UNITED STATES: The FBI is being sued by the final surviving Monkees for what he calls a “secret dossier” the organisation allegedly has on him and his erstwhile comrades.
The lawsuit was filed by Micky Dolenz, 77, the former leader of the well-known British-American 1960s group, through his lawyer, Mark Zaid, a freedom of information specialist and music enthusiast.
“That just kind of reinforced for me that there was something here,” Zaid said. “It’s not just a fishing expedition,” he added.
Zaid quickly discovered that the FBI had a document existing on Dolenz or his former bandmates and that a severely redacted, the seven-page excerpt was made public in 2011.
The FBI file’s cover on the agency’s website incorrectly calls them “the Monkeys.” Except for the fact that it was the Vietnam War era and the government was sensitive to criticism from well-known Hollywood celebrities and pop artists, the documents offer little hints as to why the band was of interest to the federal officials.
Almost the entire page is blacked out in a section titled “Additional activities denouncing the US policy in the Vietnam War.” However, the file did characterize the Monkees as a “quite successful” group that mostly catered to teenagers and consisted of “four young males who dress as “beatnik types.”
According to the report, “subliminal messages were depicted on the screen during a Monkees concert and, in the view of an agent whose name is redacted, constituted ‘left-wing innovations of a political nature, including video footage of ‘anti-US messages on the war in Vietnam’.“
The Monkees were not renowned for being an overtly political band because they were made for television. Nonetheless, the song Last Train to Clarksville was about a guy who was going to war and was unsure of whether he would ever see his loved ones again.
The band’s whole FBI file, as well as any individual files on Dolenz and his late bandmates, Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith, were among the items Zaid claimed he requested in typical freedom of information request he made in June.
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