For all of these reasons, the U.S. government was obsessed with Lennon, who had learned early on that rock music could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change.
Lennon believed in the power of the people. Unfortunately, as Lennon recognized: "The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them."
It was in 1972 that the official U.S. war against Lennon began in earnest after rumors surfaced that Lennon planned to embark on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration. President Richard Nixon, fearing Lennon's influence on about 11 million new voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders "in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement."
The FBI, tasked with spearheading the effort to deal with the troublesome ex-Beatle, has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures, most notably among the latter such celebrated names as folk singer Pete Seeger, painter Pablo Picasso, comic actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, comedian Lenny Bruce and poet Allen Ginsberg.
Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin Luther King Jr., a man labeled by the FBI as "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country." With wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office, King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of "neutralizing" him. He even received letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968.
While Lennon was not--as far as we know--being blackmailed into suicide, he was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government, an attempt by Nixon to have him "neutralized" and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, "The F.B.I.'s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose."
Nixon's pursuit of Lennon was relentless. Then, finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country when he was granted a green card. By 1980, he had re-emerged with a new album and plans to become politically active again.
On the night of December 8, 1980, when Lennon returned to his New York apartment building from a recording studio, Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows. As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman, in an eerie echo of the FBI's moniker for Lennon, called out, "Mr. Lennon!"
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