The U.S. vs. John Lennon

The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld — a close look at the years when the FBI opened a file on John Lennon and the Nixon White House pushed to have him thrown out of the country.

After The Beatles broke up, Lennon settled in New York and threw himself into the antiwar movement: Bed-ins with Yoko Ono, benefit concerts for political prisoners, marches against the Vietnam war. The Nixon administration grew alarmed — not by anything illegal, but by the prospect of a musician who could fill stadiums with young voters in an election year. G. Gordon Liddy appears in the film alongside Yoko Ono, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Carl Bernstein, and Ron Kovic, giving the story voices from both sides of the confrontation.

Leaf and Scheinfeld resist the temptation to smooth Lennon into a flawless martyr — the contradictions stay in. What they document clearly is that the deportation effort was about silencing dissent, not enforcing immigration law. The film's tagline says it plainly: "Musician. Humanitarian. National Threat." Stream The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006) online on iFILM.