Dangerous John Lennon

More than two decades after his death, John Lennon is apparently still a threat to national security-or so the FBI still contends.

Rejecting the US government's assertions of national security, US District Judge Robert Takasugi brought to a close a 23-year battle waged by Jonathan Wiener, a California professor who requested the information for a book he was writing, shortly after Lennon was murdered.

The FBI famously followed the former Beatle in the early 1970s, amassing a thick file on Lennon after he moved to New York with wife Yoko Ono in 1971. Lennon, the most overtly political of the Beatles, protested the Vietnam War, staged bed-ins for peace, recorded the anthemic "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" and publicly supported such counterculture figures as Abbie Hoffman, all while ingesting large quantities of drugs.

Government lawyers are "reviewing the court's ruling," US Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said after Tuesday's ruling. The US government has 60 days to announce whether it will appeal the ruling.