FBI Ordered to Turn Over Lennon Files

CatDogLordOfTheRoot writes "CNN is reporting that a U.S. District Judge rejected the governments arguements to keep the secret records of John Lennon sealed. The FBI argued that releasing the last ten pages would pose a risk to national security as a foreign government (not identified) secretly gave information to the US Government. Looks like another big step in the Freedom of Information Act."

Finally...

[Lu Xun]

...we'll learn what that last song on the White Album means.

Say What?

[AsnFkr]

Am I the only one that was unaware there was any sort of scandal or cover up or anything fishy about his death? I thought it was a pretty straightforward murder. This is indeed curious information.

Re:Good news

[The-Bus]

"after a certain period of time (like copyright expiration"

From the way copyright law is going, that's going to be about 435 years.

Re:crap

[just_von]

restate that: Now we'll know where he got all those good drugs from!!

When will "they" stop trying to protect us from

[Bob Bitchen]

the truth? Haven't we matured enough as a civilization to be able to handle the truth? It's as if "they" think we're all scared sheep that will fly into a panic at even the hint of "bad" news. We have come a long way and deserve the truth. Plus it's just not fair that "they" get to know all the juicy details.

Are you now

[empaler]

or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

Wrong.

[DAldredge]

They are not unintended consequences, they are deliberate. It will make it easier for those in power to stay in power and help keep 'undesirables' out of power.

Re:Good news? Bad news

[wHartHog(69)]

You've got to be kidding. The whole reason we have these problems is because of secrecy. We must hold our government accountable for its actions. The only way to ensure that is to know what, when, where, why, and how it takes action. There is no "them" and "us". The government is an extention of "the people", and should act on our behalf. We must ensure that it does. Freedom requires dilegence. And action

Re:Good news

[NakedGoat]

There are in fact declassification procedures for all U.S. classified documents that state specific declassification timeframes. The declassification time is specified for the specific document or information. 50 years is very common.
The government often has very legitimate reasons for keeping documents under wraps. For instance if Yoko Ono were passing information from North Korea with the knowledge of the local government China may not look favorably upon it and it could cause more than a little tension.

Just like when the CIA

[empaler]

had good reasons not to disclose information on how they managed the drug cartels in South America. Yeah, that was in public interest.

Re:Good news? Bad news

[einhverfr]

Wow, I can't believe people are so selfish that they'd risk the U.S.'s relations with another country just so they, and _possibly_ others, can see what happened. If the FBI wants documents classified, the FBI has a good reason. I don't want another 9/11 in the U.S. or a foreign country just because people want to see some documents.

Right, and by that logic, let's just suspend Habeus because it might make us safer too....

No, judicial and legal principles, and the framework of liberty is more important than any single action that the government does purportedly in the interest of the people. Otherwise we lose *all* our liberty.

Is that stuff still around?

[NotQuiteReal]

No, I didn't RTFA, but it has been almost 25 years since he was killed. Why would anyone keep stuff that long - doesn't the FBI have a shread-on date?

Maybe that is what is driving it - release it or lose it? I dunno.

Then again, folks are still obsessed with Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. Go figure.

Re:What I wanna know is...

[CosmeticLobotamy]

hasn't the FBI figured out that hiding documents on cold cases long out of date only adds to the suspicion?

The FBI knows what it's doing. If you only fight when you have something to hide, everyone will know you have something to hide when you're fighting. Every time there's a controversy made about it and it turns out to be nothing, people get less suspicious.

That, and they just don't like to have we mortals looking over their shoulders. It's a penis thing.

Re:Won't Be Long

[tm2b]

The problem with the USA Patriot Act is that it has an unintended consequence: While working under the guise of gathering information on terrorists (a good thing) a great deal more information is gathered on innocent individuals (a bad thing).

Jim Pinkerton, a FOX News (bear with me, he's one of the ones who does more than repeat the RNC talking points) commentator, makes an excellent point against the Patriot Act that conservatives would be wise to attend.

When they read the Patriot Act, they imagine it being used against people that this administration deems as enemies. They are comfortable with this: they see it as to be used against terrorists, illegal immigrants and other potential dangers.

Pinkerton makes the point that they must now picture the same powers in the hand of an administration that they would not be some comfortable with: for example, in the hands of a liberal President, let's say for the sake of argument a President Hillary Clinton.

Most neocons should think long and hard about that kind of mix, and why the United States has the strong tradition of limiting the power of the executive and subjecting everything to the possibility of judicial review. They're not there to protect the terrorists, they're there to protect us against an administration with whom we do not agree.

the reason?

[Phantom of the Opera]

The simplest reason is that its kind of embarrasing for the government and some beaurocrats are there to cover their asses. John Lennon had some potential political influence and that made him a target, especially because he was a scumbag hippie type.

Re: Won't Be Long

[tm2b]

And unfortunately, we also have a strong tradition of spying on people who don't do what the powers that be want them to do. A few years back news came out that that the FBI had a 70 page file on a former president of the University of California, simply because he wouldn't fire a couple of professors that certain people thought were too liberal.

Indeed. And you can find much stronger examples, in the student, civil rights, and religious groups that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spied on, and further back to the efforts that Senators Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon made to support spying upon suspected communists and the later President Richard Nixon's "enemies list" that helped direct Hoover's excesses.

There's nothing that bothers me more about neocons than their contempt for checks and balances on the executive and legislative branches. I miss the days in the 80s when neocons were commonly referred to as "cryptofascists." I'd like to see that term return.

Re:Good news

[Molina the Bofh]

So you mean the person would sue himself ? Because if someone classified a record too high, this record would be... well, classified. And nobody else would know about it.

Conintelpro?

[hotspotbloc]

Could there really be anything worse? I mean this is a couple of surveillance reports so it is likely they only deal with Lennon's movements and how he was tracked. It's the "how" part that makes the FBI nervous, especially now with the PATRIOT Act up for permanent renewal. The last thing the DOJ wants is the public being reminded of Hoover's lack of respect to the individual man and the FBI's checkered past.

This is why the FOIA is such a good thing. While it's easier to forget about our mistakes, analyzing them helps us avoid repeating them. Its so we can see what the Govt has said about us [fbi.gov].

Re:Good news

[Lobsang]

The government often has very legitimate reasons for keeping documents under wraps. For instance if Yoko Ono were passing information from North Korea with the knowledge of the local government China may not look favorably upon it and it could cause more than a little tension.


Good 'n old Security by Obscurity, aka "National Security". It leaves us all with that warm feeling that nothing is going to happen. Unfortunately, it rarely works, as malfeasants usually have other means of gaining access to the information.

It does, however, protect infantile and incompetent politicians from equally infantile voters.

Transparent Government

[Tony]

The idea that our government can operate in secret is a scary one. The whole idea of keeping this information around is that, after 25 years, information can and should be released to the public. This is a great step in helping keep our government relatively honest.

Granted, it is scary to learn 40 years after the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis almost led to nuclear war. A Russian submarine officer disobeyed a direct order: he did not launch nuclear warhead tipped torpedos at the US fleet.

This came out via the freedom of information act. Yes, it's a little late to learn about it so long after the fact, but it's great to know we should all thank Vasili Arkhipov for stopping the destruction of the world as we know it.

Black markers are still good for something

[sweetshot97]

Well, they are ordered to hand over documents, but they do have a discretion to use a black marker and mark out what they don't want to reveal. Little loophole in the Information Act. One theory many have speculated is of course, Manchurian Candidate theory. I remember watching a documentary on Lennon and one reason as to why the governemnt would want him axed is because of Reagan. Don't get me wrong, I loved the man, but word has it, Chapman was trained to kill Lennon because Lennon was the only world renowned figure who could gather masses to rise against opression and the incoming government thought he might pose a threat to Reagan. It's all speculation right?

Re:Good news

[CodeBuster]

Not necessarily. For example, would you like to have the original documents from the Manhattan project (weapon designs) made public simply because they are over 60 years old? No, it is better that certain records remain classified, even at the expense of the right of the public to know and especially when the documents in question are important to the national security of the United States.

Re:Good news? Bad news

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't write it in jest, but, annoyed as I was at people wanting to see it for personal interest and not freedom, I wrote it too strongly. I believe we need as many freedoms as we can get, but there's a point where citizens should not know what's going on. That's why so much information is classified. It's good that a judge made some documents disclosed if they should not be classified, but I hate it when people, disregarding the other side completely, immediately jump up and shout that they should be given everything they want just because they want it. It's the usual slashdot tone: popular ideas among slashdotters get modded up, and most other posts get modded down.

Re:Good news? Bad news

[TrancePhreak]

There is another problem that arises when there is no secrecy. That problem is that everybody else knows your every move and everything you are doing. It's the same problem with people in gangs and stuff who give information for better treatment. As soon as the people who you gave info about find out you have to go into hiding. I don't know about you, but it's pretty hard to hide a whole country. Or imagine someone from another country gives us information, we would be unable to guarantee their safety. This makes it less likely that we would get that information in the first place. As usual, the problem with Slashdot and politics is that people try to simplify the problems without keeping all the important issues in mind.

Re:Good news? Bad news

[rudolfel]

Many of the people working for the government are some of the most moral people in the country ... and many of the people working for the goverment are the less moral people in the country. And what's worse is that they are in command

Re:Good news? Bad news

[javaman235]

Everybody knowing everybodies every move is way less dangerous than a small elite knowing everybody elses moves while the majority of the populous remains in the dark.

Re:Say What?

[glesga_kiss]

It's that attitude that turned me off from the anti-Iraq War movement almost immediately

WTF? It's not a movement!! If you disagree, you disagree. You don't need to jump on a bandwagon!! You don't have to like people that share your opinion!!

Jeez, I feel like Brian shouting "you are all indivudual!" here...

Re:You're right,

[Thomas Miconi]

I'm reading up on the FBI files on the JFK assassination atm

The JFK assassination is one case where the public was exposed to lots of information, which is not a problem - the problem is that, in remarkable accordance with Sturgeon's law, 90% of this information was absolute crap.

A majority of americans today believe that there has been some kind of conspiracy around Kennedy's murder. Oliver Stone's film is probably the number 1 culprit for this. The ever helpful BBC made a documentary [bbc.co.uk] which simply blasted the conspiracy theory (in particular, the "magic bullet" thing was shown to be quintessential BS). See this page [thevoiceofreason.com] for a summary of the main points.

Thomas Miconi

Re:Good news? Bad news

[dpilot]

That's why there is often a delay before the information gets released. Most information is timely - after a few years, it just doesn't matter in any practical terms.

But it IS important that the information be released in order to become part of our history, and part of our historical learning.

Obviously things like the Witness Protection Act have a necessarily longer secrecy horizon. I wouldn't advocate that lives be endangered. But I don't want our stupid mistakes to be swept under the rug, so we can't learn not to do that, again.

When did Stalinism become respectable on Slashdot?

[DesScorp]

"You right-wing assholes should be in prison for your vile distortions."

This is +4, Informative?

Yeah, and the left never distorts anything? The right should be imprisoned for what their saying?

You're actually talking about IMPRISONING your opponents for their speech and ideals, do you realize that?