Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed -- especially when pornography is involved.
A lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch that is demanding President Obama release photos of Osama Bin Laden is gaining an unlikely ally from the porn industry press.
Ever since word got out that Bin Laden kept a secret porn stash at his compound in Pakistan, the adult industry trade publication XBIZ has been wanting to find out exactly which films were in his collection.
"Will we ever find out the studios, video titles, directors or genres of the films Bid Laden's alleged to have possessed?" pondered XBIZ's Rhett Pardon. "The answer is maybe."
The maybe depends on the success of Judicial Watch's suit, which, according to the National Journal, requests "all photographs and/or video" taken from bin Laden's compound during the raid.
"If the FOIA lawsuit is granted, nearly all information relative to Bid Laden's porn stash, as well as all other details of his compound and belongings, could be released," Pardon said.
Judicial Watch filed its FOIA request to the Department of Defense May 3 and filed an identical request last week, the Atlantic Wire reported. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton believes that Obama's desire to not "spike the football" is not a reason to withhold basic information about this historically important raid.
Experts like Scott Hodes, a former Justice Department lawyer in the office of information and privacy, believe Judicial Watch's suit runs the risk of being swiftly dismissed.
However, the possibility that the terrorist leader may have been watching them perform is definitely arousing the interest of porn actresses like Amber Peach.
"I have no interest in, say, seeing Bin Laden's death photo, but I have a morbid curiosity in knowing what films he was watching," Peach told AOL Weird News. "I'd like to know if he watched older or newer films, and even if I was in any of the films."
Peach, who canvassed door-to-door for Obama in 2008, won't speculate on what adult genres Bin Laden watched, and says she isn't surprised at all that he watched porn.
"It's typical that hardcore religious leaders are often watching in porn in private," she said.
Actress Joanna Angel, who also owns Burning Angel, which specializes in alt-porn featuring punkish women with tattoos, is also curious -- even though she doubts Bin Laden appreciated her work.
"I have a feeling he wasn't watching my films," she said. "Although I'd be oddly flattered if he was. You see, I own my own company -- and it's small. So to know I could reach someone without an internet connection in Pakistan would mean I was really good at marketing."
Dave Cummings, who started his porn career at the age of 54 after serving in the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, believes the porn stash is probably a lower priority than the other information found in the compound, but says knowing the titles does have value for intelligence officials.
"Even though the porn might have been merely for masturbatory purposes, or possibly used to review for potentially tempting martyrs to fantasy about what 'virgins' might look like, it's a piece of the intel and just might provide insight and value into the mindset of the jihadist planners," Cummings said, before adding a caveat. "Keep in mind that Arab culture and religion also comes into play, and the analysts need to relate findings to those aspects."