New York Times Reporter Caught Running Child Porn Website

Your News Wire – Former New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald was the administrator of a sick child pornography website, according to WikiLeaks.

Eichenwald, a huge Hillary Clinton supporter, recently attempted to sue an independent journalist for claiming that he had paid thousands of U.S. dollars for child pornography online.

It turns out, the claims made by the journalist were true.

Counterpunch.org reports: The reporter is Kurt Eichenwald, who quit the Times in October, 2006. He already had a lot of explaining to do earlier this year about his conduct while working on the Justin Berry story when it was revealed in March that, without telling his editors, he gave $2,000 to Berry — an 18-year-old who’d spent five years making child porn of himself, when Eichenwald first contacted him in 2005.

[…]
The Nashville court documents unsealed yesterday reveal the following:

• Using a fake name, Eichenwald spent $1,184 to buy digital photos from Berry. It is not clear whether they were pornographic, or if they were made when Berry was under age 18 or older. But PayPal allows purchasers to send memos with their money, and Eichenwald sent Berry several messages discussing the quality of the pictures he bought. “I found a pretty good one but the lighting sucks… still worth 100.” “There are just 20 in the file, and most of them are nothing (shots of beds and driveways, or you rolling a joint).” “I found 3 so far that I either didn’t already have and were good.” “100…we gotta talk about what the really good ones are.” (The ellipses are in the court document.)

• Eichenwald encouraged Berry in his business endeavors while Berry was making child porn. In one PayPal message from June 2005, cited in the Nashville documents, Eichenwald writes Berry that “I’ll be online today. Find me and lemme know what to do. And I have other proposals for you that would get you even more money.”

• During this same period, Eichenwald sent Berry the $2,000 check. In the Michigan trial, he testified that he assumed when he sent it that Berry was broke. Documents just unsealed in Nashville reveal that hours after receiving the money, Berry videotaped a 14-year-old boy masturbating. A few days later, he uploaded the illegal tape to JustinsFriends.com, his gay porn website that had lain dormant for months. Soon JustinFriends.com was up and running again, with new content, including masturbatory images of the 14-year old.

• Under the pseudonym “Roy Rogers,” Eichenwald was signed on as a member of the revivified JustinsFriends.com. But he was no ordinary member: He had administrative privileges, meaning he could enter areas of the internet open only to site managers with an administrative password. He used this privilege to enter an area where one could monitor new subscriptions to the illegal porn site. He visited this area over 20 times in late June, 2005.

All this information has come out in Tennessee federal court because one of the four convicted men, Timothy Richards, is trying to convince a judge that Eichenwald and Berry engaged in a conspiracy to entrap him into Berry’s criminal activities with underage pornography. In extensive filings which Eichenwald and his lawyers tried for weeks to keep sealed, Richards’ allegations are vigorously contested. Rather than conspiring, Eichenwald says in one filing, he was just trying to learn more about Berry. After consultation with his wife, he adopted the tactic of “posing as an online predator.” In 1999, National Public Radio freelancer Larry Matthews was successfully prosecuted by the Department of Justice after working on a story about child porn in which he impersonated a pedophile online by using a pseudonym and downloading illegal material.

[…]
After the documents were unsealed this reporter contacted the New York Times asking whether they were previously aware of Eichenwald’s actions as now revealed in the court documents in Nashville. The Times was asked specifically about five points:

1. Eichenwald used the $1,184 PayPal payments he paid Justin Berry to buy photos from Justin. Was Eichenwald’s editor or anyone else at the Times aware that Eichenwald was engaged in business transactions with Justin in 2005 around the time of the buying of photos?

2. Eichenwald told Berry during this time that he could help him with ideas to make more money. Is this something the Times was aware of?

3. Hours after Eichenwald paid Justin Berry $2,000 on June 8, 2005, Berry produced a video of a 14-year-old boy masturbating. Was the Times aware of this?

4. Images of the 14-year old masturbating were uploaded a few days later to a heretofore dormant gay porn website run by Berry. During this period, Eichenwald became a member of the same website. Was the Times aware he was a member?

5. Eichenwald was not merely a member of the illegal site mentioned above. He also had administrative privileges to enter it, involving a special password available only to those managing the site. He used the password more than 20 times in late June, 2005 to sign onto the site. Was the Times aware of this?

The Times responded that it is “in the process of independently reviewing” the documents unsealed in Nashville.

Read much more at Your News Wire.