Tinfoil Hat

Jewish World Review

In the 1980s, the “Miami Method” of aggressively handling child sexual abuse cases was developed by Florida Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno. In his article “Beat the Devil: Janet Reno’s Coerced Confession” for The Nation, Alexander Cockburn describes the use of isolation, quasi-hypnosis, conditioned response, and kindred mind-bending techniques used to ensure damning testimony.¹ Predictably, many of the convictions were overturned in appellate court.

Despite Reno’s witch hunts, she “was never interested in taking on and prosecuting illegal obscenity,” according to FBI Agent William P. Kelly. One of the lead officers in the City of Miami Police Department’s vice unit, Michael Berish, noted that “the majority of obscenity cases involved organized crime figures that were responsible for the interstate distribution of this material.” ²

Later appointed by President Bill Clinton to the position of U.S. Attorney General — the nation’s top cop — and within months of her promise to “protect our children from abuse,” quotes Col. Ronald D. Ray,³ Janet Reno’s Justice Department attempted to redefine the law “with the intent of legalizing a substantial portion of child pornography,” writes Concerned Women for America.⁴

A brief filed by Solicitor General Drew S. Days 3d “told the [Supreme] Court that a Federal appeals court had used ‘an impermissibly broad standard’ in interpreting and applying a law that made it a Federal crime to distribute or possess tapes or pictures of minors involved in ‘sexually explicit conduct,'” notes The New York Times.⁵ The Times also quotes an anonymous senior official in the Justice Department as saying, “It’s simply not the kind of hard-core child pornography at the center of the industry.” ⁶ Gregory J. Rummo explains:

Reno has argued for what amounts to unprecedented and unconscionable interpretations of the existing child pornography laws in order to prevent the Supreme Court from declaring such laws unconstitutional. This is a smokescreen to conceal the real agenda — the legalization of child pornography under a warped and depraved interpretation of the First Amendment.⁷

“Although candidate Clinton stated ‘that aggressive enforcement of federal obscenity laws by the Justice Department — particularly by the Child Exploitation and Obscenity section — will be a priority in a Clinton-Gore administration,