Jon Wiener

Who is Jon Wiener?

Jon Wiener is an American historian and journalist based in Los Angeles. He is notable for waging a successful 25-year legal battle to win the release of the FBI's files on John Lennon. Wiener played a key role in efforts to expose the surveillance as well as the behind-the-scenes battling between the government and the former Beatle, and is a recognized expert on the FBI-versus-Lennon controversy. A professor of United States history at the University of California, Irvine, he is also a contributing editor to the left-leaning political weekly magazine The Nation and host of a weekly radio program in Los Angeles. In addition to being an advocate for liberal causes and transparency in government, he wrote two books about Lennon, and has described Lennon's song "Imagine" as being a "hymn to idealism" with relevance today. He has been criticized by reporters for having a left-oriented bias in his books, sometimes leading to a revisionism regarding Lennon's political orientation. Wiener interviewed Gore Vidal many times, and recently published a book of interviews with the late celebrity which spanned many years.