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Mr. Lennon had publicly opposed the Vietnam War \u2014 he recorded the antiwar anthem \u201cGive Peace a Chance\u201d in 1969 \u2014 and he had been involved in protests on behalf of figures in the New Left movement, which campaigned against the war.<\/p>\n
Nixon administration officials feared that he had outsize influence among the young, who would be allowed to vote in greater numbers in the 1972 presidential election, the first after the voting age had been lowered to 18 from 21. In the paranoid atmosphere then prevailing in the White House, that was enough for administration officials and their allies, notably the conservative South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, to go after Mr. Lennon.<\/p>\n
Their case centered on the London marijuana conviction. But the appellate court judge, Irving Kaufman, ultimately ruled that the crime was insufficient to make Mr. Lennon an \u201cexcludable alien.\u201d<\/p>\n
The real reasons for the quixotic pursuit of Mr. Lennon, Mr. Wildes argued, lay elsewhere, as he was able to show thanks to his relentless digging through records. Early in 1972, Mr. Thurmond had drafted a letter recommending that Mr. Lennon be thrown out of the country, which Attorney General John N. Mitchell forwarded to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency then in charge of visas. Of particular concern was the fact that Mr. Lennon had performed at a rally in support of a New Left figure, the poet John Sinclair, who had been jailed on a marijuana charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Lennon\u2019s visa is terminated it would be a strategic countermeasure,\u201d the South Carolina senator wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ten days later, \u201ca telegram went out to all immigration offices in the United States instructing that the Lennons should not be given any extensions of their time to visit the United States,\u201d Mr. Wildes wrote in his book.<\/p>\n
For the next three years, the government continued to press its case, in efforts that appeared increasingly ham-fisted as public support for Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono grew. In letters and testimony, many of the era\u2019s cultural celebrities spoke up for them, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Leonard Bernstein, the artist Jasper Johns and the authors John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Joseph Heller, as well as Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sole reason for deporting the Lennons was President Nixon\u2019s desire to remove John and Yoko from the country before the 1972 election and a new, much younger electorate getting the vote,\u201d Mr. Wildes wrote. \u201cTo ensure his grip on power, any \u2018dirty tricks,\u2019 including the abusive misuse of the immigration process, were acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The whole time, the F.B.I. was keeping a close watch on Mr. Lennon. \u201cSurveillance reports on him ran to literally hundreds of pages,\u201d Mr. Wildes wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When Mr. Lennon learned of the skulduggery, he was infuriated. \u201cThey\u2019re even changing their own rules because we\u2019re peaceniks,\u201d he said in a television interview.<\/p>\n
The 1975 ruling allowed him to remain in the country. He was killed in front of the Dakota, the Upper West Side building where he and Ms. Yoko lived, five years later.<\/p>\n
In another breakthrough, Mr. Wildes found that immigration officials had the discretion to deport or not, depending on whether there were extenuating circumstances. The revelation of this policy continues to aid immigration lawyers battling the deportation of noncitizens today.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of his legal strategy, Wildes conducted groundbreaking research on the \u2018nonpriority\u2019 program, and eventually filed an application for \u2018nonpriority status\u2019 for Lennon,\u201d the immigration expert Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia wrote in her 2015 book, \u201cBeyond Deportation.\u201d \u201cWildes learned that I.N.S. had for many years been granting \u2018nonpriority\u2019 status to prevent the deportation of noncitizens with sympathetic cases, but I.N.S. had never publicized the practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout what Mr. Wildes acknowledged was the all-consuming job of representing the Lennons, he kept a bemused and friendly eye on his famous clients, sometimes encountering them, as others did, in what he called the \u201cwonderful upright bed\u201d in their Bank Street apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cOne could meet half the world around that bed,\u201d he wrote \u2014 \u201cradical types like Jerry Rubin or Bobby Seale, oddball musicians like David Peel, poets like Allen Ginsberg, actors like Peter Boyle, television personalities like Geraldo Rivera, or even political operatives like the deputy mayor of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n