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It's time to confront the real terror threat -- porn
Eric Heyl is a Tribune-Review staff writer. He can be reached via e-mail or 412-320-7857.
Don't get me wrong, combatting the terrorist threat is a laudable activity. The FBI, however, deserves credit for putting its priorities in order and pursuing a far greater menace to the free world: pornography.
The FBI is proceeding with plans to form a new anti-obscenity unit targeting the manufacturers and purveyors of sexually explicit material. The unit won't target illegal stuff such as kiddie porn, but rather readily available materials both starring and marketed toward consenting adults.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI reinvented itself from a reactive agency pursuing domestic criminals to a proactive entity devoted to ferreting out terrorist plots before they mushroom into gargantuan calamity.
This reinvention forced the bureau to virtually ignore the, uh, mounting porn threat. Big mistake. Just compare the FBI's most-wanted terrorist to that of the man virtually certain to top its list of most-wanted pornographers:
Osama bin Laden
Age: 48
Aliases: "The Prince," "The Emir," "The Director"
Distinguishing characteristics: Is left-handed and walks with a cane.
Wanted for: The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. Also is a suspect in many other terrorist activities, including the 9/11 attacks that killed more than 2,700 people.
Ron Jeremy
Age: 52
Alias: "The Hedgehog"
Distinguishing characteristics: Don't even go there.
Wanted for: Appearing in nearly 1,000 adult movies and videos during the past three decades, including such X-rated classics as, "Nude World Order," "Immoral Support," "This Lady is a Tramp," and "The Wizard of Ahhs."
See? It's chillingly clear both men present near-equal danger to society.
To probe deeply into the underground world of pornography, the bureau will have to infiltrate a virtually impenetrable network of anonymous porn providers. We're talking outfits like DirecTV, Time Warner, thousands of video rental stores and the Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Sheraton hotel chains. All make a mint from making porn readily available. None are what you would call mainstream entities.
That's what makes the FBI's mission so daunting. Compared to the CIA's relatively simple chore of searching for bin Laden in the dark, dank caves along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the FBI's "Bod Squad" certainly has a hard task ahead.
Sorry. I meant "formidable." Honest.
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