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Micky Dolenz of The Monkees has had enough.
The singer and actor have filed a lawsuit against the FBI to get the agency to release the band’s full FBI file.
“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.
Dolenz is quoted in the lawsuit as saying, “I just want to know what they were investigating and why. We were never accused of anything.”
While full of good men and women, the FBI has made some tremendous mistakes going back to the days of J. Edger Hoover.
According to the lawsuit, the FBI has been sending Dolenz “threatening and harassing” letters, as well as calling him on the phone and showing up at his home.
Dolenz says that the harassment began in the early 1970s when The Monkees were at the height of their popularity. He claims that the FBI targeted the band because of their anti-war stance and support for the civil rights movement.
The lawsuit claims that the FBI’s harassment has continued even after The Monkees disbanded and that Dolenz has been living in fear for his safety.
Dolenz is seeking unspecified damages from the FBI.
This is not the first time that The government has targeted the Monkees. In 1967, the band was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for their supposed “subversive” activities.
The Monkees were cleared of any wrongdoing, but the investigation put a strain on the band, and they eventually disbanded in 1971.
Despite the FBI’s harassment, The Monkees have remained popular and have even reunited several times over the years.
Dolenz is the latest in a long line of celebrities who have spoken out against the FBI’s harassment. In recent years, stars such as Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen have also sued the agency.
Dolenz’s attorney: “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.”
We hope that Micky Dolenz gets the answers he is looking for.
