Micky Dolenz, the last surviving member of the 1960s band The Monkees, has filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department to release information the FBI gathered on the group, according to Rolling Stone.
While the agency released a heavily redacted investigative file on the group about a decade ago, Dolenz said he wants to know more about the information the Justice Department withheld.
“If the documents still exist, I fully expect that we will learn more about what prompted the FBI to target the Monkees or those around them,” attorney Mark Zaid, who is representing Dolenz, told The Washington Post.
Dolenz, 77, filed the lawsuit Tuesday.
In the redacted file, an agent reported seeing “subliminal messages” on a screen at one of their concerts, depicting racial-equality protests and “anti-U.S. messages on the war in Vietnam.”
In a 2016 interview, Dolenz told the Rolling Stone that the band’s 1966 hit “Last Train to Clarksville” was an antiwar song about a man going to an Army base and not knowing when he’d return to his girlfriend.
The four members of the band came together in 1966 as the stars of a sitcom, rather than a rock band. The show ran for two seasons. However, the group put out several songs that became hits.
Dolenz filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents with the FBI in June, according to Rolling Stone. He asked the FBI to review any redacted material and provide other possible files relating to the band and its members, according to the lawsuit.
Barring “unusual circumstances,” the government has 20 business days to respond to FOIA requests. According to the suit, Dolenz has so far only received acknowledgments of his requests.
“Any window into what the FBI was up to can lead to the opening of another window,” Zaid said. “That’s the beauty of gaining access to these types of files — because there are little nuggets and pieces within them that can lead to a bigger picture in understanding what was going on within the FBI at the time.”
The other members of the band, which broke up in 1970, were Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork.
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