Table of Contents

Introduction PART I. HISTORY 1. Getting Started 2. From District Court to the Supreme Court 3. Deposing the FBI and CIA 4. The Clinton Administration Takes Action 5. After the Settlement Conclusion: The Culture of Secrecy PART II. THE FILES Guide to FBI File Pages The Files Notes Glossary Chronology Bibliography Acknowledgments Index Photographs

About the Author

Jon Wiener is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, author of Come Together: John Lennon and His Time (1994), and a contributing editor of The Nation.

Reviews

"If only the New Left and the 'youth culture' that coexisted with it had been as threatening to the US government as the latter seemed to believe. That wistful thought occurs while perusing this chronicle of the Nixon administration's harassment of John Lennon for his involvement in radical causes during the early '70's. . . . For all the unintentional humor that pervades these documents, they convey a far more sobering message: how willing the government has been at times to spy on, intimidate, and harass those whom it regards as its most effective critics."
*Mother Jones*

"Lennon himself isn't the main focus here. Instead, [the] long struggle to get the withheld files released is made an object lesson in the tenacity of government secrecy, which Wiener convincingly depicts as a bureaucratic habit so ingrained that the FBI (or any other government agency) treats the public's right to know—FOIA or no FOIA—as a nuisance to be circumvented whenever possible. That's true even when the materials being protected are trivial, as these turn out to be." 
*Washington Post*

"John Lennon's deportation case is well known. What Jon Wiener does in Gimme Some Truth is tell two virtually unknown stories—the history of the FBI role in the White House deportation campaign and the fourteen-year battle to force Hoover's heirs to release Lennon's file."
*Journal of American History*

"Return with Wiener to another, not necessarily simpler but very different time when governments feared revolution by the young, fomented by a rock star. . . . The documents constitute an impressive display of wrong-headedness . . . A great period piece."
*Booklist*

"An excellent account."
*The Oregonian*