A smut peddler and a patriot

Hustler's Larry Flynt asks why a porn mogul and not the New York Times had to sue the government for press access in Afghanistan.

By Stephen Lemons

Nov. 28, 2001 | Larry Flynt wants to go to Afghanistan. No, he's not looking to sign up new Hustler subscribers, he wants to send reporters to cover our boys on the front lines. He'd probably even throw in some free mags for the troops if the Pentagon would give him access. The Defense Dept., alas, denied his request faster than Mullah Omar hightailing it to the hills.

But unlike the Big Kahunas of America's fourth estate, Larry doesn't take no for an answer. The Premier Potentate of Porn has filed suit against the DOD to allow Hustler's scribblers to go where the action is, just like Matthew Modine in "Full Metal Jacket."

Flynt's suit may have a snowball's chance in Saudi Arabia, but that doesn't bother him. After all, he's been doing battle for so long over First Amendment issues that conservatives cringe when they hear his name. Recently, the patriotic Sultan of Skin took a break from assailing the government and overseeing his Beverly Hills-headquartered empire of erotica to discuss his suit, the war on terrorism, civil liberties and his current bête noire, Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Why are you suing the federal government, and what do you hope to achieve by it?

We've had a long tradition going all the way back to the Civil War of journalists being able to accompany the troops onto the battlefield. This continued up through World War I, World War II, Korea and the Vietnam War. Think of how many more thousands of people might have died in Vietnam had it not been for the press. But after Vietnam, the commanders and the president started treating the press quite differently. It began when Reagan invaded Grenada. The press knew absolutely nothing about it. I filed a suit at that particular time, but the invasion was so short that the suit became moot before we could ever get a hearing. Then Bush invaded Panama and snatched Noriega, and the press was not included. And if you watched CNN during the Gulf War, you sort of felt like the war was being covered because you've got Peter Arnett on the rooftop of a hotel in downtown Baghdad giving you a blow-by-blow account, but there really were not any [journalists] with troops fighting on the ground.

I think Afghanistan is the straw that breaks the camel's back. I mean, you've got to draw the line somewhere. It's the press's obligation to report how the military is conducting the war. I know there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration, but we made a concession which I think was substantial. That is that any reporting done from the front lines could be censored by the field commander on the grounds of national security or anything that might put the troops' lives in danger. We've asked for a preliminary injunction from a federal court in Washington, and we're waiting for a date now. Bush likes to say this is a different kind of war, but you know FDR could have used the same argument for World War II. It's still a war. And we either have a free press or we don't. If these guys covering the war want to put their lives in harm's way, well, that's their business, and not the business of the secretary of defense.

What about the argument that the Department of Defense would be responsible for the safety of reporters involved?

That's what we made clear to the Defense Department -- that they were putting their lives at risk now, and that they did so at their own peril. So the Defense Department would not be liable there. We need them there to document and record the war, but also so the American people can actually see how the military conducted their operations.

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