Last September, Brent Ward, the head of the Department of Justice Obscenity Task Force, sent an email to Kyle Sampson, then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff. The email, titled “obscenity cases,” was cryptic in its message and tone. It mentioned two U.S. attorneys by name—Paul Charlton of Phoenix and Dan Bogen of Las Vegas—who were “unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them,” and deemed the situation with Charlton to be “urgent.” Both Charlton and Bogden have since been forced to resign, along with six other federal prosecutors in what has been considered by many to be a politically motivated purge of power. Many factors have been put forth, formally and informally, to explain the firings. Explanations range from job performance to the prosecutors’ views on death penalty, border control and drug smuggling but little attention has been paid to the issue of obscenity, a hot button topic for Gonzales, and what role pressures to prosecute purveyors of adult pornography played in the careers and dismissals of Charlton and Bogden.

Interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta’s 2005 announcement that obscenity would be the Department of Justice’s new top prosecutorial priority under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales not only shocked but angered many law enforcement officials. The Clinton administration declined to prosecute purveyors of pornography, other than child pornography, under the three-prong test for obscenity outlined in the 1973 landmark case Miller v. California, which allows contemporary community standards to judge the purpose and offensiveness of graphic materials to deem whether or not they should be considered obscene.

In response to pressure from the American Family Association and other right wing forces, Gonzales determined that prosecuting adult pornography should be a major concern for law enforcement and so created the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, collecting prosecutors from areas of organized crime, computer crime, and money laundering together with other forensic experts. Bruce Taylor, a famous crusader against pornography in the 1980s—who once put Larry Flynt in jail and later tried to make nude models in Utah wear bikinis and has prosecuted more than 100 state and federal obscenity cases—was called upon to help lead the task force.

Congress began funding this initiative in 2005, specifying that the FBI must devote 10 agents to “gather evidence against ‘manufacturers and purveyors of pornography—the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.” They were advised to focus on pornography including sadomasochism, bestiality, urination, and defecation, as they would be the most likely to offend juries, according to one White House memo. Many believe Gonzales’ allocation of funds was irresponsible and would hamper more important efforts, like pursuing child pornography, organized crime and terrorism. "I guess this means we've won the war on terror. We must not need any more resources for espionage," commented one FBI agent. Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, an attorney and American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson, was equally disturbed saying, "It’s amazing that we're wasting our resources on the morality police."

In this political atmosphere, Paul Charlton and Dan Bogden were presented with and asked to pursue obscenity cases that they may have found questionable. Charlton was told to investigate Five Star Video, a pornography retailer in Arizona, purportedly selling five indicted titles in its Arizona outlet. The strength of the case was called into question by Richard Hertzberg, the attorney for the defendant, who noted that the same titles were simultaneously being sold and rented by Castle, another pornography retailer, while it was under the management and supervision of officials appointed by the U.S. Bankruptcy court. Hertzberg says that the government is legally stopped from claiming the community standard regarding obscenity as anything other than that under which its employees operated Castle. Still, Charlton not only took this case, but acquiesced to Ward’s demand that he assign an addition prosecutor to it. He also pursued obscenity through other avenues. He was “on the leading edge” of adult obscenity prosecutions, according to an attorney familiar with his caseload who noted that Charlton had been simultaneously launching the first ever national investigation into pornography distributed via SPAM email.

Ward’s remark regarding Bogden is equally questionable. Bogden publicly commented he handled all obscenity cases passed along to him by Brent Ward and called Ward’s accusation “nonsense.” The case in question involved materials that Ward’s task force had uncovered during a visit to the annual adult video awards in Las Vegas where they hoped to gather names of those trafficking potentially obscene materials over the Internet. "They go in there, and in their super-sleuthing work, they come up with the name of an individual who may be selling obscene videos over the Internet," explained Bogden. But though Bogden found the case presented to him weak, he agreed to look into it after a few high profile trials had been resolved and his office had more time free. He was fired before having the chance to make good on this promise.

According to a former law enforcement official familiar with his office’s work, this was not the first weak case that Ward had presented to Bogden, citing another described it as ‘“woefully deficient” of details.’ Apparently, it involved a website but had no accompanying information involving the assets or person to be targeted. Still, Bogden also agreed to put together a proposal for this case, according to the official. The official commented that the notion that Bogden was unwilling to pursue obscenity cases presented to him is "totally absurd."

Charlton and Bogden, despite potential reservations about the strength or credibility of obscenity cases presented to them, were willing to pursue investigations as ordered. It seems that they were competent prosecutors, especially Charlton, who was ranked in the top 10 for prosecutions and convictions out of 93 U.S. attorneys nationally and who was responsible for filing 30 percent, or more than 2,200, more immigration cases in 2006 as in 2004. Bogden, too, was often praised for his skill and devotion to the job. “ He's the finest U.S. attorney I've ever worked with," commented Ellen Knowlton, an FBI agent for 24 years who managed its Las Vegas office for four.

It seems that the discussion over these attorneys’ willingness to take good obscenity cases was simply another way for White House officials to try to excuse a politically motivated mass firing of competent U.S. attorneys. “The date of the email is subsequent to the date when they asked for [Charlton's] resignation, so it's gratuitous,” explained one justice department source. “W hen a paper trail to support the charge that U.S. attorneys were deficient in their performance was required to cover the reality of political dismissals, the Justice Department finally discovered an important use for its top porn cop.”

It might also be considered that these firings were an attempt to point the finger at someone for the general failure of the Obscenity Prosecution Task force, which achieved only two indictments over the course of 10 months, one of which was from an FBI tip-off, making Ward himself call the task “a failure so far.”

Charles Schumer, one of New York’s senators, has charged the Bush administration with having “blatantly manipulated the U.S. attorney system to serve its political needs.” To many, this seems to be the case. The issues the administration raised for having ousted these attorneys—including views on the death penalty and taping FBI interviews, among others—go unmentioned in the hundreds of pages of emails published, while the attorneys’ purported unwillingness to prosecute obscenity cases is named as a key factor, without any support or statistics given to this accusation. These attorneys were willing to take obscenity cases given to them—even weak ones—and as time continues to pass since the firings, it remains unclear what role the administration’s zeal for prosecuting obscenity, and lack of success in doing so, had in the dismissals of Paul Charlton and Dan Bogden.