FC: FBI and DEA monitored Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Beatles

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[This is, unfortunately, not a parody. Real life surpasses The Onion again.
Your tax dollars at work. --DBM]

********

http://www.apbnews.com/media/gfiles/dead/index.html

       FBI and CIA documents obtained
       through the Freedom of Information
       Act (FOIA) indicate the bureau and the
       federal Drug Enforcement
       Administration (DEA) monitored
       performances of groups such as the
       Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.
       APBnews.com has obtained files the
       FBI maintained on both bands. 

       [...]


       When those suspected to be FBI agents appeared at Jefferson
       Airplane gatherings, they would sometimes wind up on an unwitting
       LSD trip after being handed a spiked drink, said Paul Kantner, lead
       singer of Jefferson Airplane. 

       "Our whole generation got away with stuff we really shouldn't have
       gotten away with," Kantner said. "We broke the laws daily." 

       Back then, it wasn't hard to pick out the informers, said Todd
       Gitlin, a professor at New York University and counterculture
       expert. 

       "The FBI guys traditionally wore black shoes and looked like
       G-men from the '50s," said Gitlin. "And the informants were always
       too gung-ho." 

       [...]

       Even the relatively benign Beatles
       received a share of the government's
       attention -- especially John Lennon,
       whom Nixon wanted to deport in 1972.

       [...]

       Another band that caught the government's eye was the Kingsmen,
       the 1960s pop quintet whose hit Louie Louie was suspected of
       being obscene. Hoover's agents spent hours playing the record
       backward and forward, slow and fast, trying to decipher the song's
       garbled lyrics. 

       [...]


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