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Townshend's essay lends support to his claim that he has been campaigning against child porn for some time. But investigators will want to know if he was aware when he posted the treatise that the porn site he had visited had been busted. The Landslide trial in August 2001 was well publicized. Attorney General John Ashcroft himself announced it to the press. Townshend's Web account could be a self-serving effort to pre-empt suspicion. It could also turn out that his motives are more mixed than even he knows. If he was abused as a child, could he separate his revulsion at child pornography from his curiosity about it? Does Townshend saying "I have never downloaded" sound too much like Bill Clinton saying he never inhaled? Or is he being unfairly singled out by authorities who are using him to show that their crackdown is working? --Reported by J.F.O. McAllister/London, Elaine Shannon/Washington and Chris Taylor/San Francisco