John Lennon

Los Angeles, Dec. 20 (AP): The FBI has released the final surveillance documents on John Lennon to a university historian who has waged a legal battle for 25 years to obtain the secret files.

The 10 pages contain new details about Lennon’s ties to Left and anti-war groups in London in the early 1970s but nothing indicating government officials considered the former Beatles star a serious threat, historian Jon Wiener has told the Los Angeles Times in an article published on its web site yesterday.

The FBI had unsuccessfully argued that an unnamed foreign government secretly provided the information and releasing those documents could lead to diplomatic, political or economic retaliation against the US.

The newly-released documents include a surveillance report stating that two prominent British Leftists had courted Lennon in hopes that he would finance “a Left-wing bookshop and reading room in London” but Lennon gave them no money.

Another page states that there was “no certain proof” that Lennon had given money “for subversive purposes”.

“I doubt that Tony Blair’s government will launch a military strike on the US in retaliation for the release of these documents,” Wiener said.

“Today, we can see that the national security claims that the FBI has been making for 25 years were absurd from the beginning.”

Wiener first requested the documents in 1981 to write a book about Lennon after the singer’s murder. He obtained some documents but the FBI withheld many files, saying they contained national security information.

Wiener sued the government and received some files in 1997 as part of a settlement with the FBI. Justice department lawyers continued to withhold the final 10 pages until a federal judge in 2004 ordered their release.