by Legs McNeil
RONALD REAGAN (PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, ADDRESSING THE DALLAS MORAL MAJORITY RALLY, OCTOBER 1980): I know this is a nonpartisan gathering—and so I know you can’t endorse me—but I only brought that up because I want you to know I endorse you and what you’re doing!
LARRY FLYNT: Pornography has been a pet peeve of the religious right going all the way back to Anthony Comstock, who was the nation’s first censor. And it’s continued to remain as much in the Republican Party as the “right to life” has.
BILL KELLY: That’s why the Meese Commission was so comprehensive—because of these volunteer federal officers, and I think several local guys in the LAPD, which has by far the best local investigative agency for obscenity in the United States. In fact, it’s one of the only ones.
GINGER LYNN: Not long after I appeared before the grand jury, I got a knock on my door, and I was indicted. They were charging me with tax evasion.
TOM BYRON: The IRS basically did a six-year investigation of me; I guess they wanted to infiltrate the porno industry. My case boiled down to the fact that I had filed one return late and didn’t file an extension.
So they charged me with tax fraud and tax evasion. It was a three-count indictment: two felony, one misdemeanor. I was facing twelve years in federal prison.
GINGER LYNN: When I went to fucking trial, and I saw the documents, it was the whole Traci Lords thing that did us in—Tom Byron, Harry Reems, and me. And we were three people who had helped her.
LARRY FLYNT: You must understand that the Meese Commission was the complete opposite of the Presidential Commission on Obscenity. The Meese Commission traveled the country basically interviewing victims. They were not using any scientific approach in their efforts to try to understand pornography or its effect on society.
JOHN WATERS: I love feminists like Ti-Grace Atkinson and Valerie Solanis; I was all for that. My favorite was Jenny Fope, remember her? The one that was named the head of NOW and then they found out she was wanted for murder? I’m a lesbian hag. I have no problem with any of that.
But when Andrea Dworkin and “Women Against Porn” came out—that’s not my idea of a feminist; that’s my idea of a right-wing censor. I hated all of them.
ANDREA DWORKIN [FROM “FINAL REPORT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S COMMISSION ON PORNOGRAPHY”]: “My name is Andrea Dworkin. I am a citizen of the United States, and in this country where I live, every year pictures are being made of women with our legs spread. We are called beaver, we are called pussy, our genitals are tied up, they are pasted, makeup is put on them to make them pop out of a page at a male viewer.”
GINGER LYNN: I don’t think that anybody ever intended—nor did they wish for—the adult industry to stop. They just wanted to make it look like they were stopping it. They make too much fucking money to stop it.
BILL MARGOLD: The Meese Commission and radical feminism were forced into an unhappy state of affairs. Both of them would go where anybody listened so they became this unholy alliance, dedicated to wiping out pornography. Obviously it failed.
I told them, “All you’re doing is calling more attention to us,” and it did, quite honestly. But the Meese Commission wanted to call attention to us—and by doing so they warned another generation not to watch us. And when you tell society they shouldn’t watch us, they can’t wait to go out and get us.
ANDREA DWORKIN: “Millions and millions of pictures are made of us in postures of submission and sexual access so that our vaginas are exposed for penetration, our anuses are exposed for penetration, and our throats are used as if they are genitals for penetration. In this country where I live as a citizen, real rapes are on film and being sold in the marketplace. And the major motif of pornography as a form of entertainment is that women are raped and violated and humiliated until we discover that we like it and at that point we ask for more.”
GLORIA LEONARD: Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon were the Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein of the so-called Feminist Movement. So radical, so over-the-top, you know? I mean, Dworkin considered penetration to be rape! I just laughed at them.
CATHERINE MACKINNON: If pornography is a part of your sexuality, then you have no right to your sexuality.
GLORIA LEONARD: No matter what you said, porn was bad. And of course the irony was, nine-tenths of those who radically pooh-poohed it had never even seen a goddamn porno movie!
I mean, nobody is drugged or dragged off the street to do this. In all my years in this business, I have never seen coercion. Ever, ever, ever. You always had the right to say, “No, I don’t want to do this.”
Including Linda Lovelace.
LINDA LOVELACE [FROM FINAL REPORT ON THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S COMMISSION ON PORNOGRAPHY]: “During the filming of Deep Throat, actually the first day, I suffered a brutal beating in my room for smiling on the set. It was a hotel room and the whole crew was in one room, there was at least twenty people partying, music going, laughing, and having a good time. Mr. Traynor…started bouncing me off the walls.”
BILL KELLY: In the book she allegedly wrote, Inside Linda Lovelace, Linda talked about how I used to harass her and threaten to yank her outta bed and put her on an airplane and put her before the grand jury in New York and all that. None of that is true. I never even saw the woman until we testified back to back before the Meese Commission in January 1986.
LINDA LOVELACE: “I figured out of twenty people, there might be one human being that would do something to help me. I was screaming for help, and I was being beaten. And all of a sudden the room next door became very quiet. Nobody, not one person, came to help me.”
Disappearing DiBe
NEW YORK CITY
1986
BRUCE MOUW: Who was the greater power, Robert DiBernardo or Mickey Zaffarano?
There’s no comparison: DiBe. If you put aside the porno stuff for a second, DiBe was very knowledgeable in labor racketeering. He controlled the Teamsters for the Gambino family for many years. So he was a rising star in the Gambinos—and very well respected by the other families.
BILL KELLY: After Gambino family godfather Paul Castellano and his bodyguard were murdered in front of Sparks Steak House in December 1985, John Gotti took over the Gambino family.
BRUCE MOUW: DiBe was very politically astute. He knew how to appease the bosses. And because he was a very wealthy man, Paul Castellano liked him, so they had a very close relationship.
He was very, very competent. He just got things done. And he was smarter than most of those other wise guys.
BILL KELLY: John Gotti didn’t like Robert DiBernardo. I’m not sure, but I think it was because DiBe was Paul Castellano’s man.
BRUCE MOUW: In early 1986, while John Gotti was in jail, his underboss, Frank DeCicco, was murdered in a car bombing. So they were looking for a new underboss. And the person who wanted to be underboss was Angelo Ruggiero, who was a captain at the time. Angelo was John’s right-hand man, and his goal in life was to be John Gotti’s underboss.
SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO: I would see DiBe three, four times a week. We handled the construction, the unions. Did I ever hear him express views on who should replace Frank DeCicco as underboss? Yes, I did. His view was that I should be underboss. And it came up at a meeting with “Joe Pinney,” myself, and Angelo. Angelo said that DiBe expressed an opinion that I should be underboss, and then he asked me if it was so. I said, “Yes.”
SHARON MITCHELL: I met DiBe only once. I had to go get permission for money to make a movie because I was producing and directing. I think it was two hundred and fifty thousand, which was pretty standard then for a thirty-five-millimeter film.
So I was put in the back of a car, driven out to some godforsaken town on Long Island, and had a conversation with DiBe and some other old fuck. And they said, “You made a lot of money for us in the past. Okay, fine.”
FRED LINCOLN: I wasn’t friendly with DiBe. Nobody was. You just didn’t talk to DiBe. He had nothin’ to do with us. I just spoke to Teddy Rothstein and Andre D’Apice
and I got along real good for a long time. Andre and I were good buddies. We’d probably still be partners if Andre hadn’t gone to jail on MIPORN.
RUBY GOTTESMAN: They loved DiBe. He made ’em serious money. But then the people came to Gotti and said DiBe was talkin’ bad about him, and that’s why he got whacked. But they killed him for that? They shouldn’t a killed this guy. This guy made ’em nothin’ but serious money. I mean, DiBe had that whole pornography thing, and once he was gone, it was harder to make money. The mafia left the business. That was the only involvement: DiBe and Mickey Z.
JOHN GOTTI [FBI WIRETAP]: “DiBe, did he ever talk subversive to you? Never talked it to Angelo, and he never talked it to ‘Joe Pinney’? I took Sammy’s word that he talked about me behind my back. I took Sammy’s word. I saw the papers and everything. He didn’t rob nothin’. You know why he’s dying? He’s gonna die because he refused to come in when I called. He didn’t do nothing else wrong.”
BILL KELLY: At one point John Gotti ordered DiBernardo to come for a meeting, and DiBernardo ignored him. I understand that was the main reason he was killed. That, and the fact that DiBe was in line to move up; Gotti figured, “We better get rid of this guy, ’cause he’s got too much clout.”
BRUCE MOUW: Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and DiBernardo were actually very close friends. Gravano thought the world of DiBe. Sammy thought it was a bad idea to kill DiBe because they needed guys like DiBe to run the family and spread out things like labor racketeering to other businesses.
But Angelo Ruggiero started spreading stories that DiBe was talking behind John Gotti’s back—that he wasn’t a team player, and that he wanted to become boss of the family. So word got back to Gotti—and being the impulsive person he was, he said, “Kill him.”
SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO: Angelo came to me and told me that John Gotti sent out an order to kill DiBe. Angelo said that DiBe was talking behind his back, and there was another reason….
BRUCE ELLAVSKY: Do I have any knowledge that Robert DiBernardo may have been cooperating with the United States Attorney’s Office at the time of his disappearance? Hmmm…
I don’t, but I probably wouldn’t tell if I did.
ROGER YOUNG: Two things were behind the fact that DiBe got killed. One, I think, was too much publicity—too much going on where people know too much—and they were afraid he might roll to save his own skin.
Secondly, a lot of times they think, “They’re getting too powerful. We can’t trust them anymore. They might not be turning everything over to us—information and money.”
SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO: DiBe was just talking a lot and not meaning anything. He wasn’t dangerous. It was something we could hold up on. But Angelo responded to me that this had to be done, that John was steaming. We already had a location to kill him, which was Tony Lee’s mother’s basement.
BRUCE MOUW: The hidden motive behind Angelo Ruggiero wanting Robert DiBernardo killed was the fact that he owed DiBe a ton of money. I think DiBe helped him buy his house in Cedarhurst, Long Island. So in one fell swoop DiBe gets killed, the way is cleared for Angelo to become underboss—even though it never happened—plus he wiped out his loan.
SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO: DiBe came in. He came downstairs. He said hello. He sat down. Then old man Paruta got up, and I told him to get DiBe a cup of coffee. He got up. In the cabinet there was a .38 with a silencer. He took the gun out, walked over to DiBe, and shot him twice in the back of the head. Me and Eddie picked him up and put him in the back room, locked it up. We left the office. We locked the office up, and I went and met with Angelo in the Burger King in Coney Island and told him it was done.
SHARON MITCHELL: DiBe was a very sweet guy. When they picked him up and took him for the ride, everyone looked at it as a big disservice. There wasn’t an ounce of honor in that. I mean, why, because he didn’t come in for a sit-down?
See, that’s just where I come from in the school of pornography—from organized crime. For me it was ideal because I felt like these mobsters would protect me from anything. I wasn’t attracted to them because they were dangerous or anything—but because they weren’t. They were family guys; they were like my uncles. I felt safe with them.
BOBBY ELKINS: Everybody loved DiBe. But that’s what I’m saying: If the mentality of the dagos was that they would kill DiBe because he was a big money earner, then they killed him because of their pride.
Gotti was an asshole. So was this little fucking stool pigeon Sammy the Bull. He was a piece of shit.
RICHARD ROSFELDER: They supposedly fed DiBe through a tree shredder.
BILL KELLY: We still don’t know what happened to Robert DiBernardo’s body. Somebody said, “He’s having lunch with Jimmy Hoffa,” and he probably is.
Conclusions
U.S.A.
1986–1987
GLORIA LEONARD: The radical feminists ended up as kind of odd bedfellows with the Christian right because they were basically espousing the same rhetoric. I used to debate the radical feminists all the time, at dozens and dozens of colleges and universities. Toward the end of one of our gigs, one of the so-called feminists with whom I used to debate actually hit on me, ha, ha, ha.
But I was asked to speak in front of the Meese Commission, and as luck would have it I wound up being very ill and was hospitalized. So I sent Veronica Vera down in my place. She did great.
VERONICA VERA: I had to think twice about it because there are parts of pornography I find stupid and silly. I didn’t want be seen as representing some of the very misogynistic sleazy stuff. But I felt it was more important to stand up for free speech than to worry about being seen as defending stuff that I find distasteful.
I had sent them photos of myself in bondage because I thought this was really what they’re concerned about. And accompanying the photos was a piece I had written, saying that pornography was a way to explore my own bondage fantasies, and I asked to read it.
Senator Arlen Specter said, “Okay, you can read it.”
BILL MARGOLD: When the Meese Commission reared its empty head, we in the industry were told not to cooperate. That’s the worst thing you can tell me. I said to the people around me, “Don’t you want anybody to go there and tell the truth?”
“Oh, no. Don’t cooperate—they’ll go away.”
I said, “If you don’t tell them what the hell we do for a living, if you don’t tell them what we’re all about, then they’re gonna make up their own stories.”
KRISTIN STEEN: My instincts were sharp, but I made some serious mistakes, too. Back in 1969 or 1970, I agreed to do this one film—it was just supposed to be a very short, one-night thing. I was actually filling in for somebody who couldn’t make it. I was supposed to be a body double. They got me on the set—it was a very small crew, and just me and one other actor. The scene was supposed to be in an airplane; the guy was supposed to try to touch me, and I was supposed to rebuke him.
It was just supposed to be a short, little, funny scene. He’s supposed to get my three buttons open before I smack him. And that was it.
Well, we start shooting, and he gets the three buttons open, and I do my thing—and he doesn’t stop. And I say, “Wait a second!”
He keeps going, and by now I’m trying to fight him off me, and he keeps going and the camera keeps rolling and I start to yell. I look around at the director, and all of a sudden I’m getting really, really scared, right?
He’s on me, and he’s in me, and he’s…And I’m crying and screaming—and they’re filming this, right?
VERONICA VERA: So I read, “I am the love object, waiting for you to enjoy me, to tie me up, to take pleasure from me. I’m the object of your desire, always open to your cock and your mouth….” But when I was testifying, I got to this part about the cock in the mouth, and I thought, “Am I going to be able to say this?”
I stopped just before the word cock, and Specter had the text in front of him. I said, “Shall I go on, Senator?”
He said, “Yo
u certainly may.”
So I finished up and said: “Always open to your cock and your mouth! Enjoy me, take pleasure from me, as you do, you’ll understand by the purity of my surrender that you have become my captive, too.”
Then I said, “Senator, I’m not a victim. I don’t want to be considered a victim. I think that both men and women need to be free to explore their fantasies. I think otherwise it just makes it unfair that men or women have to feel guilty about exploring our fantasies.”
VERONICA HART: The Meese Commission tried to get as many horror stories as they could, to validate the idea that people in the industry were victimized.
KRISTIN STEEN: Finally the camera stops, and the director comes over to me. I’m begging him, “What the hell are you doing?! STOP THIS!”
And he says, “Listen, the guys producing this film are really, really heavy guys, all right? They’ve paid a lot of money for us to get this, and I’m really sorry, but you’re gonna have to go with it.”
It was totally unbelievable to me. I’d never had any kind of experience like that. This was rape, and they were filming it. They turned the cameras on, and the guy had me pinned….
That was the first time I had sex on camera.
NINA HARTLEY: What really irritated me about the Meese Commission and the radical right-wing feminists were the cries of “Women and Children! Women and Children!” As an adult female, I didn’t appreciate somebody infantalizing me and portraying me as someone who needs protection from the big, bad phallus—or my own fantasies.