In Praise of Indecency

MEET AN FBI PORN SQUAD AGENT

In October 2006, a historic event occurred in the world of porn. Seven FBI agents sat down to engage in a dialogue with a group of “adult businesspersons,” as Mark Kernes wrote in AVN. The purpose of this meeting at FBI headquarters was to discuss plans to implement federal regulation 2257, which requires producers to obtain two forms of government-issued identification from performers, keep them on file indefinitely, and refer to those records on the labels of all videos and DVDs. How mundane.

One of the attorneys who was present—Jeffrey Douglas, chairman of the Free Speech Coalition—says that complying with the rules has buried porn producers in paperwork. One of his clients employs a staff of eight who work full-time to maintain and organize the required records. “If you were so incredibly crazy to film a minor,” he observes, “you surely would not get a copy of their junior high school ID.” He points out that although the FBI said its “primary concern” is underage performers, it inspects all the records for the video features on its list, creating a report that it forwards to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Another attorney, Paul Cambria, recalls, “They said they created a database of producers, they fed it into a computer, and the computer spit out, randomly, companies to be inspected. The FBI agents then review that company’s product. They then select certain individual actors and actresses, then go to a [place of business] with the list, and look for the required records as to those people.” Cambria asked the assistant director of the criminal investigation division, James “Chip” Burrus, “whether it was based on any particular content, and he said no. So I said, ‘There are certain movies, for example, that are of a sort of geriatric genre; why would you waste your time?’ And he said, ‘No, we include those because we want to keep it all random at this point.’”

In AVN, Kernes wrote that “Any violation of the 2257 regulations may result in federal charges being brought, with penalties including fines and years in jail for each violation.... So while the FBI’s function is merely to inspect the 2257 records to ascertain whether they are complete and accurate, the report the bureau files with the Justice Department could easily form the basis for decisions as to which companies the DOJ may choose to prosecute for obscenity, knowing that a bona fide 2257 violation by a company would be an incentive for that company to cop a plea.”

Three months later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI has stepped up raids on porn studios, “saying it wants to ensure that children are not being sexually exploited. About a dozen pom production facilities... have been taken by surprise in the last three months by a barrage of federal agents at their doors.... The Justice Department has prosecuted only one company to date under the new law... the founder of the Girls Gone Wild video empire, Joe Francis.”

One of the raided companies, K-Beech, Inc.—comprised of fifteen studio lines that feature titles in a variety of niches, including straight, gay, amateur, transexual and gonzo—takes the storyline out of adult movies and heads right for the sex scenes. Early one morning, the agents demanded to see the offical IDs certifying that performers in ten sexually explicit films dating back to 1995 were not minors. They weren’t.

Owner Kevin Beechum asks, “Why would I jeopardize $10-million a year to shoot an underage girl? We’re not stupid.” Historian Athan Theoharis states that “The FBI has limited what they investigate since 9/11, so moving into this area does raise the question of resources. Is this at the expense of investigating the Enrons or the WorldComs that have far more effect on the lives of American citizens?” In that same vein, a letter to the Times asks, “If the FBI can send agents out to porn studios to check employee records, then it’s now clear that all terrorists, bank robbers, kidnappers and miscellaneous fugitives have all been caught and locked up. Haven’t they?” In another letter, Georgina Spelvin, who starred in the 1973 classic porn flick, The Devil in Miss Jones, writes, “My heart goes out to the poor FBI agents required to spend hours viewing porn, ‘culling material in search of performers with a suspiciously youthful glow.’ What a bum assignment.”

And so the FBI has become part of the Bush administration’s War on Porn. When the Bureau’s Washington Field Office began recruiting for their fledgling obscenity squad, ten agents were selected. What follows is my apocryphal interview with one of them, who of course prefers to remain anonymous.

Q. Why do you think that this undertaking was described in a memo to all 56 FBI field offices as “one of the top priorities” of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller?

A. I think they figure that pornography is an easy target. It’s what Congress asked for, and funded. Nobody wants to come out for porn. They’re all sucking up to the religious right. Plus they’re control freaks themselves. And this operation misdirects attention away from the results of their own insidiousness and incompetence. To tell you the truth, the guys I had worked with, they all thought it was just a big joke.

This was in an FBI field office where there are really important projects—involving national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption—but I was feeling burnt out. I needed something less stressful. So I applied for the “Hard-On Hunters,” which is how my old buddies refer to it. They still razz the hell out of me. One guy says, “Hey, I thought there was supposed to be a war on terror going on.” Then another guy says, “Yeah, and I thought it was supposed to be urgent that we develop better resources for espionage.” And the first guy says, “I guess we must have been wrong.”

Q. So what exactly is it that you do in your new mission?

A. Well, we have to gather evidence against the manufacturers and purveyors of pornography. And it’s not even the kind that exploits children—I mean, I’m totally against kiddie porn—but this is about the kind of material that’s marketed to consenting adults. I never liked pornography myself—they used to show it at my college fraternity—but when I first joined the FBI, I swore to uphold the Constitution, not to trample on the Bill of Rights.

In fact, the communiqué we got from the Justice Department even admitted that federal obscenity prosecutions encounter many legal issues, including claims of 1st Amendment rights, so we applicants had to be prepared for the kind of material that tends to be most effective with local juries, because it’s been shown that the best odds of conviction are in pornography cases that involve bestiality, urination, defecation, sadism and masochism. But it’s a living.

Q. How have you gone about doing your job?

A. I started out with bestiality fetishes as my specialty. In the course of my research, I checked out websites with beautiful women actually having sex with all kinds of animals.

Q. So tell me, did you get aroused?

A. Actually, yes, I did, but I was aroused only by the women, not by any of the animals. Later on, though, I was investigating a whole variety of kinky sites—from female ejaculators who are squirtaholics to tobacco addicts who smoke before, during and after sex—and then I found one that was devoted entirely to women who wear eyeglasses and the men who love to come on them, that is, on the glasses, while they’re being worn, and somehow that really turns me on.

I’ve become obsessed with it. I’m seeing a psychiatrist twice a week now. She practices hypnotic age regression, and she took me all the way back to when I was being breast-fed, and my mother wore glasses, and that became associated with sensuality. And now that I understand the cause of my fixation, I can begin to wean myself from it.

Q. What’s next for you, then ?

A. Well, I’ve learned that digitalized pornography on cell phones is a huge business overseas, and it’s coming to America. Cingular Wireless, the country’s largest cell phone service, has quietly launched filtering devices and password-enable blockers that will help thwart underage consumers from buying adult content. But what we’re more concerned about is a new trend where adult film stars make groaning and moaning noises for cell phone ring tones. It feels like the whole world is getting completely out of control—our control.