John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial: Short in a Variety of Ways, But Still Worthwile

Today is the 43rd anniversary of John Lennon's assassination.  The older I get, the more clear I am that Lennon's murder, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, are the two most deforming events of the history that has taken place in my life.  And of the two, Lennon's was the worst, since he was one of the most wondrous singer-songwriters who ever lived, which I think is more rare that even a great President.

Given all of that, how I could I not watch this short documentary that went up two days ago on Apple TV+.   Short -- three episodes, that added up to less than three hours.  I would have much rather spent that time re-watching any part of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back.  But I felt I had no choice.

Was it worth it?  Well, here are the highlights of what most struck me about this documentary:

1. MKUltra, the CIA operation 1953-1973 that drugged, hypnotized, and otherwise abused subjects without their knowledge to do its bidding, may have played a role in Lennon's assassination.  More specifically, it's implied/suggested that  John Lennon's assassin may have been hypnotized and more by the CIA.  This is the second time MK-Ultra has come up in documentaries I've watched/listened to in the past few weeks.  The excellent Who Killed JFK? podcast with Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien is exploring the role that MK-Ultra may have had in that assassination.  And unlike John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, the JFK podcast goes beyond mere suggestions and offers some evidence.

2.  The assassin of John Lennon said he killed him to get more people to read The Catcher in the Rye.  The documentary tells us the shooter who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan under four months later had a copy of that very novel in his hotel room.  But the documentary gives that no further consideration. Was the novel figuring in the life of one assassin and the life of a would-be assassin just a coincidence?  I'd say, probably not.  So does that novel have some kind of monstrous effect on vulnerable minds, on the psyches of people who are mentally ill?  I'd say, also probably not.  The most the likely explanation for Catcher in the Rye being in the lives of the two shooters is that the second was sickly inspired by the first.  But that's just logical -- the documentary provides no evidence of that.

3. If you're interested in alternate history -- which I very much am -- Lennon's record producer, Jack Douglas, provides an exquisitely heartbreaking example.  He tells us that he'd usually go back with John and Yoko from the recording studio to the Dakota, I guess to talk over what they'd done that night, or were planning to do the next night, or whatever.  On that night, the night that Lennon was murdered, Douglas did not go back to the Dakota. He's sure that if he'd seen the assassin lurking, Douglas would have done something, "tackle" that "nutcase," anything, to prevent the beyond obscenity that occurred.  A day hasn't gone by since then that Douglas hasn't raked himself over the coals for not being in the limo that night with John and Yoko.

4. Yoko Ono correctly points out that John likely wouldn't have been killed by an assailant with just a knife, and says point blank that John's death was due to a lack of gun control in the United States.  The insane, mounting number of shootings in the United States with every passing year couldn't make Yoko's message any more timely.  Just yesterday, three people were shot to death at a university in Las Vegas.  These shootings which seem to be happening now almost weekly or more often are the fault not only of the person who pulled the trigger but every US Senator and Representative who has steadfastly stopped sensible gun control, over and over again.

Indeed, though Kiefer Sutherland's voice as narrator was very effective as it always is, and  the lawyers and the police and the other people who played a role in the aftermath of John Lennon's assassination were interesting and sometimes crucial to see and hear from, the five or so minutes that Yoko was on the screen is what most made John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial worth watching.  Most of that comes near the end.  Will that make it worthwhile viewing for you?   I guess that depends, more than anything, on how much tolerance you have for another dose of horror and grim understanding that cuts through your soul.

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Here's an alternate history story about The Beatles that might make you feel a little better.

Who Killed JFK? Episode 4: The Real Manchurian Candidate

Episode 4 of Who Killed JFK, the podcast with Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien, was just put up today.  It's all about Lee Harvey Oswald, prior to his day in the Texas Book Depository, or wherever he was on that day in 1963 when JFK was assassinated.  It tells us of his conditioning or brainwashing by the CIA, resulting in his false defection to the Soviet Union.  A lot of this reminded me of The Manchurian Candidate.

In case you haven't seen it, I highly recommend this 1962 movie, based on 1959 novel by Richard Condon of the same name.  In the movie, Lawrence Harvey (Oswald's middle name, an awful coincidence?) plays a Korean War veteran who comes home to America, brainwashed by the North Koreans. He's now an assassin, programmed to kill -- in this case a nominee for U. S. President -- with no conscious knowledge of what he's doing.  (Yes, this is similar to Homeland, which clearly was inspired by The Manchurian Candidate.)

Episode 4 of Who Killed JFK presents a variety of evidence that Oswald was "brainwashed" by the CIA in the late 1950s.  Whatever happened to Oswald, the CIA's infamous MK-Ultra program -- which used LSD, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other nefarious methods to program its subjects to do whatever the CIA wanted -- is established fact.  (Candy Jones, one-time model and later co-host with her husband, Long John Nebel, of their widely popular late-night radio talk show, claimed to have been given the MK-Ultra treatment in the 1950s.) Episode 4 of Who Killed JFK presents the case that Oswald was put through the program and sent to the Soviet Union as a double agent.  The title of the episode, "The Patsy," comes from what Oswald himself said when he was between the time JFK was killed and Jack Ruby in turn killed Oswald.  The next episode will present the further case that Oswald, still under the influence of MK-Ultra program, was set up to take the sole rap for killing JFK.

So here's where we stand at the end of 4th episode:  The CIA has it in for JFK.  They pressured doctors to change their reports in order to support the preposterous single-bullet theory.  And they programmed Lee Harvey Oswald to do their bidding -- at this point, to pretend to defect to the Soviet Union.

I'm looking forward to learning all about the continuation of Oswald's trajectory in the fifth and subsequent episodes of Who Killed JFK?  I do have one question at this point.  What was the reaction in the Soviet Union of Oswald being named the sole killer of JFK?  In Episode 4, we're told that maybe, likely, the Soviets were suspicious of Oswald's defection, and likely were playing their own game with Oswald, seeking to use him for their own ends.  I hope Who Killed JFK -- which has become must listen-to audio for me -- tells us a little more about what Reiner at al may have learned of what the Soviets thought of Oswald being labeled as the sole assassin of JFK.  Given what we found out in previous episodes about JFK and Khrushchev drawing closer after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, driven by their mutual desire to make sure that the U.S and the USSR never came so close to the precipice of nuclear Armageddon again, it makes sense that the Soviets would have been very interested in who really killed JFK, even after Khrushchev was put out of power.

See also Who Killed JFK?  A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast