Question: Who instigated the FBI Lennon investigation?
Answer: In February, 1972, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina sent a memo to the Nixon White House, suggesting that deporting John Lennon might be "a strategic counter-measure” against his increasing political activism. That same month, CIA director Richard Helms sent a memo to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover about Lennon's upcoming "anti-war" tour. A source also erronously reported in April that Lennon had donated $75,000 to an organization called the Election Year Strategy Information Center, which was supposedly dedicated to disrupting the upcoming 1972 Republican National Convention. (The 1968 Democratic National Convention had ended in a riot, largely due to conflicts over Vietnam protests.)
In July, the FBI's New York office wrote to acting director L. Patrick Gray III about Lennon's illegal drug use, suggesting that Lennon be tailed at the RNC, to be held in Miami in November, and possibly arrested, noting that "if Lennon were to be arrested in United States for possession of narcotics he would become more likely to be immediately deportable."
