FBI releases obscenity investigation file on 'Deep Throat' director Gerard Damiano to AP

In this May 31, 1980 Associated Press file photo, protesters picket the theater where the film 'Deep Throat' is being shown, near Times Square in New York. FBI files released in June, 2009 to the Associated Press show agents across the country and at the highest level of the agency investigated 'Deep Throat'

"Today we can't imagine authorities at any level of government - local, state or federal - being involved in obscenity prosecutions of this kind," said Mark Weiner, a constitutional law professor and legal historian at Rutgers-Newark School of Law. "The story of 'Deep Throat' is the story of the last gasp of the forces lined up against the cultural and sexual revolution and it is the advent of the entry of pornography into the mainstream."

– Via AP: FBI files show wide "Deep Throat" investigation (let's all take a moment to marvel at the pervy genius of that AP headline, a case in point illustration of the effects of that cultural and sexual revolution, shall we?).

Mark Weiner is right about that: "Deep Throat" changed everything when it comes to adult entertainment. Today's news from the Associated Press – a deep file on "Deep Throat" director Gerard Damiano, released by the FBI in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the AP – shows that the FBI did everything in its power to thwart the film and prevent the cultural shift Weiner describes.

Damiano, the the director of nearly 50 adult films including Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue and Never so Deep, died on October 25, 2008.

Today's AP article discusses 498 pages from the FBI's file on Demiano pertaining to investigations into obscentiy charges pertaining to "Deep Throat." The FBI's interest in Damiano doesn't end there: The full file runs to nearly 6,000 pages, the AP reports, with more than 1,000 pages still redacted.

Here's one fun historical footnote to emerge from the file: William Mark Felt, the FBI's second-in-command at the time of the Deep Throat investigation – and later revealed as Bob Woodward's "Deep Throat" source in The Washington Post's reporting on Watergate – was aware of and may have been directly involved in aspects of the Deep Throat investigation.

More from the AP report:

Aside from investigative records tracking subpoenas, interviews, screenings and shipments of the film, the Damiano file includes various FBI agents' play-by-play accounts of the movie's plot, and the specific role of Damiano in the agency's investigation.

The FBI notes Damiano had been "somewhat cooperative," On Aug. 7, 1973, an assistant U.S. attorney general writes to Kelley, saying Damiano is being considered for immunity. The memo doesn't specify the crime, though mentioned throughout the file is the charge of interstate transportation of obscene material.

...

Officials at every level of government tried to stop screenings and obscenity trials continued for years. But in the end, experts say, it represents the end of an era in which the government sought to stop the changing cultural tides.

For more on "Deep Throat" and its cultural implications, don't miss the HBO documentary Inside Deep Throat. Here's a trailer: