The FBI's Obscene File

Having gained access to the FBI's heavily redacted and incomplete Obscene File, Charles (history, Pennsylvania State Univ., Greater Allegheny; J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-Interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State) has written an introduction to this neglected topic, exploring the FBI's investigations of obscenity law violations and its attempts to control obscenity according to Hoover's personal agendas (e.g., power, politics, and personal morality). However, fewer than five Supreme Court cases are noted as primary sources (1973's landmark Miller v. California is glaringly absent), even though Charles acknowledges that the FBI operates according to precedent. In palpable excitement over gaining access to the FBI's Obscene File, Charles doesn't take advantage of its most salacious figures; to learn the intimate details of Andy Warhol's film Lonesome Cowboys or the pornography collections of Abbott and Costello, search elsewhere.