The New Yorker, April 20, 1998, quotes Sean Lennon on the circumstances surrounding his father's death:

He was a countercultural revolutionary, and the government takes that kind of s*** really seriously historically. He was dangerous to the government. If he had said, "Bomb the White House tomorrow," there would have been ten thousand people who would have done it. These pacifist revolutionaries are historically killed by the government, and anyone who thinks that Mark Chapman was just some crazy guy who killed my dad for his personal interests is insane, I think, or very naïve, or hasn't thought about it clearly. It was in the best interests of the United States to have my dad killed, definitely. And, you know, that worked against them, to be honest, because once he died his powers grew. So, I mean, f*** them. They didn't get what they wanted.

[Ed.: In a parallel too striking to be dismissed as mere coincidence, a similarly skeptical Dexter King, son of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., publicly stated his belief that James Earl Ray was not responsible for his father's assassination, either. Instead, Mr. King blames a conspiracy that includes Army intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, and the indispensable Lyndon Baines Johnson. Ray also alluded to a mysterious South American mastermind named "Raul," whom Ray indentified in a photograph but who turned out to be a New Yorker who had never been to Memphis, where King was murdered.]

†