Micky Dolenz, drummer and lead singer of the band The Monkees, filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice on Tuesday (8/30) to obtain the secret files the FBI compiled about the band while protesting the Vietnam War over the years. ’60.
The lawsuit was filed in the Washington federal court after several failed attempts to obtain the documents through the Freedom of Information Act. as on their individual members, “states the cause.
The FBI website confirms that the band is the subject of two files, one of which has been “omitted entirely”. The other file is a memo from the Los Angeles Field Office, dated 1967 and published in 2011 with several information omitted.
Filed under the misspelled name of “The Monkeys”, the document confirmed the investigation into “four young men who dress up as ‘beatnik guys'” and “sing together.” At the time, an FBI informant claimed that the band’s performances contained “subliminal messages” intended to cause “leftist political intervention.”
The band’s performances were accompanied by images displayed on a large screen. And, according to the censored documents, the images shown there contained “anti-American messages about the Vietnam War”, as well as showing the conflicts that took place on American soil, such as the civil rights march that took place in Selma. Alabama.
Dolenz learned of the existence of these documents after his attorney – and fan – Mark Zaid suggested checking if the FBI had any files on him. The document found that “it just strengthened me that there really was something there,” the attorney told Rolling Stone magazine.
However, the lawyer admits that he does not know what he will find in the documents. “We are still fishing, but we know there are fish in the water,” he told her. “Theoretically, anything could be in these files. We have no idea what records there are. It could be next to nothing. But we’ll see soon.”
The lawsuit points out that both Dolenz and his late bandmates – Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones – spent time with other musicians under investigation by the FBI, such as Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. As the attorney points out, the FBI “was famous for monitoring the counterculture, whether or not it committed illegal acts.”
The Monkees have expressed their feelings for the war in some of their songs, such as “Last Train to Clarksville”, about a young man recruited to fight in Vietnam. In the text, the guy who was saying goodbye when he took the last train said he didn’t know if he would be able to go home. He remembers the song below.
Source: Terra
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
