Was John Lennon's murderer Mark Chapman a CIA hitman?...

...Thirty years on, there's an extraordinary new theory

By Tony Rennel, Daily Mail

...He felt betrayed, personally insulted. He stalked and shot his erstwhile hero out of a weird sense of retribution — coupled with a desire to be famous for something.

So the story went. But, with the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s death next week, a theory has resurfaced that challenges this long-held conventional view.

Though seemingly far-fetched, if true it would startle and appal the millions of fans who still idolise Lennon.

In a new book, author Phil Strongman claims that Chapman was a stooge. Lennon’s real assassin was the CIA — at the behest of Right-wing fanatics in the American political establishment.

He gets to this controversial conclusion by contesting many of the so-called ‘facts’ about the case — including the basic assumption that Chapman was a Beatles and Lennon fan.

Strongman writes that, until the weekend before the killing: ‘Chapman, the supposed Lennon “obsessive” and “fan of fans”, did not own one Lennon single, book or album. Not one. Some “fan”, some “obsession”.’

He dismisses the often-made claim that Chapman had 14 hours of tapes of Lennon’s songs in his rucksack on the day of the shooting. ‘They have never been photographed or produced for the simple reason that they do not exist.’

So Chapman wasn’t just a celebrity stalker who went too far. Nor, says Strongman, did he kill Lennon for 15 minutes of fame.

‘If he was an attention-seeker, then why did he turn down the chance of what would have been the trial of the century? By pleading guilty, Chapman missed all of this attention he was supposedly seeking. Why?’

It is the killer’s calmness after the shooting that Strongman sees as the key to what really happened, providing evidence for his theory that Lennon’s death was a state-sponsored conspiracy.

If Chapman looked like a zombie, as he hung around after the killing and waited for the police, it was because that was exactly what he was.

Chapman, he suggests, had been recruited by the CIA and trained by them during his travels round the world, when he mysteriously pitched up in unlikely places for a boy from Georgia.

How strange, for example, that Chapman should visit Beirut at a time when the Lebanese capital was a hive of CIA activity — and was said to be home to one of the agency’s top-secret assassination training camps. Another camp
was supposedly in Hawaii, where Chapman lived for a number of years.

And who funded the penniless young man’s round-the-world trip in 1975, which took in Japan, the UK, India, Nepal, Korea, Vietnam and China?

Money never seemed to be a problem for Chapman, but no one has ever explained where it came from. The distinct possibility remains, in Strongman’s opinion, that the secret service was his paymaster...

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