Last Surviving Monkees Member Sues to Get Band's FBI Records

Micky Dolenz, the last surviving member of The Monkees, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday to "obtain any records the FBI created and/or possesses" on the band, and on its individual members, TMZ has reported.

Dolenz, who is 77, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI in June, but has not received any material and wants a judge to force the bureau to hand over all of its records on the band.

About a decade ago it was revealed that the FBI was following The Monkees when they went on tour in 1967. The FBI was on the lookout for "subliminal messages" on the screen behind the band, including images of the Vietnam war, riots on the Berkley campus and in Selma, Alabama, and other "left wing intervention of a political nature," according to TMZ

In 2011 a, a seven-page portion of the band's FBI file was released to the public, but Dolenz want to see the rest of it, Rolling Stone reported.

The suit was filed on Dolenz's behalf by lawyer Mark Zaid, who is an expert in Freedom of Information Act litigation and was a key part of the team that represented the government whistleblower in the 2019 Donald Trump/Ukraine investigation.

Zaid explained that "The Monkees reflected, especially in their later years … a counterculture from what institutional authority was at the time. And [J. Edgar] Hoover's FBI, in the Sixties in particular, was infamous for monitoring the counterculture, whether they committed unlawful actions or not."

Zaid talked about his infatuation with the band, saying that "my babysitter, who was about 10 years older than me, gave me her collection of Monkees albums in 1975 when I was just a little kid.

"That turned me into a big fan."

Zaid said he met Dolenz through mutual friends not long ago, and suggested to him it might be fun to see the file the FBI had on him or his former bandmates.

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