set, "The John Lennon Signature Box," which includes some of his personal tapes, outtakes and sketches.

There's a new film coming out, "Nowhere Boy," about Lennon's pre-Beatles teenage years in Liverpool, England.

via Beatles Fans Celebrate John Lennon's 70th Birthday - ABC News.

FBI surveillance and de-classified documents

After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files documenting the Bureau's role in the deportation attempt. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case. In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton's newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all but 10 of the contested documents. Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files contained facsimiles of the documents, including "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". The story is told in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as containing "national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.

via wikipedia

"FROM: DIRECTOR, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY"
CIA Director Richard Helms sent this coded teletype to Hoover on February 10, 1972 (CIA-4 page 1). The subject is "JohnLennon and Project 'Yes'." Here, the CIA reports that Lennon is involved in a project "which will include the use of video tapes, films, and special articles" - not exactly a crime in America - and participation by "a caravan of entertainers." It's hard to see why any law enforcement agency, much less the CIA hada legitimate reason for monitoring "a caravan of entertainers."

"THE HALDEMAN LETTER"
J. Edgar Hoover's letter (HQ-12) to H.R. Haldeman, the president's chief of staff, dated April 25, 1972, provides crucial evidence that the Lennon investigation was a political one, of significance at the highest levels of the Nixon White House. In the original release, virtually the entire text was withheld on National Security grounds. The FBI describes the portion still withheld as "intelligence information provided by a foreign government." The FBI has stated that releasing it could lead to "foreign military retaliation." In 1992 the FBI reported that "the foreign government was recently contacted" and that it "continues to insist that the information remain confidential." The withheld portion remains in litigation. The ACLU cited this document as evidence that the FBI lacked a legitimate law enforcement purpose in investigating Lennon.

- via lennonfbifiles

Why would the president of the United States imagine a British rock 'n' roll singer to be his primary obstacle to re-election? ... Lennon's financing of people the government was trying to incarcerate, such as John Sinclair and Bobby Seale, did not ingratiate him to the Nixon administration. But neither did his penning of songs such as "Give Peace a Chance," which threatened to replace "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as the national anthem of the Vietnam years. This exhaustive account of Lennon's years from 1966 to 1976 reveals an unpleasant truth about government paranoia, and the lengths to which the highest office in the land will go to squelch the dissent of a radicalized culture.

- via seattlepi

Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman (publicly known as H. R. Haldeman; October 27, 1926–November 12, 1993) was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and for his role in events leading to the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate scandal — for which he was found guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He was imprisoned for 18 months for his crimes.

- via wikipedia

I've always wondered why. Did Chapman have any help going crazy, for example, as some conspiracy theories suggest?

Chapman denies such things.

KING: What do you make of all the conspiracy theories that have come up in the last 12 years, CIA, mind control, et cetera?

CHAPMAN: Against the death of John Lennon?

KING: Yes.

CHAPMAN: Hogwash.

KING: No one asked you to do it? No one prompted you to do it? No cabal, nothing?

CHAPMAN: No, they probably wished they would have had me, Larry, but they didn't. It was me doing it, it wasn't them.
- cnn

While it is reasonable to wonder how much "mind control" the MKULTRA and other projects were able to obtain, there isn't any evidence that a person can be programmed as a zombie killer.

If it was a conspiracy, the inception of the idea was done with such perfection that the killer still believes the idea was his own. I don't think anyone has that level of control over human thoughts yet.

The story that Chapman acted alone, and why, is convincing.

Mark David Chapman (born May 10, 1955) .... murdered John Lennon on December 8, 1980.  ...Chapman was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His father, David Curtis Chapman, was a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force ... He said that he lived in fear of his father as a child, who was physically abusive towards his wife and son. ... At age 16, Chapman became a born-again Christian, and distributed Bible tracts. ...

In 1977, Chapman attempted suicide via carbon monoxide asphyxiation. He connected a vacuum cleaner hose to his car exhaust pipe and led it inside the car, thus exposing himself to the car's exhaust, but the hose melted in the exhaust pipe and the attempt failed. He was discovered and brought to a local mental health clinic. A psychiatrist admitted him to Castle Memorial Hospital for clinical depression. ... Chapman developed a series of obsessions, including artwork, The Catcher in the Rye, music, and John Lennon, and started hearing voices again. In September 1980, he wrote a letter to a friend, Lynda Irish, in which he stated, "I'm going nuts", and signed it "The Catcher in the Rye" ...

He was angry that Lennon would preach love and peace but yet have millions [of dollars]," said his wife Gloria. Chapman later said that "He told us to imagine no possessions, and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music." ...

Chapman recalls having listened to Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album in the weeks before the murder and stated: "I would listen to this music and I would get angry at him, for saying that he didn't believe in God. - wiki