The Covert War Against Rock

by Alex Constantine

  In a news story on Weiner’s debacle over the suppressed FBI files, Eliot Mintz stated that memories of Hooverian overkill were too traumatic for Yoko to bear. She wasn’t an obstacle to Weiner’s struggle with the FBI over Lennon’s files, but didn’t care to be involved. “She’ll say, ‘it’s incredible how much was going on,’” Weiner said. She told him that their friends in the Peace Movement “were always saying that they should’ve been doing more, but all of this stuff makes it clear that the government thought that they were doing way too much.”28

  The intelligence groups would revisit this thought again when, conceivably, Lennon overcame his fear of federal harassment and buggered the rising shadow of Reaganism with four-letter outbursts of anti-Republicanism.

  Killing Lennon was only the first step. All that he signified must be defaced. This was the principal objective of Walrus.

  The headquarters for Walrus was Bob Rosen’s apartment on 169th Street. The key strategist was Dr. DeBilio. German-born Fred Seaman, the psychiatrist’s pawn, was an avid Beatles “fan.” Like Chapman, he was obsessed with John Lennon and sought to subvert his memory.

  Defaming Lennon and revising history required “primary materials,” so every Friday for a period of twelve months, at the end of his workday, Seaman strolled out of the Dakota with a grocery bag stuffed full of Lennon’s diaries, folders, an unpublished Joycean novella, other manuscripts, love letters, song lyrics, photographs, everything that could secreted from the apartment complex.

  The theft of the diaries, kept current by Lennon from 1975 until his death, was essential to the central purpose of Project Walrus, the defamation of Lennon, Ono, and their political views. When most of the diaries were recovered, it was found upon close examination that some entries were not in Lennon’s handwriting, and others had been altered. This tampering with history by Lennon’s “extremely powerful” detractors undermined forever the use of the diaries by future biographers and historians. These documents were the record of his most personal thoughts and concerns, defiled with no better justification than the scoring of a crude propaganda coup.

  Once the project had possession of the diaries, it followed that a legal claim to them be made to void any litigation Yoko Ono might apply to force their return and stop the publication of the defamatory book on Lennon planned by Fred Seaman. The chauffeur wrote in a journal that he and Dr. DeBilio had an “intense talk about doctoring the diary to show Lennon’s setting me up to write book . . . to build up [the appearance of] great intimacy.”29

  Seaman was to be the executor of John Lennon’s archives, the dead Beatle’s official biographer, co-opting Yoko Ono. Seaman told friends that he was going to “discredit Ono at all costs.”

  A number of assassination attempts failed, but did rattle her deeply. Further psychological pressure was applied to drive her to a nervous breakdown and thereby discredit her in any steps she might take to correct the public record.

  The Walrus crew anticipated immense profits. As Rosen wrote in his diary, “Dead Lennons = $$$$$.”

  In the March 1984 Playboy, authors David and Victoria Sheff described “unexplained events” at the Dakota: “Passports are found to be missing and then turn up days later on the kitchen table; lyrics to new songs disappear and then just as mysteriously reappear; collages by Lennon . . . disappear and the reappear in unexpected places. It is beginning to sound like the movie Gaslight, in which a woman is made to feel she is going crazy.” The Chapman letter was stolen and altered. Anonymous death threats by phone and mail were continuous. “There are precious few people to trust,” observed the Sheffs, “and Ono is depending mostly on her bodyguards for any sense of security. So when an anonymous call is received saying one of her security men is working against her, the paranoia around the [Dakota] is almost palpable. . . . The idea that someone in her own home may kill her has been planted. She begins sleeping badly again.” One of Ono’s assistants, wracked by the stress, began packing a gun at all times. “You don’t know how big this thing is. The people who are doing this are too big to fight.”30

  On May 7, 1983, Fred Seaman entered a guilty plea to grand larceny in the second degree. He was sentenced to five years’ probation. But, the Sheffs reported, “Seaman’s obsession has clearly become manic. He calls a reporter at odd hours, saying only, ‘How does it feel to be useless?’ then calls the Dakota with the same enigmatic message. He spreads stories about Ono’s wickedness—that she is a drug addict, that she was having affairs before Lennon died, that she had McCartney arrested in Japan for possessing marijuana. Seaman will admit to friends that the smears are meant to ‘discredit Ono at all costs.’”31

  Albert Goldman, in a biography largely based on Seaman’s distortions after Simon & Schuster rejected a manuscript penned by the former Lennon/Ono employee—the publishers found it replete with unfounded smears—was the most prominent of the post-assassination assassins of Lennon. A publisher’s blurb promises that The Lives of John Lennon is the study of a “turbulent personality of labyrinthine complexity,” a “tribute to his legendary achievements and a revelation of the true price he paid for them.” In fact, the reader finds in Goldman’s book a Lennon unrecognizable to his friends and followers. At every stop, Lennon’s actions and motives are skewed. An instructive example is the claim that John and Yoko avoided visiting places of artistic or cultural significance while on tour in Japan in the late 1970s, preferring to fritter away their afternoons at amusement parks and shopping centers. In fact, as seen in Imagine: John Lennon (a documentary that premiered in New York on October 7, 1988, within weeks of the release of Goldman’s book, untainted by Walrus, a criminal plot, the organized attempt to malign, to influence public opinion, to portray the late Beatle precisely as the “phony” that Mark David Chapman happened to despise, a “king,” as Goldman had it, who “has no clothes”), the Lennons visited scores of Buddhist temples to meditate, and in general immersed themselves in Japanese culture. Goldman’s journalistic practices in the preparation of the book were abysmal, obviously designed to sully Lennon and his generation. Tony Manero, a musician who knew Lennon briefly in the 1960s, reported to David and Victoria Sheff that Goldman offered to pay him for a story on his “homosexual liaison” with the Beatle—which, unfortunately for the author, Manero maintains never occurred.29 Rolling Stone, in an October 20, 1988 commemorative issue honoring Lennon, found Goldman’s biography “riddled with factual inaccuracies, embroidered accounts of true events that border on fiction and suspect information provided by tainted sources.”

  The discrediting of Lennon and the late peace movement was one facet of the Walrus plot. Another was the dissemination of false conspiracy theories, clouding public comprehension of John Lennon’s murder. In Santa Cruz, California, and soon all across the state, Steven Lightfoot emerged to pester talk show hosts with his insistence that the true killer of John Lennon was author Stephen King. This revelation, Lightfoot contends, is “the biggest true story since Christ was discovered.” His argument, repeated ad nauseum on California radio stations, is founded on “coded” language allegedly planted in headlines and photo captions printed in Time and Newsweek.

  Lightfoot explains in a 1997 Internet posting that it was “hard not to spot strange behavior in the headlines of Time magazine, especially since the magazine I happened to pick up came out the day of the murder. The bold print headlines, with almost every turn of the page, seemed to plug into the murder of John Lennon and not just the more obvious intent of the article. When I turned to page 16 and saw the ominous headline ‘Who’s In?’ Who’s Out?’ above just elected Reagan I began to think I was stumbling on to government codes and that the double meaning of this headline translated to ‘Reagan’s In,’ ‘Lennon’s Out.’ I looked closer and noticed the smaller headline below the photo that read ‘Fitting together the pieces of a complicated jigsaw puzzle . . .’ I looked at the picture and saw a vase of lillies, symbolic of death . . .” and so on. Bearing in mind that Lennon was the victim of an e
xtreme right-wing plot, Lightfoot’s own affinity with the Far Right is revealing. “Incidentally,” he notes, “I am not an anti-semite. I am merely aware that a small, evil group of Jews want the destruction of America and are using the media and violence to bring about a hasty disintegration of our morals. I, in fact, think Moscow is behind this media monopoly under 90 percent Jewish control and that America’s harboring of Nazis after WWII is one obvious reason.”

  European fascists brought to these shores after the war participated in political assassinations conceived by the intelligence community. American and German operatives are the beating heart of fascist conspiracies of the sort that claimed the life of John Lennon, so the appearance of a Jew-baiting anti-communist making unfounded claims on talk radio—to discredit legitimate researchers on the Lennon murder—is a predictable development.

  NOTES

  1. Fenton Bresler, Who Killed John Lennon?, New York: St. Martin’s, 1989, p. 242.

  2. John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, New York: Times Books, 1979, pp. 187, 191.

  3. Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas, Affidavit in Behalf of Sirhan Sirhan Serving Time in San Quentin, March 9, 1973, pp. 13–14. The Sirhan trial, he concluded, “was, and will be remembered, as the psychiatric blunder of the century” (p. 22). But Simson caught a glimpse of conspiracy beyond the “blunders” when he examined the notebooks supposedly kept by Sirhan. Simson wrote: “A conclusion emerges from the study of court transcripts that Sirhan’s ‘notebooks’ were modified . . . to support the improper diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. This is an assumption that should not be ignored” (p. 14). “I strongly suspect that the notebooks are a forgery, for the thinking reflected in them is foreign to the Sirhan I carefully studied.” (p. 18).

  4. Bresler, p. 270.

  5. Bresler, p. 240.

  6. Bill Landis, Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger, New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 228.

  7. Michael Newton, Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of Devil Worship and Satanic Crime, New York: Avon, 1993, p. 77.

  8. Mae Brussell, World Watchers International broadcast, Monterey, California, December 20, 1980.

  9. The two families were close. Scott Hinckley, the brother of John Hinckley, Jr. and a VP at Vanderbilt Energy Corp., was to have been a dinner guest of Neil Bush, the vice president’s son, the day after the shooting. Neil, the Los Angeles Times reported on March 31, 1981, “said his family knew the Hinckley family because they had made large contributions to [Bush’s] campaign.”

  10. Bresler, pp. 104–5.

  11. Synopsis of Bresler text.

  12. David and Victoria Sheff, “The Betrayal of John Lennon,” Playboy, March 1984, p. 188. The Sheffs write: “If some kind of switch was made, it could only have been to make it seem as if some crank had written a letter to Italy in 1981, and with Lennon long dead, had used Chapman’s name and the Dakota address as some sort of macabre joke.”

  13. Bresler, p. 174.

  14. Sheffs, p. 183.

  15. “Stand by Me: The Elliot Mintz Interview,” Instant Karma, No. 52, December 1991.

  16. Sheffs, p. 178.

  17. Mintz, Instant Karma interview.

  18. Sheff, p. 186.

  19. Sheffs, pp. 86–190.

  20. “Sean Lennon Lives in Fear,” AP release, March 11, 1996.

  21. Rebecca Mead, “Sean Lennon has a new record—and a theory about his father’s murder,” New Yorker, vol. 74, no. 9, April 2, 1998, p. 45.

  22. Fred Fago, “I Read the News Today,” The Social Drama of John Lennon’s Death, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994, p. x.

  23. Fago, p. 120.

  24. Quoted in: Albert Goldman, “Rock’s Greatest Hitman,” Penthouse, September 1989. p. 220.

  25. Fago, p. 116.

  26. Sheffs, p. 186.

  27. “A Talk with Jon Wiener,” Instant Karma, no. 16, June/July 1984. Wiener, an authority on the FBI’s case against John Lennon, bases his observations on 26 pounds of FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service files released under FOIA request and court orders. Wiener has long been embroiled in a battle for release of materials held back for “reasons of national security.”

  28. Ibid.

  29. Sheffs, pp. 187–88.

  30. Sheffs, p. 184.

  31.Ibid.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  What’cha Gonna Do? . . . The Deaths of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh

  I THINK THE CIA SAW BOB MARLEY FOR WHAT HE WAS, A FREEDOM FIGHTER AND A CHAMPION OF THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE.

  BASIL WALTERS, RASTA HISTORIAN, MARCH 1999

  MARLEY WAS SO IMPORTANT THAT, WHETHER HE COULD OR NOT, HE WAS PERCEIVED AS BEING ABLE TO SWAY A NATIONAL ELECTION. HE WAS WITHOUT QUESTION THE MOST POPULAR PERSON THAT JAMAICA HAS PRODUCED, AT LEAST SINCE MARCUS GARVEY, AND HE WAS AT THE SAME TIME A VERY FEARFUL FIGURE TO A LOT OF PEOPLE BECAUSE HE COULD CHANGE THINGS IF HE WANTED TO.

  ROGER STEFFANS, REGGAE ARCHIVIST

  VAMPIRES DON’T COME OUT AND BITE YOUR NECK ANYMORE. THEY CAUSE . . . SOMETHING DESTRUCTIVE TO HAPPEN THAT BLOOD WILL SPILL, AND THOSE INVISIBLE VAMPIRES WILL GET THEIR MEALS.

  PETER TOSH

  Peter Tosh, born Winston Hubert McIntosh, a preacher’s son, on October 9, 1944, transcended his squalid origins to become, like Bob Marley, a widely influential civil rights agitator. And like other black activists before him, Tosh was gunned down. He died on September 11, 1987 at the age of 43. “He was upset with the treatment of his people,” wrote biographer John Levy, “It is believed by many that this is the very character trait which led to Tosh’s murder.”1

  Witnesses reported that three men took part in the shooting, but only one of them was tried. Dennis “Leppo” Lebban pled innocent but was sentenced after an eleven-minute trial to death row in Jamaica’s Spanish Town Prison. Leppo’s accomplices remain at large. Mike Robinson, a witness to the shooting, reported that the assailants were “clean cut.” They spoke and behaved like “professional hit men,” in marked contrast to Leppo, an ex-con from the ghetto with a gritty exterior. Despite the disappearance of the mystery gunmen, Jamaican authorities consider the case closed.2

  Tosh’s interest in music began in the fifth grade with six months of piano lessons. But his musical cathexis came when he happened across a man playing guitar on a stoop. Young Tosh was so enraptured by the sound that he sat half the day watching the man play. When the music stopped, Tosh was “hypnotized.” He took the guitar handed him and plucked the tune note for note.3

  In 1956, Winston and his aunt moved from Savanna-la-Mar to Denham Town in Kingston. His aunt died and he went to live with an uncle in Trench Town—a dreary gauntlet of hovels erected by the Jamaican government (25 or so ruling families) in 1951 after a hurricane scrapped the garbage-dump shanty-towns that sprang up around Kingston, known as the spiritual home of the Rastafarians. It was in this setting that Winston met young Bob Marley and taught him to play guitar. Tosh also met Neville “Bunny Wailer” O’Reilly Livingston in Trench Town, and in 1964–65, Winston changed his name, and the trio, the “Wailin’ Wailers,” set out to conquer the universe.

  “Simmer Down,” the first tune recorded at Studio One, immediately throbbed to number one in Jamaica. But the Wailers were drastically underpaid. Each of them earned about three pounds a week, so in 1970 they bailed and signed with famed Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. But record producers, “dem pirates and thieves,” are notorious for pocketing more than their take. The Wailers recorded three LPs in England for the Trojan label and received precisely nada for these albums or the bootlegs of Tosh’s rehearsal sessions marketed by Trojan.

  In 1972, the Wailers met Island Records producer Chris Blackwell, and their fortunes turned around. “The group’s first collaboration,” writes White in Catch A Fire, “served as an introduction for many people to reggae music. This album contains many classic reggae tunes, including ‘400 years’ and ‘Stop That Train,’ both of which featured Peter Tosh on lead vocals. These songs in
troduced people to the militant, outspoken, candid approach of Peter Tosh, qualities which would remain with him to his grave.” These characteristics set Peter apart from his peers. “Unlike most musicians in Jamaica, Peter always let his feelings be known. He cared more about principles and morals than popularity and fame.”4

  His beliefs were completely incorruptible. In 1983, an interviewer asked Tosh if any political groups had sought his endorsement. He acknowledged that he’d been approached, but “they know I don’t support politricks and games. Because I have bigger aims, hopes and aspirations. My duty is not to divide them, my duty is to unify the people, ‘cause to divide people is to destroy people, and destroy yourself, too.”5

  The band went on to release Burnin’, a blunt commentary on political oppression. “Get Up, Stand Up” had Tosh on lead vocal, chanting “stand up for your rights.” The album sold briskly, but Burnin’ was the last album to feature Tosh. He left the Wailers after a series of wrangles in the studio with Marley and keen displeasure with producer Chris Blackwell.

  In Jamaica, old wounds were opened by a wave of destabilization politics. Stories appeared in the local, regional and international press down-sizing the achievements of the quasisocialist Jamaican government under Prime Minister Michael Manley. The people should give up faith in themselves and their leader, this was the message. The island was struck by a tidal wave of political violence, sabotage, propaganda, and as Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop phrased it three years later, the CIA’s “pernicious attempts [to] wreck the economy.”

  “Destabilization,” Bishop told the emergent New Jewel Party, “is the name given the most recently developed method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and violence. In the old days, such countries—the colonialist and imperialist powers—sent in gunboats or marines to directly take over the country by sheer force. Later on mercenaries were often used in place of soldiers, navy, and marines. Today more and more the new weapon and the new menace is destabilization. This method was used against a number of Caribbean and Third World countries in the 1960s, and also against Jamaica and Guyana in the 1970s.”6