LOS ANGELES -- A federal judge has ordered the FBI to turn over files on John Lennon to a California professor who said the documents show Britain's domestic spy agency shadowed the political activities of the former Beatle slain in 1980.
Rejecting the US government's assertions of national security, US District Judge Robert Takasugi brought to a close a 23-year battle waged by Jonathan Wiener, a University of California professor who requested the information for a book he was writing, shortly after Lennon was murdered.
"The issue has become government secrecy and the absurdity that, today, when the FBI should have better things to do, they are still trying to keep secret 34-year-old documents about the antiwar activities of a dead rock star," Wiener said.
Government lawyers are "reviewing the court's ruling," US Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said after Tuesday's ruling. The US government has 60 days to announce whether it will appeal the ruling.
The 10 documents at issue were part of a file on Lennon gathered by the FBI during the early 1970s, when he participated in protests against the Vietnam War.
Wiener and the American Civil Liberties Union won the release of about 200 pages from the file in 1997, the contents of which he chronicled in his 2000 book "Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI File." The documents revealed efforts by President Nixon to deport Lennon to silence his antiwar activities in 1971 and 1972, Wiener said.