FBI Files Show Wide "Deep Throat" Investigation

"Deep Throat" achieved fame unlike any pornographic film in history and become the most widely known adult film to reach a general audience. It was hugely profitable — made for about $25,000 and amassing hundreds of millions in receipts — and became a cultural buzzword.

Officials at every level of government tried to stop screenings and obscenity trials continued for years. But in the end, experts say, it represents the end of an era in which the government sought to stop the changing cultural tides.

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, said the oddity of the scope of the investigation into "Deep Throat" is a reflection of very different times.

"Certainly today, with our broadly socially less restrictive attitude to most pornography and to sex more broadly it may seem odd that the government was spending so much effort on something like this," he said. "But attitudes back then were much different."