THE MEESE POLICE ON PORN PATROL

Johansen, Bruce E.

THE Meese Police ON Porn Patrol BY BRUCE E. JOHANSEN On June 11, 1987, about fifty gun-wielding Federal agents and police officers burst into the North Omaha home of seventy-six-year-old John...

...The costs of these raids and indictments is enormous...
...California and some other states keep such lists and distribute them to law-enforcement agencies...
...Some agents conduct "surveys" asking about sexual preferences and habits, promising to arrange computer dates...
...Once victims have been recruited, indicted, and convicted for buying the Government-issued pornography, they are added to the statistical body count that justifies continuation of the program...
...They ransacked my wife's things...
...McGlynn speaks of the cost in tax money—and the cost to those caught in the operation, many of whom have lost their jobs, homes, and savings, as well as friends and family...
...It was all in a day's work at the hysteria factory...
...And they seized his file of personal correspondence...
...Already, four of those indicted have committed suicide, including one man whose family McGlynn has gotten to know...
...It's most Orwellian: The Government creates the crime and then takes' credit for catching the "criminals...
...Mc-Glynn, who has never been charged with or convicted of child abuse, thinks it's a bit of 1984 in 1988...
...They acted like the Gestapo," says McGlynn...
...The only solicitations to buy such things these days are Government-issued, and the addresses and telephone numbers listed as contacts usually lead to Federal agents or local police under cover...
...Once the fish decides to bite, the Feds follow his order through the postal system and post an inspector to witness delivery...
...Hundreds of law-enforcement officers, customs agents, and postal inspectors throughout the United States," according to Stanley, "devote their time to ferreting out child pornography and prosecuting defendants by creating phony businesses, newsletters, and personae for purchasing, selling, and exchanging child pornography...
...Government agents also place ads in swinger, gay, and other sexually oriented magazines...
...It is set up to fulfill the self-righteous expectations of prosecutors, to make social lepers of its victims, and to destroy their lives—all for ordering a tape or magazine manufactured by dear old Uncle Sam...
...They are the Meese Police—products of a popular hysteria over child pornography...
...The Federal raiders impounded his tape collection so the Government could look for other adult movies—thus establishing McGlynn's "predisposition" to the crime...
...Then they spent five and a half hours turning the furnishings inside out, looking for a videotape of nude boys...
...There is no commercial production of child pornography in the United States or Europe today," Stanley claims...
...Address books of suspects are favorite sources of potential new suspects...
...The various films, magazines, and other pornography are then described in a catalogue, which the Government sends to likely customers...
...Other forms of obscenity are protected if they possess "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value...
...The public is conditioned to accept the indictment on this charge as 'proving' that the victim is a 'pedophile,'" says McGlynn...
...They turned mattresses upside down...
...He has also become part of a nationwide defendants' network attempting to contest the raids and indictments...
...They went through my drawers...
...work project for Federal gumshoes seeking good press...
...McGlynn is certain the law is manifestly unjust...
...He was told, he says, "Sometimes you people have a lot of guns, and we don't want to take any chances...
...Anyone who has corresponded with a suspect may also end up being invited into Edwin Meese's kiddie-porn supermarket...
...Under the law, McGlynn points out, "any organization" found guilty of producing child pornography is liable for a fine of up to $250,000...
...in the three hours they already had been in my house," McGlynn says...
...How does the program select its "clients...
...The sting operates this way: First, the Government manufactures various articles of child pornography, such as magazines and video tapes, by reproducing material already on 'What may have begun as a legitimate concern for the well-being of children quickly became a "moral panic" which swept the nation.' hand—technically violating just about every child-pornography law it is supposed to enforce...
...A name may come from a list of previous sex offenders...
...I am accused of this 'crime' by the United States Government, which has broken, repeatedly, every paragraph of the law...
...The fact that the Government is creating crime seems, to McGlynn, to be very strange indeed...
...Stanley says, however, that no such statistics exist "on a Federal level or anywhere else...
...Various postal inspectors around the country have concocted organizations with such names as "Candy's Love Club," "Project SeaHawk," and "Heartland Institute for a New Tomorrow," all engaged in attempts to strike up correspondence with people interested in asserting First Amendment rights, sexual liberation, and other themes the Feds believe might lead to sales and indictments related to child pornography...
...Until 1984, the law applied only to those engaged in commercial production and distribution of child pornography...
...Before the Government put it out of business around 1980, the kiddie-porn industry in the United States never generated more than $ 1 million a year in revenue, according to Lawrence A. Stanley, an attorney in New York City who has extensively researched the issue...
...But the victims of this sting are, for legal purposes, beyond the protection of the First Amendment...
...mails...
...High-profile raids by squads of Federal agents and local police come next, followed by indictments, trials, and convictions...
...Federal agents also impounded Mc-Glynn's videotaping equipment and his collection of about 120 video cassettes containing everything from home movies to adult films...
...Once targeted, a suspect may become subject to visual surveillance, wiretapping, and more unorthodox investigative tactics, such as "trash covers," during which police officers seek evidence in a suspect's garbage...
...Because of all its raids, McGlynn asserts that the Justice Department now owns the world's largest collection of child pornography...
...Johansen is an associate professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the author of "Forgotten Founders: How American Indians Helped Shape Democracy," published by Boston Common Press in 1987...
...But the newspaper's editors didn't flinch at the notion of an industry bigger than the gross national product of a medium-sized country—or a level of activity that would involve an average of roughly one" child on every city block in America...
...He refused to answer...
...In discussions with my classes at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, I learned that several students here have gotten such unsolicited mailings during the past year...
...His reputation is totally destroyed and his family and some 'friends' avoid him as if he had AIDS...
...He says the Government did everything but let him know buying its tape was illegal...
...Sentenced two months later to a ten-year term, all but six months of which has been suspended, McGlynn is still free pending appeal...
...In that year, the Justice Department lobbied amendments through Congress that broadened it to include anyone who gets any kind of child pornography through the mail—this after the commercial industry had been effectively shut down...
...Under a 1973 Federal ruling in Miller v. California, child pornography became per se a category of unprotected speech...
...McGlynn pleaded guilty as charged in Omaha's Federal District Court on January 12 and faced up to ten years in prison, a $100,000 fine, and forfeiture of his car, cameras, videotape players, and other possessions, for ordering a dirty movie from the only remaining commercial producer of kiddie porn in the United States—Uncle Sam...
...McGlynn ordered the Government-issue pornography, and a postal inspector watched as a mail carrier slipped the telltale tape into his mail box...
...As long ago as 1980, the Government had substantially closed down the "kiddie porn" industry, theoretically working itself out of a job...
...And so John McGlynn found his tax dollars at work...
...The mere possession of a piece of child pornography can lead to indictment and conviction—and to the possible first-offense term of ten years and a fine of $100,000, a term which places buying a dirty magazine on a scale of penal severity comparable in many jurisdictions to manslaughter or second-degree murder...
...THE Meese Police ON Porn Patrol BY BRUCE E. JOHANSEN On June 11, 1987, about fifty gun-wielding Federal agents and police officers burst into the North Omaha home of seventy-six-year-old John Mc-Glynn...
...The 120 cassettes the Government confiscated included other adult films...
...If I had known it was a Federal offense," he says, "I never would have requested it...
...In 1986, it became illegal to publish or cause publication of any advertisement offering to buy or sell child pornography, which is generally defined as visual representation of anyone under eighteen years of age involved in a sexual act...
...They went through her purse, and they confiscated my address book...
...They took his address book and personal letters to add names to their catalogue of suspects—new grist for a mill that currently employs several hundred civil servants in the Department of Justice, the Customs Service, and the Postal Service...
...I asked how many guns they had found Because of all its raids, McGlynn asserts that the Justice Department now owns the world's largest collection of child pornography...
...In 1982, the Albany Times-Union trumpeted "Federal statistics" that the industry generated $46 billion nationally and involved 2.4 million children...
...The system is not set up to treat what many believe is a form of addiction akin to alcoholism or gambling...
...He thinks that, given the facts of his and the other cases, Edwin Meese's Justice Department ought to be facing this charge...
...What may have begun as a legitimate concern for the well-being of children quickly became a 'moral panic' which swept the nation," Stanley wrote in an extensively documented forty-nine-page paper titled "The Hysteria over Child Pornography and Pedophilia...
...When his home was raided, McGlynn asked the postal inspector who seemed to be in charge why it was necessary to have several dozen Omaha police officers in his place...
...Nudity alone usually does not legally qualify...
...The Justice Department has defended its actions on grounds that, to obtain convictions, its agents also sell illegal drugs and engage in alleged conspiracies...
...McGlynn was not happy to plead guilty, but he did not contest the opinion of his attorney, J. William Gallup, that "the Government had enough evidence to show predisposition" to commit the crime, which might have undermined a defense of entrapment...
...But that was before Attorney General Edwin Meese III sent his agents out looking for suspects...
...The agents might have simply asked for the tape, since they knew that other Government agents had manufactured it themselves and enticed McGlynn to buy it...
...When the supply of legitimate law-enforcement targets dried up, the moral crusaders in the Justice Department liked the limelight so much that the current prosecutorial program began to scour the landscape for suspects to perpetuate the scare...
...McGlynn was indicted under Title 18, Section 2252, of the United States Code, the charge being that he received pornography through the U.S...
...After the raid, McGlynn became one of more than a hundred persons indicted in the United States in what looks like a makeBruceE...
...The victims of this self-perpetuating Government sting have all the rights a witch had at Salem in 1636...

Vol. 52 • June 1988 • No. 6


 
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