Micky Dolenz, Last Surviving Monkee, Sues To See Unredacted FBI Files On Band

The last surviving member of the Monkees is hoping to get to the bottom of what FBI files say about the 1960s pop group.

On Monday, drummer and singer Micky Dolenz filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking full access to the bureau’s documents on the band, according to Law&Crime .

The agency posted a redacted version of documents  on the group in 2011, under the title “Additional Activities Denouncing the U.S. Policy in the War in Vietnam.”

Part of the text that is publicly visible features comments by an FBI informant who attended a 1967 concert and described “subliminal messages” on a screen behind the band that “constituted ‘left wing innovations of a political nature.’”

During the show, the screen showed messages and images related to the Vietnam War and civil unrest, according to the informant.

Another file is completely redacted, according to the New York Post.

The 77-year-old Dolenz had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in June but sued the FBI after failing to get a timely response, according to Billboard.

“This lawsuit is designed to obtain any records the FBI created and/or possesses on the Monkees as well as its individual members,” the suit read.

“Mr. Dolenz has exhausted all necessary required administrative remedies with respect to his FOIA/PA request,” it added, referring to both the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer who filed the lawsuit on Dolenz’s behalf, told Law&Crime that most people “might not think” that the litigation “would reveal what our government was up to,” but he said it shows that the FBI “was actively monitoring war dissenters, perceived radicals and anyone counter to [former bureau director] J. Edgar Hoover’s cultural beliefs, and that included the Monkees!”

The lawsuit also mentions that the FBI kept files on other rock icons like Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon.

Dolenz had been unaware of the redacted documents until Zaid suggested that they research whether the FBI kept a file on his band, the lawyer told Rolling Stone.

Those redacted documents “just kind of reinforced for me that there was actually something here,” Zaid said. “We’re still fishing, but we know there’s fish in the water.”

He added: “Theoretically, anything could be in those files. ... It could be almost nothing. But we’ll see soon enough.”

The FBI has not responded to numerous media inquiries about the documents, possibly because agents are jamming out to Monkees hits like “I’m a Believer,” which you can listen to below.