December 8, 2020 marked the 40th anniversary of John Lennon being killed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as he was returning to the Dakota apartment building in which he lived, at West 72nd Street and Central Park West.
Yet, over 40 years after the former Beatles super-star musician and rock songwriter was murdered, many U.S. music fans, who question the Establishment media’s “official story” of how and why JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and RFK were slain in the 1960’s, also question its “official story” of how and why Lennon and some other celebrity musicians ended up dying before they reached the age of 50 years.
So Protest Folk Magazine recently asked the producer of the documentary film (and book) Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA War On Musicians And Activists, John Potash, to share his thoughts with readers in an email interview. Potash has discussed his work on C-Span’s American History TV, A&E, RT, The Real News Network, and The Reelz Channel, along with over a hundred radio programs in the U.S. and abroad.
Was John Lennon ever under NY Police Department, FBI or CIA surveillance between the time the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan’s CBS television show in New York City in 1964 and December 8, 1980? And if so, why would either the NY Police Department, the FBI or the CIA be monitoring the activities of celebrity rock musicians like Lennon during the 1960’s, 1970’s and early 1980’s or of celebrity rap musicians like Tupac Shakur, in subsequent decades?
JOHN POTASH: British barrister (lawyer) Fenton Bresler worked as London's Daily Mail newspaper legal correspondent when John Lennon was murdered. Bresler spent seven years investigating Lennon's murder to come out with his book, Who Killed John Lennon?, in which he first published his evidence and conclusion that the CIA murdered John Lennon. They and the FBI had previously monitored and harassed Lennon for years. Bresler was able to attain 217 FBI documents from their file on Lennon, and only 4 pages of the CIA file on Lennon. Bresler said these pages alluded to many more pages the government wouldn’t release.
These documents clearly showed that Lennon was under surveillance by the FBI with CIA involvement. The FBI had agents who also worked for the New York Police Department’s Intelligence divisions, such as the Bureau of Special Services. Activists broke into an FBI office in 1971. These documents revealed their Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that targeted antiwar activists, Civil Rights activists, and other leftists. When the U.S. Senate Church Committee investigated U.S. Intelligence in the mid-1970s, they found and published the contents of documents detailing tactics for targeting political musicians.
As to why these governmental agencies would be monitoring John Lennon, a page or two of the FBI documents on Lennon, as well as other FBI documents, tell some of that story. For example, a document dated 2/25/72, stated a “New Left-oriented group is being formed by British musician John Lennon.” This document also presented concern about Lennon’s planned activist concert at the Republican National Convention.
When Lennon toured the U.S. in 1964, he publicly refused to play segregated southern concerts in 1964. U.S. intelligence was spying on and attacking the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King for his anti-segregation work (which I cover in my first book/film, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders) and were concerned about this popular white singer doing the same. John Lennon proved a problem for U.S. Intelligence in 1966, when he said that he and his fellow band members were against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
By 1968, Lennon had written some of his most radical songs as a Beatle, such as “Revolution.” He followed it up in his solo career with even more radical political songs such as “Power to the People.” Around 1970, Lennon also supported activists ranging from antiwar activist Abbie Hoffman to Black Panther National Chairman Bobby Seale.
Shortly before his death in 1980, John Lennon had sent out a press release announcing that he would be marching with a Teamsters protest action in California and playing music at their rally. Lennon also produced two albums in the year before he died, after having taken a 5 year break from music to raise his son.
Regarding musicians such as Tupac Shakur, he was born into the activism of his Black Panther family, and headed his own activist group, The New Afrikan Panthers at 17 years old. The New Afrikan Panthers tried to replicate The Black Panthers and were active in 8-10 cities. FBI agent whistleblower Wes Swearingen stated in his FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Expose, that the FBI was forced to close its COINTELPRO units down in 1971, yet continued COINTELPRO work into the 1980s and ‘90s under different named units.
Were any former or current NY Police Department, FBI or CIA employees, assets or informants near the front of the Dakota apartment building in the moments immediately before or after Lennon was shot on the Upper West Side on December 8, 1980? And if so, has the NY Police Department, FBI or CIA fully disclosed what kind of work any former or current employees, assets or informants present when Lennon was killed had done in past or were doing in December 1980?
JOHN POTASH: Attorney and legal correspondent Fenton Bresler makes a very strong case that through their Project MK-Ultra, the CIA used drugs and hypnosis to turn Mark David Chapman into the assassin he became when he shot John Lennon. Since you ask more about this in the next question, I’ll follow up with the details there.
Another highly suspected shooter of John Lennon was his Dakota apartment building doorman Jose Joaquin Sanjenis Perdomo. Phil Stongman, a critically praised British music writer and author of 5 books, wrote John Lennon: Life, Times, and Assassination. Strongman found that Cuba’s Information Archives showed that Jose Joaquin Sanjenis Perdomo was an active anti-Castro Cuban. A CIA spy employee said Perdomo had been on the CIA payroll for at least ten years from the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion onwards, as part of Brigade 2056, at least up to the Watergate burglary. Strongman further claimed that one of the first policeman to arrive at Lennon’s murder scene, initially believed Perdomo, rather than Chapman, killed Lennon.
The best evidence supports that Jose Perdomo was a back-up shooter to Mark David Chapman, to ensure the murder of John Lennon.
The CIA is notoriously secretive. Only one CIA whistleblower admitted what I said above. The FBI, after giving some documents to Bresler through his Freedom of Information Act request, let some of those documents be public. Neither of those agencies nor the NYPD has admitted having anyone involved in Lennon’s murder. (end of part 1. To be continued)
 |
| John Lennon performing at Free John Sinclair! rally and concert in 1971 |
No comments:
Post a Comment