The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz has sued the FBI to try to get the band’s full FBI file released. The FBI, while full of good men and women, has made some tremendous mistakes going back to the days of J. Edger Hoover.
“During the concert, subliminal messages were depicted on the screen which, in the opinion of [informant’s name redacted], constituted ‘left-wing intervention of a political nature,’” says a portion of the Monkees FBI file that was released.
“These messages and pictures were flashed of riots, in Berkley, anti-U.S. messages on the war in Vietnam, racial riots in Selma, Alabama, and similar messages which had unfavorable response[s] from the audience.”
Now Dolenz wants to see the whole file and hired attorney Mark S. Zaid, an expert in Freedom of Information Act litigation, to get the documents released. Dolenz is the last surviving member of the group.
Zaid said:
“The Monkees reflected, especially in their later years with projects like Head, a counterculture from what institutional authority was at the time.
“And Hoover’s FBI, in the Sixties in particular, was infamous for monitoring the counterculture, whether they committed unlawful actions or not.
“This means that we’re headed into court.
“I tell all my clients, ‘If you are serious about getting your documents, then we need to litigate it.’ What happens from here is that we’ll be assigned a judge within a matter of a couple of days.
“After that, the process will start.
“Theoretically, anything could be in those files though.
“We have no idea what records even exist.
“It could be almost nothing. But we’ll see soon enough.”
“My babysitter, who was about ten years older than me, gave me her collection of Monkees albums in 1975 when I was just a little kid.
“That turned me into a big fan, and I went to see their initial reunion tour in 1986. I’ve seen them about eight times after that, and I even got to meet Davy Jones right before he died,” he said.
BREAKING: The Monkees' Micky Dolenz has sued the FBI in an effort to get the band's full FBI file on the band. https://t.co/otoGHvrHmY
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) August 30, 2022
"It’s not just a fishing expedition," said Dolenz's lawyer Mark Zaid, an expert in Freedom of Information Act litigation. "We’re still fishing, but we know there’s fish in the water."
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— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) August 30, 2022