What follows is my upcoming column in AVN [Adult Video News] Online, trade journal for the multi-billion-dollar Internet porn industry.
Recently, the FBI became part of the Bush adminstration's War on Porn, and the Bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for their fledgling obscenity squad. Ten agents were selected. What follows is my 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. 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 a 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 communique we got from the Justice Department even admitted that federal obscenity prosecutions encounter many legal issues, including claims of First Amendment rights, so 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 Web sites with beautiful women fondling and fucking and sucking horses, snakes, cows, dogs, monkeys, sheep, donkeys, goats, pigs, and occasionally necking with a giraffe or humping a camel. Unlike regular commercial movies that are shown in theaters, online pornography doesn't include any disclaimers, such as "No animals were harmed during the making of this film." There are no overseers from the American Humane Society. Nor are there any complaints from People For the Ethical Treatment 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, when 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.