The U.S. vs John Lennon Page #9

I'd like to be here.

I've got a lot of friends here,

and this is where

I want to be, you know?

Statue of Liberty...

Welcome.

I even brought my own cash.

He was under an order

to leave the country

within 60 days

for pretty much all of 1972

and on into 1973.

Our reaction to the government's action

taken last week

I believe has been very, very succinctly

put by The Wall Street Journal

in an editorial

of March 28, 1973.

It states, "We find it more than

a little hard to believe

"that authorities

could find no legal way

"to resolve what is, after all,

"a highly unusual

set of circumstances.

"Further, we submit if the law does not

reflect the human equities,

it is a law

that needs to be changed."

Yes, the case was very

difficult at that point,

and what he did was to just

keep on extending our stay,

which I thought

was very wise,

a very wise tactic.

I don't understand law,

as it were,

because it is finite.

And I don't really go,

sort of...

I can't express... Dig that scene,

you know?

I don't know.

It seems just like to me

as somebody once said,

"Kafka-esque."

It's just bureaucracy,

and they get going

and then what can they do?

They don't know

where to turn, I suppose.

The game's started,

and we have to play it out.

When I talked to Jerry Rubin

and Abbie Hoffman

about this period,

they told me they wanted

to try something new,

something they thought would maybe be

more effective in stopping the war.

Jerry Rubin was talking about

what he called

a political Woodstock

that they would hold outside

the Republican National Convention.

They really tried

to make us go to Miami,

and we kept saying

we're not gonna do it,

but Jerry, for political reasons,

just announced that we're

gonna be there.

They think we're going

to San Diego or Miami.

We've never said we're going.

We ain't going.

They'll be no big jam

with us and Dylan

because there's

too much going on.

We never said we were going.

That's it.

By then John and I realized

that it would have been

very, very dangerous for us.

We had a very distinct,

clear feeling

that if we had gone

to the Republican convention,

we would have been

in danger of our lives.

You know, he said,

"The only thing I ever really wanted

to do in my life

was to play in

a rock and roll band."

And then he said,

"I can't let them

take that away from me."

The very core of his existence

was threatened

by what they were trying

to do to him.

It is now clear that Richard Nixon

is the winner of this election.

That's what our trend

now indicates,

the President reelected

by a landslide.

The fact that McGovern lost,

the fact that Nixon

was reelected again

and all that really upset us,

because in the big picture

the United States...

the policy of the United States

would affect the whole world.

And from that big picture,

we were very depressed.

Once Nixon is reelected,

the FBI loses interest

in Lennon,

says, "We're closing our file."

The immigration service,

though, is a good bureaucracy.

When they're given a job,

they do their job.

And they kept doing their job.

They kept doing it to Lennon

for another year and a half,

two years.

The situation is

I'm still appealing.

Every now and then they'll say,

"You got 30 days to get out,"

and then my lawyer will appeal

and we'll go up to another court

or something like that.

It will just go on forever.

Terry Southern put it well.

He says it keeps

the conservatives happy

that they're doing something about me

and what I represent.

And it keeps the liberals happy

because I haven't

actually been thrown out.

So everybody's happy.

The easy thing to do

would have been

just slink away

and go back to England,

but he chose to stand

on his rights

and I'm glad that he did.

Lennon and his legal team

went on the offensive

and filed a couple

of very interesting lawsuits.

I sued the Attorney General,

Mitchell,

and a whole slew of other people

who I claimed were

involved in a conspiracy

to deny John and Yoko's case

and get them out of

the United States improperly.

What do you think your chances are

of remaining in this country?

- 99-1.

- For or against?

- For.

- Why is that?

Because I'm overconfident,

as usual.

We ultimately were able to examine

the records in the case.

And lo and behold, deep

in John's immigration file,

which was a high security file,

were documents reaching all the way

up to President Nixon

showing improper interference

in an immigration case

and prejudgment.

Probably the most important documents

in the Lennon FBI file

are reports addressed

to the White House

signed by J. Edgar Hoover.

These were not sent

directly to Richard Nixon.

They're addressed

to H.R. Haldeman,

Assistant to the President.

Now, Haldeman was the most important

person in the White House

if you wanted to get to Nixon.

So when Hoover sends something

to Haldeman saying,

"Here's our report on our progress

in trying to kick Lennon

out of the country,"

the reason that he's doing that

is that Nixon wants to know.

I would not say that it was

integral to the politics

of the Nixon administration

to keep John Lennon from having

residence in this country.

I think it was of a piece

with the general nastiness

of the Nixon administration.

I had no prior knowledge

of the Watergate break-in.

You had the President

of the United States, Richard Nixon,

who was running

a rogue presidency,

a criminal presidency.

We do know, from Mr. Nixon's

long statement of May the 22nd

that he did approve much earlier

a program of wiretapping

and even burglary

in national security matters.

Did other presidents

break the law,

bend the law occasionally?

I'm sure they did.

Was there wholesale criminality

in any other presidency

in our history?

No.

For God sakes,

they committed a burglary,

and then they destroyed

the government of the United States,

covering it up.

That is the context in which you have

to determine and judge

and value what they did

to John Lennon.

The case against

John Lennon by the FBI

and the lmmigration

and Naturalization Service

and by President Nixon

and all his people

was that John Lennon

was disloyal

to the United States of America

and what it stood for.

The real disloyalty was Nixon's,

Hoover's, the INS,

and all the people

who were implicated

in the FBI and the INS

and wherever else,

because their perversion,

distortion of the Constitution,

their violation

of the basic principles,

that was the greatest

disloyalty to this country.

Therefore, I shall

resign the Presidency

effective at noon tomorrow.

Vice President Ford will

be sworn in as President

at that hour in this office.

Lennon was somebody

who was a born enemy

of those who governed

the United States.

He was everything they hated.

So I just say that he represented life,

and is admirable.

And Mr. Nixon...

and Mr. Bush represent death,

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