FBI: Lennon too stoned to be a threat

[darthmix]

By John Line, Metro
22 September 2005

John Lennon was dismissed as a Communist threat to the US only because he was always stoned, secret FBI papers revealed yesterday.

The ex-Beatles singer was thought to be a ringleader of revolutionaries plotting to hijack a Republican conference, the documents show.

But his drug-taking - which in the early 1970s included heroin, cocaine and marijuana - ultimately ruled him out of FBI inquiries.

Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball and Albert Einstein were also investigated as suspected Communists, according to the files, published for the first time.

http://www.thisislondon.com/showbiz/articles/20429610?source=Metro

Well, that's a relief.

[tk2kewl]

1. Too bad we can't say the same thing about the chimperor...

He is just as much a threat stoned or sober.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. How do you know he'd be a threat if sober? Do we have any data on that?

[H2O Man]

40. In his rebel phase

John was funneling money to some activists tied to "the Good Fight" in Ireland. One of the fellows who played in the Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory had connected John with a few people in NYC. Some of the money from "Sometime in New York City" ("Luck of the Irish") went to the Emerald Isle. Ah, that old "loweer east side gang"!

It wasn't that John and Yoko were hanging out with Abbie and Jerry, and were going to become rebels, that upset Nixon and that noble Attorney General Mitchell. It was that John might connect the radical left in the USA with the very radical left internationally.

[Tace]

2. Who Knew?

Any high school kid in the early 70's could have told you the same thing.

[tainowarrior]

3. well, Albert Einstein WAS a communist

Marylin and Lucille, however? nahhhhh...

[Missy M]

10. Maybe because of Marilyn Monroe's marriage to Arthur Miller who was...

questioned by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities but Lucille Ball, you have got to be kidding me.

[UpInArms]

20. wasn't Lucy married to Desi Arnez - from Cuba?

would that make her a "communist"

:rofl:

[dflprincess]

37. The Arnez family fled Cuba long before Castro came to power

Anyone know, were they running from Batista or someone before him?

[Piperay]

22. Actually Lucille Ball was

a registered member of the Communist Party, she registered to please either her father of grandfather (I'm pretty sure it was her grandfather).

[tainowarrior]

24. I Love Lucy was a communist!

wow...take that , America! One of your main pop culture figures was a communist, as was Charlie Chaplin.

[BuelahWitch]

32. Chaplin was not a Communist

He leaned to the left, but he was never a Communist. Poor man was run out of the country, lost his home and studio because of the lies of right wingers like Hedda Hopper, please stop perpetuating this rumor.

[tainowarrior]

38. wait a minute, I could have sworn he was a communist

you're right, I googled it a little. Seems he was just a "suspected" communist

Poor man indeed. Such a great artist, and bothered by our government!

[kskiska]

31. Lots of people were socialists/communists back in the 20s & 30s

When I was a kid I would look through books in the attic owned by my Armenian immigrant grandfather, who died in the 30s. He had quite a few by Lincoln Steffens, prominent socialist of the day.

…Lucy was called in by the House Un-American Activities Committee which had discovered that she once registered as a Communist voter. This was back in 1932 and done to placate her (nutty socialist) grandfather, Fred Hunt. Though some former fans and some network sponsors turned against her, the conclusion was that the only thing red was the hair…

[Maple]

14. When was Einstein ever a communist??

Socialist yes, communist no.

[tainowarrior]

23. No, he was a communist

actually, he was not just a communist, he actually was a chairperson of many communist groups.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein.html

"One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion. "

It all depends who you believe. The guy supposedly had connections with like 30 communist organizations, and he did write an essay on Socialism, plus he met with Soviet officials.

Not that being a communist is a bad thing, but, I think enough evidence abounds that he's a communist

[Maple]

29. People confuse the two

as did the FBI

"He expressed his "passionate opposition" to the idolatrous, bureaucratic and anti-democratic Soviet state. However, such statements were lost on the FBI, which in the early '50s collected 1,500 pages of material on Einstein's allegedly pro-Soviet activities. In 1958, Life (Time's sister publication) listed Einstein as one of America's leading Communist "dupes and fellow travelers."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/History/Einstein_Socialist.html

However, while he certainly examined communism, as do many people, he himself stated he was a socialist.

It was just a dangerous era, in which to be enough of a free-thinker to look at all the possibilities, got you labelled and investigated.

However, even the FBI concluded he was not.

[ToolTex]

33. Wrong. Lucy was a card carrying, as they used to say, member

of the party in 1935. Well documented. But nobody cared except McCarthy.

[Angry Girl]

4. Carl Sagan was a major stoner as well but....

Somehow that never gets mentioned.

I can't stand it when people run around parroting, "Drugs are bad" when they're regular consumers of aspirin, caffeine, and sugar.

[K-W]

5. I dont think the issue is that drugs are bad.

Just that someone doing as many drugs as Lennon wasnt going to be organizing any militant movements.

[Angry Girl]

13. I know, i know. It just set me off on a tangential rant. Mea culpa! :-)

[CrispyQ]

6. I would think the food industry would be in favor of legalization of

mj. I eat everything in sight & walk to the store for more!

Yes, their hypocrisy is simply stunning.

BTW, I didn't know that about Sagan. Thanks for the tidbit.

[K-W]

11. From Wikipedia: (Sagan even wrote about Marijuana)

Carl Sagan was an avid user of marijuana, although he never publicly admitted it during his life<4>. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X," he wrote an essay concerning cannabis smoking in the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered, whose editor was Lester Grinspoon. In the essay, Sagan commented that marijuana encouraged some of his works and enhanced experiences. After Sagan's death, Grinspoon disclosed this to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson<5>. When the biography, entitled Carl Sagan: A Life, was published in 1999, the marijuana exposure stirred some media attention<6>.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

[Angry Girl]

16. LOL! Yeah, Kraft & Nabisco should jump on that!

Sagan's friend, Dr. Grinspoon, has a site (you can even contribute):

http://www.marijuana-uses.com/learn.html

[Runcible Spoon]

26. Dr. Grinspoon! I LOVE it!

I think I'll start calling myself that next time I'm stoned and indulge in some Ben and Jerry's! :evilgrin:

[MisterP]

27. that further explains the resemblance to Andy Warhol

[Bob3]

28. that explains the billions and billions catch phrase

don't yah think?

[LuCifer]

39. THANK YOU!

And I get BLASTED for pointing out that sugar IS a drug...

I may just have to dig out my Terence McKenna books now!!!!!!!!!

Lu

[LeftyMom]

7. Lucy a communist?

Apparently they never heard about her magic spy-detector filings?

[evlbstrd]

9. He's a bit too dead to be a threat.

[WindRavenX]

12. has any pot head been a threat to society?

Seriously, all I want to do is eat, sleep, and have sex.

Menance to society indeed...:rofl:

"We want a Revolution- hey, where's the Ben and Jerry's???"

[Angry Girl]

17. Certainly! They like to think for themselves! n/t

[WindRavenX]

21. Oooooo

The SCARY POT HEADS ARE THINKING!!! HIDE THE CHILDREN!!! :hide: :hide:

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. Yupper!

Back in my stoner days I was thinking all the time.

Not able to do much else, I must say, but boy could I ever think!

[Bob3]

30. yep that's a threat you're too easily satisfied now with coke

all you want to do is take more coke - so you make more money to take more coke. A perfect consumerist drug even better than booze.

[CrispyQ]

34. Eating, sleeping is ok, but if it's sex with someone of the same gender,

well now, we can't have that kind of deviant behavior going on! :sarcasm:

[Freddie Stubbs]

15. That would explain the Yoko Ono marriage

[fshrink]

18. Those idiots don't get anything, which

is rather reassuring in fact. They will always be taken by surprise by any upsurge of the force of change. Which is mainly why the trend is, and has been for a long while, to increase control in all aspects of everyday life. Clueless thinks that amount of data will make things easier to forecast. Will only make understanding harder. RIP John.

[4dsc]

19. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...

EOM!!

[leesa]

35. And why is being a communist a threat?

[K-W]

36. Booo. The evil ideology is coming to get you.

Didnt you know that Soviet tyranny was not the predictable result of centralized power, militarism and an undemocratic siezure of power by a fundementalist sect, but was in fact the result of an evil ideology that dared suggest people could live together as equals.