JOHN LENNON & THE FBI FILES – ALAN PARKER & PHIL STRONGMAN
(SANTUARY PRESS)

John Lennon was gunned down on a cold November evening in 1980 by Mark Chapman. It is an undisputed basic fact that everyone knows. But just like the assassination of John F Kennedy in Texas in 1963 there is more to the story than the official verdict of a lone nut with an obscure grudge against the victim.

In an attempt to prove this Alan Parker and Phil Strongman have trawled through the many files on Lennon kept by the FBI, now available thanks to the US Freedom of Information Act and the persistence of Lennon scholar and historian Jon Weiner. In their new book, ‘John Lennon & The FBI Files’ they present an excellent history of Lennon and The Beatles in the context of the major historical events of their time. They pay particular attention to the spate of high profile assassinations that occurred in the 60s, including those of JFK, his brother Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, all of which were explained by similar lone assassin theories.

The parallels drawn quickly become pointed. All the victims were deemed enemies of the right-wing establishment particularly the then head of the FBI, the notoriously paranoid, J Edgar Hoover. All were killed by men with contrived histories, whose behaviour after shooting their victims was bizarre to say the least, and whose motives for the murders were tenuous, if not completely ambiguous. The authors draw a line from JFK’s supposed assassin, Oswald in 1963 through to Chapman, via James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan (blamed for the MLK and RFK’s murders respectively), and note how each successive assassin appears more and more under the influence of some nefarious mind control.

They also attempt to show that the US secret services deemed Lennon as much a threat as the other more obvious, political opponents. The existence of the extensive files is one evident factor but they also highlight Lennon’s position as an extraordinarily popular figurehead for the anti-war and the early anti-capitalism movements. His own self-imposed exile from public life in the mid-70s ensured he slipped from their spotlight, but in 1980, not only was Lennon recording music again, but it is also accepted that he was planning a return to political activism. Even if you don’t think that Lennon was truly worthy of such deadly interest from the US authorities, the idea of Chapman as the end product of an FBI backed mind control experiment to create the perfect assassin is introduced. Perhaps Lennon was merely a convenient target for FBI testing.

The trouble with conspiracy theories is that you have to either go wholeheartedly with them or be utterly sceptical. In the absence of unquestionable facts or undistorted truths it’s difficult to find a middle ground from which you can assess each version of events for their plausibility.
Here the authors go with the conspiracy every time. They see connections in everything. The appendix contains a section listing the connections between various characters –such as Richard Nixon, Ruby and Oswald –linked with the JFK assassination, and further links between the other supposed assassins.

The connections are at times perhaps coincidences, at times something more sinister, but it’s the sheer volume that is supposed to convince you of their significance. This is taken a step too far with the odd aside regarding Lennon’s belief in the meaning of the number 9, more links that are afforded a personal place in the appendix. This only serves to create a mystic aura around the other connections when you really want cold hard facts.

Naturally these should stem from the FBI files, the whole point of the book. Unfortunately the files are of little real value. The Freedom of Information Act means that all classified government files have to be made public after a certain time period has elapsed. Yet the files accessed by the authors contains whole passages and pages that have been blacked out or removed for “reasons of national security”. All that is left are reports concerning Lennon’s movements, his attendance at political rallies and some timid memos regarding his contested US visa application. Hardly shocking stuff considering that Lennon himself was at the time only too aware that he was being followed.

There are few people who regard the official version of JFK’s assassination as the complete truth. The authors’ extensive rehashing of the well-established discrepancies surrounding the case is designed to suggest that if you believe that a conspiracy took place in Dallas, then there’s no reason to deny that Lennon was murdered with government help. The problem is that they are not the first to propose this and the disputed facts surrounding Lennon’s case have been brought to light before.

Their unprecedented access to the FBI files should have been a touch paper to ignite new controversy. However the continued unavailability of any real information leaves them grasping at the usual similarities, links and connections, which are unlikely to convince those doubters familiar with the theories. While the book is an entertaining and engrossing read, at the end they are left preaching to the converted.

words: Colm Larkin