elementropy: And in This Corner, Representing the Police State

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

And in This Corner, Representing the Police State

Moar Liddy from The U.S. vs. John Lennon

He repeats the story he told in Will about grabbing a candle-holding protester in front of the Treasury building and getting a light from him -- but he cleans up the language and tone considerably.

Regarding Kent State:

Ok, you had 18-year-old college kids, without the sense God gave a goose, going around challenging 18-year-old kids with 30.06 semi-automatic rifles. Yes, they were in uniform, but they were National Guard, very little training. They felt threatened, they were armed, what did you think was gonna happen?

On J. Edgar Hoover, in tones of admiration (Liddy was an agent before he was a Nixon goon):

Back in those days the FBI would operate affirmatively, in other words, would not just gather intelligence, but it perceived as its mission the disruption of the other side.

On John Lennon being a Weapon of Mass Destruction in the hands of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin:

The knife lying on a table is not a threat to any body. It requires human responsible agency to take the knife and use it to cut somebody's throat. [John Lennon] would be looked upon as a tool; in this instance, he was being manipulated in a way that harmed the efforts of the United States to win the war in Vietnam and to have order and stability here at home.

It was our impression of Lennon that, most of the time, he was walking around stoned out of his mind. But he was a high-profile figure, so his activities were being monitored.

U.S.A., love it or leave it:

It wasn't so much that Lennon was being critical of U.S. policy; it was that he was over here, and enjoying all the benefits and the success that we were giving him, the wealth, and all the rest of it, and bad-mouthing us here. Our attitude was: You wanna do that, go back to London, go back to Liverpool.