FBI reluctance stalls Bush anti-pornography push

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, twice elected with solid backing of conservative Christians, promised to curb adult pornography in the United States.

But the administration has had little effect on the $13 billion industry, anti-porn activists say, largely because the FBI has focused investigations on small operations producing extreme forms of smut instead of on the bigger companies.

Adult-obscenity investigations have taken a back seat to more pressing issues such as terrorism, even though former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales named obscenity as a top priority, two FBI officials said.

Internal FBI guidelines also encourage agents to focus on the most egregious violations -- material that depicts rape, defecation or sex with animals.

Pornography producers "know that they don't have to worry about being prosecuted because it's only the small companies that are producing that kind of material," said Patrick Trueman, who headed the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section between 1988 and 1993.

Even though the prosecution of child pornography has greatly increased, porn-industry insiders agree that adult business has not been dented, despite repeated promises by Bush and his attorneys general to be more aggressive.

"I and most of my colleagues view these kinds of cases as being pretty much an anomaly," said lawyer Jeffrey Douglas, who is defending porn producer Max Hardcore on obscenity charges. Hardcore's films show rough sex and abusive treatment of women.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said the department does not have guidelines that spell out what sexually explicit material crosses the line into obscenity. "It's basically prosecutorial discretion," he said.

DIFFICULT TO DEFINE

Obscenity has been notoriously difficult to define in a legal context -- "I know it when I see it," Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in 1964.

Under a test established by the court in 1973, the material in question must depict sex in a manner that offends contemporary community standards and is devoid of artistic or scientific value to be found obscene.

That has given law enforcers enormous discretion.

Under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, prosecutors like Trueman targeted a cross-section of the industry in sting operations that drove several of the largest porn distributors in the country out of business.

Under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the Justice Department pursued few, if any, adult-obscenity cases.

The current Republican president promised to crack down on porn during the 2000 election campaign, and appointed religious conservative John Ashcroft as his first attorney general.