West tries to
keep his gay porn pics private

As a Washington State judge prepares to decide whether the contents of Spokane, Wash., mayor James E. West's city-owned computer are part of the public record, the mayor is arguing that numerous gay-oriented photos on the laptop were placed there automatically. But a computer expert hired by the local newspaper said West and his lawyers are wrong and that material of a "pornographic nature" was deliberately downloaded to West's computer. Adams County superior court judge Richard Miller has been asked to consider West's effort to keep the contents of his computer sealed. West faces a December 6 recall election over a sex scandal involving gay men, and he is desperately trying to keep the contents of his laptop computer secret on the grounds that they are too offensive for the public to see. Earlier this week West's lawyers filed a court document saying a city computer expert was able to prove that the Web site Gay.com automatically placed pictures and other material about gay men onto the computers of visitors to the site. "All of the thumbnail pictures from the member profiles that I viewed had been automatically downloaded to the Internet cache folder," Garv Brakel wrote in his affidavit. West, a longtime Republican state senator and opponent of gay rights, has acknowledged that he was a closeted gay man but has denied breaking any laws. He has admitted that he visited Gay.com on his work computer but is denying that he deliberately downloaded some 1,800 files that The Spokesman-Review newspaper is demanding to see. Based on his testing, Brakel said a recent affidavit by Josiah Roloff, a computer expert hired by the newspaper, may be inaccurate. Roloff had contended that a user must select and view the pictures in member profiles in order for them to be downloaded to a computer. Roloff, of Global CompuSearch LLC of Spokane, was hired by lawyers for The Spokesman-Review, which since May 6 has been seeking access to the records on West's computer as part of its investigation into whether he abused his office by offering young gay men public appointments and jobs in exchange for sex. Roloff said Wednesday that Brakel's affidavit is flawed. While it is true that images and Web pages visited are saved in temporary Internet file folders without the user taking any action, Roloff said the items he was discussing in his affidavit were deliberately filed by the user. "The history files in this case indicate a purposeful, conscious choice to access individual profiles on Gay.com.," Roloff said. "These profiles then produced images that were saved to the West computer. These profiles and their accompanying images did not magically 'open up' simply because the user went to Gay.com," Roloff said, adding that the images "can only be described as of a pornographic nature." Spencer Moore, a spokesman for Gay.com, said Wednesday that the Web site will not get involved in West's legal battle, even if it means that contents from its site end up being released to the public. "We have no idea where his images came from," Moore said. "There is no way to know if it came from somebody e-mailing him direct." Moore said that material viewed on Gay.com is cached on a user's computer. But images are not automatically downloaded to a person's computer without the user's knowledge, Moore said. Brakel is a 30-year expert in the fields of information technology management and system administration who has worked for the city since 1998. He was asked by Mark Busto, a lawyer hired by the Spokane city council, to determine whether West violated city policies in the use of his computer and to determine what information is placed automatically on a user's computer after he logs on to Gay.com. Brakel said he took a computer identical to West's, made sure the hard drive was "clean," and installed standard city programs. He went on to Gay.com on November 8, witnessed by two city computer technicians, and registered as a member. "As a result of registering on Gay.com, the Internet cache folder on the tablet PC 'jumped' by 451 files," Brakel's declaration said. "These files were downloaded onto the hard drive when I registered on Gay.com, without my knowledge or consent." Brakel then clicked on the "member profiles" link on Gay.com and searched for males between the ages of 18 and 50 within a 30-mile radius of downtown Spokane. The results were displayed as head-and-shoulders pictures with short text descriptions. He clicked on one of the pictures, which brought up a profile page, a larger picture, and a series of small "thumbnail" pictures. Brakel said he did not click on any of the thumbnail pictures. But when he looked at the computer's Internet cache folder, all of the thumbnail pictures from member profiles he viewed had been automatically downloaded to the folder, even though he did not click on them. (AP)