The Walrus and the Elephants

by James Mitchell

  By the summer of 1972, the antipresidential sentiment gained momentum after the June break-in at the Democratic Party’s Watergate Hotel offices was discovered. Journalists across the country tried to keep pace with Woodward and Bernstein as the story unfolded, each new development raising questions as to just how far up the ladder the scandal reached. There was talk of secret White House accounts that financed the burglary, and the latest revelations included the involvement of former Attorney General John Mitchell, whose wife Martha had become a quotable media darling. The flamboyant Mrs. Mitchell had been credited with popularizing the presidential “Tricky Dick” nickname, and also described Vietnam protestors as “Russian revolutionaries.”

  Martha had even juicier stories to tell in the wake of Watergate, and Realist reporter Mae Brussell explored a notable Beltway legend: “Why Was Martha Mitchell Kidnapped?” Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell were Watergate residents, and she claimed to have been forcibly silenced after the burglary. With Watergate, though, even the wildest theories often connected with actual targets.

  Brussell’s report joined a growing chorus of questions about Nixon and company. Each revelation heightened the sense of danger felt by those, like the Yippies, who were fighting the fight. Krassner thought that Lennon should know a few things about the White House he’d angered, an administration more than willing to co-opt the law on its own behalf. Krassner showed Lennon the printer’s galleys of the Brussell article: the sheets awaited time on a printing press before the story went public.

  Krassner had a story to tell, but as often was the case with independent publishers, he was short of the capital needed to get it in print. He told Lennon of his shortfall, and after lunch they went to a local bank to withdraw the $5,000 Krassner needed to get the presses rolling. Admittedly, Krassner showed the galleys to a man with a reputation for dropping cash to support efforts like the Realist.

  Perhaps Lennon sympathized with a fellow suspect; he had a demonstrated soft spot for radicals known to be under federal watch, which Krassner surely was. Included in Krassner’s FBI file—which he obtained years later under the Freedom of Information Act—was a letter sent to Life magazine in response to a favorable 1968 profile of Krassner and the Realist. Krassner, the author said, was not the lovable crusader portrayed by Life: “To classify Krassner as some sort of ‘social rebel’ is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut. As for any intellectual rewards to be gleaned from The Realist—much better prose may be found on lavatory walls.”80

  The letter was signed, Howard Rasmussen, Brooklyn College. As recounted years later in the Los Angeles Times, “Rasmussen” was an FBI agent. Never failing to recognize a solid turn of phrase, Krassner entitled his autobiography Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut.

  More grievously, while the Left included plenty of people who posed no real threat to the establishment—delusions of counterculture grandeur notwithstanding—that didn’t matter to a corrupt government willing to abuse its authority to keep them quiet. Krassner says the Nixon-Beatle showdown resulted from a combination of factors—extreme abuse of presidential power and a cultural figure of rare if not unequaled stature.

  Lennon confided to Krassner that he might have crossed a line, and perhaps some of his open defiance went too far. If conspiracy theorists were correct about the Nixon administration’s willing to use “any means necessary” to silence their opponents, all bets were off. A lot of people were paranoid, but Lennon had reasons for his fears.

  “We had a conversation about musicians who died young,” Krassner says, the recent tragedies of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix very much on the minds of the rock community. “I was quoting something that they were all really killed by the CIA or something like that. He said, ‘No, no. They were all self-destructive.’”

  Lennon’s final words to Krassner on the topic left the publisher with chills long after his guests departed: “He said, ‘If anything happens to me and Yoko, it wasn’t an accident.’”

  • • •

  “You’re a long way from New York City,” Geraldo Rivera said, and asked a question tailor-made for Lennon. “What brings you here?”

  “A car,” Lennon deadpanned. He paused, then shared a laugh with Rivera, the old-school punch line echoing Lennon’s answer to how he found America eight years earlier: “Turn left at Greenland.”

  John and Yoko spent most of August 5, 1972, playing tourist with Rivera—by then a New York friend.81 They had first met in the Village and had seen each other often as the WABC-TV Eyewitness News reporter covered both the INS story and Yoko’s search for Kyoko. Getting together on the West Coast invited a chance to see some of the city in friendly company and catch up, on the record, about any new developments.

  There was a lot to talk about. Lennon’s status with immigration remained uncertain, as were the whereabouts of Yoko’s daughter. Equally uncertain were Lennon’s professional options: freshly stung by the backlash to Some Time in New York City, any plans for a concert tour—musical rather than political—awaited visa allowances.

  Lennon knew what he didn’t plan for during his stay in California: “We don’t want to do any politics,” he said. “We came down here to get away from that.”

  Yet the issues were never far from Lennon’s mind while John and Yoko wandered with Rivera and a cameraman. They rode the cable cars and gave dozens of passengers a lifetime memory; they walked along the wharf, drove the roller-coaster streets, and stopped at a hillside lookout point for a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It seemed a good day: bright skies, the wind from the bay blowing strands of Lennon’s hair under a beret-style cap, his denim jacket flapping in the breeze. They’d been on the West Coast for several days, had spent the weekend at Krassner’s oceanside cabin, and were settled in the Hotel Miyako where Rivera and a skeleton crew recorded off-the-cuff segments for later broadcast.

  Guitar in hand while holding a conversation, Lennon played bits and pieces from a mental jukebox stocked over a lifetime. He sang the first two verses of the truly appropriate “Fools Like Me” by Jerry Lee Lewis, a lament of misunderstood romance: “Everybody tells me love is blind / maybe so but I refuse to see.” He switched to a tropical “Down in the Caribbean” groove, riffed a few bars of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue.” Geraldo asked about his influences and personal tastes, which seemed to come from a variety of sources. Many styles, but most from a time when Lennon was discovering his love of music.

  “I don’t know what the titles are,” Lennon said. “I know the song but I don’t really know bluegrass from green grass. Everybody remembers their own favorites. I’m just doin’ the ones [from] when I first had a rock group.”

  It always came back to music for Lennon. His forays into political activism were but one aspect of a multifaceted artist, one who had conquered his chosen field. Rivera wondered where Lennon’s muses would take him next.

  “What do you want to do, really want to do, man?” Rivera asked. “You’ve done virtually everything, the Beatles. What’s left?”

  “We want to pool our heads and do a new form,” Lennon said. “It could be movies, it could be anything. We’re always instinctive, we just follow the wind. Like sails on a yacht, when the wind gets in us we just go with it, you know.”

  That ship, however, was stuck in a harbor, anchored by court appearances and legal challenges. Lennon was half-resigned to being deported, and mostly concerned with the limited options for Yoko: the courts had awarded her paper custody of Kyoko, but ex-husband Tony Cox could afford to be patient during the deportation proceedings. The ordeal left him and Yoko in a state of tired disbelief.

  “You can’t believe it’s happening to you,” Lennon said. “You never know what the state’s doing. The judge said you must bring the child up in the continent of America, and we’re quite happy with that. We’d love to be here.”

  If allowed to stay, Rivera asked, would Lennon continue his ac
tive participation in the antiwar movement?

  “I don’t know what active is,” Lennon said. “I’d always look at every offer to help very thoroughly and decide the pros and cons of any move or cause. We consider everything. It depends on what the gigs are, right?”

  Rivera had just the gig in mind, a project they’d talked about for several months. Rivera was equal parts investigative reporter, fiery activist, and gonzo crusader—and a journalist of unlikely beginnings. After he had graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1969, Rivera served as an investigator with the New York Police Department, then as counsel for a Puerto Rican activist group, the Young Lords. Television called and Rivera became an on-air reporter with New York’s ABC affiliate. In late 1971 he began investigating disturbing allegations about a New York hospital, and did so in decidedly street fashion. As recalled by the Atlantic magazine, Rivera “used a stolen key to investigate the Willowbrook State School for the Mentally Retarded. His televised report on the rampant abuse and neglect of the residents led to changes in state law and new standards for the treatment of the mentally disabled across the country.”82

  The Willowbrook story aired in January 1972 and resulted in near-immediate change for patients and long-term improvements for an incalculable number of suffering souls. The Peabody Award–winning exposé put Rivera on the national broadcast map.

  There was more to be done, and the Willowbrook reports spawned thoughts of a benefit concert. Rivera’s idea, to make a “one-to-one” connection between the people of New York and victims of Willowbrook, was perfectly consistent with what Lennon had been trying to say. The chance to bring both funds and awareness to the cause was exactly what he’d been looking for—to help a local charity, one not likely to spark controversy, and do what he most wanted and missed: get onstage and play some rock and roll for a reason.

  As recalled in Lennon Revealed, Rivera said that Lennon had been eager to help from the minute he saw the televised reports, and to do more than just make a token appearance onstage.83 Lennon “was not a celebrity who just loaned his name to a cause,” Rivera said. “Both John and Yoko felt like adopted citizens of New York. They wanted to give something back. John was extra sensitive to the needs of others.”

  • • •

  Lennon was absent in body but present in spirit when the Republican National Convention got underway in Miami on August 21.

  A last-minute change found both the Democrats and Republicans convening in Miami: some claimed that hippie pressure forced the GOP move from San Diego; others said a donation by ITT in Florida paved the way. First up in July was the Democratic nomination of George McGovern, whose perhaps too-progressive platform that included abortion rights and gay liberation added a sacrificial lamb–quality to his candidacy. A fair number of activists showed up and hung around Flamingo Park for a few days, but the big show was the following month when the Republicans convened.

  The August convention attracted the expected celebrities to either protest or support the Nixon administration, generational lines as clear as ideology: antiwar stars included Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty, and fresh-from-North-Vietnam Jane Fonda; support for the president was shown by Jimmy Stewart, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Jr.

  If massive, violent problems had been expected, the convention failed to meet doomsday prophecies, although the week was not without incident: one widely reported clash featured those in support of the president spitting in the faces of disabled Vietnam Veterans Against the War, including one of the group’s leading voices, wheelchair-bound Ron Kovic (whose 1976 autobiography Born on the Fourth of July would be dramatized in a 1989 film by fellow veteran Oliver Stone). More than two hundred demonstrators were arrested after Miami Police—credited up to that point with emphasizing negotiations over assault tactics—let loose with teargas to end what they considered a small riot. (Rolling Stone’s Hunter S. Thompson and reporter Andrea Mitchell were among the gassed when they were assumed to be resisting arrest.)

  As expected by the White House and FBI, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman were present and accounted for, seen on the floor pretending to be reporters on assignment for Popular Mechanics magazine, but the words “You’re under arrest” were not directed at the Yippies most expected to cause problems. Along with presumably keeping an eye on “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, the FBI made sure that Miami agents and cops knew which of the high-profile radical leaders would most likely cause a problem.

  This included John Lennon, who remained an expected visitor to Miami by investigators still determined to find reasons to deport. Attempts to have him arrested for narcotics had failed; either Lennon lived a clean, drug-free life or New York cops made little effort to help the feds.

  A memo had been prepared for convention distribution that included a physical description of Lennon—to educate Southern officers as to his identity—with a note that a drug bust might help a fading federal argument: “Local INS has very loose case in NY for deporting subject on narcotics charge in England. INS has stressed to Bureau that if Lennon were to be arrested in US for possession of narcotics he would become more likely to be immediately deportable.”84

  The name John Winston Lennon headlined a be-on-the-lookout poster that was distributed to local law enforcement agencies, and included a by-the-numbers profile of a white Englishman, approximately six feet tall, weighing 160 pounds, brown to blond hair, and the fact that he’d been arrested in his native land for narcotics.

  This time a picture was included—unlike previous bureau memos that mentioned the need to have a photo “for identification purposes”—an image of a longhaired man with circular-frame glasses. The photo included a cartoon balloon emerging that had him declaring, “The pope smokes dope.”

  But the FBI circulated a picture of the wrong man; it was David Peel. The photo was from a publicity release for Peel’s comically named album. Some confusion may be allowed—sort of—as the flyer included the names John Lennon and Yoko Ono as producers. But there was very little resemblance between Peel and any former Beatle.

  The absence of John Lennon in Florida all but closed the FBI’s investigation. His nonappearance was confirmed in an August 30 memo filed by an agent—who went to Miami in undercover capacity as a member of the Weathermen Task Force: Lennon “was not observed by the case agent . . . it is believed the subject did not travel to Miami as he had previously planned.” INS attorney Vincent Schiano likewise reported the no-show, and said there was no additional evidence that Lennon was “active in the New Left,” a movement that suffered from internal disputes: “The subject has fallen out of the favor of activists Jerry Rubin, Stewart Albert and Rennie Davis, due to the subject’s lack of interest in committing himself to involvement in anti-war and New Left activities.”

  The John Lennon case was placed on “pending inactive status.” The New York office sent headquarters a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” message; they would advise and inform if any changes took place in Lennon’s deportation case.

  For some Movement leaders there was an empty-tank quality after the convention. Life under the federal microscope took its toll, and Jay Craven returned to DC and the re-relocated offices of a dwindling Coalition for Peace and Justice. Intimidation tactics kept the radicals in check whether in Miami or Washington, and any threat they might have once posed seemed to have dissolved. Craven recalls being tailed and shadowed throughout the convention, and realizing that the Nixon agenda would continue no matter their opposition.

  “We were under a lot of surveillance. They had agents in the next office who wanted us to know they were there,” Craven says. “The Nixon administration’s effort to intimidate and strategically block the Movement won.”

  Whatever the future held for the coalition and the nearly defunct Yippies, Rennie Davis knew it no longer included John Lennon. In their minds Lennon backed away from the Movement as a whole due to green card concerns; in reality he’d simply distanced himself from
Rubin, but kept on fighting. The politically driven concert tour had been a great idea once, the peak of a burgeoning movement. But instead of a victory cheer the Movement seemed ready for a funeral march.

  “My initial reaction to John coming out to join us was really colored by the larger context of the enormous role he played,” Davis says. “He breathed life into something that had lost its way and was unwinding.”

  Even without Lennon in their future, Davis wondered if there was any Left remaining to rally at this uncertain threshold.

  “Coming off this phenomenon of young people who stepped up to change the world, by Miami it was over,” Davis says. “There was one more demonstration outside the White House, but for all practical purposes it was at an end.”

  • • •

  Lennon approached the One-to-One benefit concert as more than just a unique performance; the August 30 show was intended to be the first of many.

  “I was ready to go on the road for pure fun,” Lennon told Rolling Stone of his expectations. “I didn’t want to go on the road for money. I felt like going on the road and playing music. And whatever excuse—charity or whatever—would have done me.”