he Story of the Man Who Saved John Lennon & Yoko Ono from Being Deported
The 1976 Robert Redford-Dustin Hoffman film All the President''s Men about the Watergate break-in gave movie viewers an idea of the chilling atmosphere during the years of the Nixon Administration when political opponents were followed by FBI agents and wiretapping of telephones was a regular occurrence.
But it became a real-life drama for John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who became a Nixon Administration target during the era. In early 1972, they hired immigration lawyer Leon Wildes because the government was trying to deport them. The case is fully detailed in Wildes' new book, John Lennon vs. The USA: The Inside Story of the Most Bitterly Contested and Influential Deportation Case in United States History (Ankerwyke Publishing, Aug. 7), with a foreward by his son, Michael, who now manages the firm. It's a book that both Lennon and Ono had asked him to write.
Wildes said that at the time of his introduction to Lennon and Ono that he had no idea who they were. “I had never heard of John Lennon, much less Yoko Ono,” he writes. “While I was vaguely aware of the Beatles, I certainly couldn't name any band members.” His son, Michael, confirmed his dad's pop culture blind spot, saying in a telephone interview this week from New York with both himself and his father, “When Dad met John, he had no idea who he was.”
The case began as a simple legal procedure aimed at allowing the Lennons to keep trying to get custody of Yoko's daughter, Kyoko, who then lived with her father, Tony Cox. “In the beginning of the case, we had no intention to apply for residence,” Leon Wildes said. “So all I was retained to do was to get an extension of six months so that John and Yoko could continue their custody proceedings with respect to Yoko's eight-year old child. So I was confident that I could get that.”
By: Steve Marinucci
Source: Billboard
