Baz Luhrmann’s recent Elvis Presley biopic was as mad as a hermit crab with a mortgage out on his backpack home. The Australian director really Luhrmannised the hell out of life and times of the ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, but ironically, the one aspect the film didn’t truly capture was the unhinged heights his personal life hit in his later years when he may well have been Richard Nixon’s inside man on the pop culture scene.
You see, Elvis might have delivered pop culture to the masses, but he thrust it to the fore at such hurtling speeds that it morphed quicker than the chameleonic Gary Oldman. Soon, Elvis seemed dated. The greased-up Lothario simply didn’t identify with new-fangled hippies one iota. While he never descended to cynicism and often shared praise for some of the scene, he was left feeling disenfranchised from culture. However, he never felt disenfranchised from his country—barring the notable exception of when he claims to have had a telepathic encounter with a UFO.
When he had achieved everything that he could in music, his next hope was to become the greatest conspicuous spy in the history of espionage. He hoped to serve his country like a Jailhouse James Bond. So, on December 21st, 1970, he met with Richard Nixon in the White House. A photo of the pair shaking hands horrified many of his fans, but the strange, secret bond they shared proved even more perturbing: they both hated John Lennon with a passion.
Beyond that, we are about to head into conjecture territory, so let’s establish some known facts first. When John Lennon sat on Dick Cavett’s couch in 1972, he made the revelation that left millions awestruck when he claimed that the FBI were spying on him. Silence filled homes across the nation. Most of the masses watching on were struck dumb by the thought that Lennon had finally lost it, he’d stepped one toke over the line, and they were watching the downfall of a deranged man.
Thankfully, a dossier has since been revealed serving proof of the working-class hero’s sanity. Jon Wiener is the person to thank for the documentation eventually coming to light after he waged a 25-year legal battle to win the release of the files. “The ’72 election was going to be the first in which 18-year-olds had the right to vote,” Wiener explained to NPR in 2000 regarding Richard Nixon’s orchestrated attack. “Before that, you had to be 21. Everybody knew that young people were the strongest anti-war constituency, so the question was, for Lennon, how could he use his power as a celebrity to get young people into the political process?”.
Wiener continued, “And also, this is a time when kids are very alienated from, you know, mainstream politics. So to get Lennon out of the country, the strategic countermeasure is to deport Lennon so he won’t be able to take this tour that would register young voters. At the same time, they’re worried that, you know, young voters will vote against Nixon for kicking out, you know, the clever Beatle.” Thus, they quietly hatched a plan to spy on Lennon and throw him out with some drummed-up due cause. Ultimately, Lennon had the financial backing to legally fight his own corner, and the rest is history.
However, an interesting question has since been posed: was Elvis a secret contributor to this reconnaissance document? Well, lodged in the FBI vault, is a 663-page report on “Presley, Elvis A”. Within that, we learn that “he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit.” Furthermore, he was also “of the opinion that the Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music.”
However, he might have been pointing that finger at the ‘Fab Four’ but the FBI were accusing him of the same thing and preventing him from an audience with senior officials. As one passage states: “Presley’s sincerity and good intentions notwithstanding he is certainly not the type of individual whom the Director would wish to meet. It is noted at the present time he is wearing his hair down to his shoulders and indulges in the wearing of all sorts of exotic dress. A photograph of Presley clipped from today’s Washington Post is attached and indicates Presley’s personal appearance and manner of dress.”
While that reportage might throw water on the theory that he was actually enlisted as a spy at some level, the flames of speculation are stoked once more when confirmation that he was indeed granted a Federal Bureau of Narcotics badge came to light. All he had to do in order to acquire this was plead with Nixon. Clearly, his pitch that he was a hippy-hating Kung Fu master succeeded. But was the title purely arbitrary or did he set out to bust Lennon on drug charges?
Well, according to his ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, the only reason he wanted the badge in the first place was far less patriotic (or unhinged) than he led people to believe. She stated that the real reason he wanted one was so “he could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished”. However, those wanting to believe the speculation dismiss that as cynicism beyond the singer’s usual sincere tact and that his public profile paradoxically set him up as the perfect pop culture spy.
After all, he had also once been denounced by the intelligence agencies as a threat himself. As one letter from a former Army Intelligence Service officer to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover stated in 1956: “[he is] a definite danger to the security of the United States.” Continuing: “[His] actions and motions were such as to arouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. One eye-witness described his actions as ‘sexual self-gratification on stage,’ – another as ‘a strip-tease with clothes on’.”
Before troublingly concluding: “It is known by psychologists, psychiatrists, and priests that teenaged girls from the age of eleven,” which strictly doesn’t even make them teenagers, “and boys in their adolescence are easily aroused to sexual indulgence and perversion by certain types of motions and hysteria, – the type that was exhibited at the Presley show. There is also gossip of the Presley Fan Clubs that degenerate into sex orgies. From eye-witness reports about Presley, I would judge that he may possibly be a drug addict and a sexual pervert.”
While that might make for very problematic reading, the fact that Elvis was toured around the FBI headquarters ten days after meeting Nixon in 1970, as an ally figure, shows just how fast the sexual liberation of pop culture unfurled. And when Elvis was there, he shared his belief that “the Smothers Brothers, Jane Fonda, and other persons in the entertainment industry of their ilk had poisoned young minds by disparaging the United States in their public statements and unsavoury activities.”
How did he find himself there offering this info? Well, it is possible that a letter he presented to Nixon had the President at least wondering whether he could be an asset. That letter reads: “First, I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I have no concern or motives other than helping the country out.”
He continues: “So I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large and I will help out by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and foremost, I am an entertainer, but all I need is the Federal credentials.”
Later citing: “Sir, I am staying at the Washington Hotel, Room 505-506-507. I have two men who work with me by the name of Jerry Schilling and Sonny West. I am registered under the name of Jon Burrows. I will be here for as long as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent. I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good.”
In truth, he really had been in the middle of the whole thing. In fact, he had, excuse the French, spawned the whole f—king thing! But now he was well and truly on the outside. Thus, while the FBI and Nixon might have entertained him, there is no evidence that he actually was enlisted for any real intelligence work. By that stage, in order to get the dirt on the counterculture scene, the FBI truly had agents at the heart of it like the laughably named David ‘The Acid King’ Sniderman (no relation to Alana ‘The Coke Fiend’ Snitchwoman or even Grace ‘The Acid Queen’ Slick).
As it turns out, Sniderman wasn’t quite as hip as he first seemed. He had ensnared the Rolling Stones and the likes with his substances but little did they know, he was not, in fact, the most openly named drug dealer of all time, but rather a wily Canadian actor. He was informing on the addled minds of the pop culture stars he hung about with. Thus, in truth, a figure as bombastic as Elvis couldn’t really give authorities anything that the sinister folks twisting the morals of the movement with suspect substances from within couldn’t already. Albeit at least Elvis knew Kung Fu if it ever was to kick off down in the seedy circles of Jailhouse-bound rock.
