NEW YORK (AP) -- Pornographer Larry Flynt says he bought nude
photos of Pfc. Jessica Lynch to publish in Hustler magazine, but changed
his mind because she's a "good kid" who became "a pawn for the
government."
Flynt told The Associated Press
on Tuesday that he bought the photos last month from the men who
purportedly participated in the amateur shoot with the Army supply clerk.
The soldiers "wanted to let it be known that she's not all apple pie,"
Flynt said.
"My first intention was to
publish them, but I don't think it was the best, positive move I could
make," Flynt said in a telephone interview. "She's very much a pawn for
the government. They force-fed us a Joan of Arc."
In an interview with the AP on
Tuesday, Lynch declined to comment on any aspect of the matter, including
whether such photos exist.
Her attorney, Stephen Goodwin,
said in a statement: "It's incredulous that anyone would think it
appropriate in any way to attempt to publish unauthorized photos of
Jessica -- photos taken before she was deployed to Iraq and before her
capture and rescue."
The interview with Lynch was
scheduled to publicize her biography, "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica
Lynch Story," which was released Tuesday. It covers the days between March
23, when her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah,
and April 1, when she was evacuated from a hospital by U.S. commandos.
After her rescue, the young
soldier from Palestine, West Virginia, was celebrated as a hero prisoner
of war.
Goodwin also said Lynch had never
claimed to be a hero, saving that description for her rescuers.
"She is and will remain -- not a
Joan of Arc, not a hero -- but a young woman honestly and openly dealing
with the high price she has paid for proud service to her country," he
said.
Flynt said the photographs
appeared to be taken in an Army barracks, and showed Lynch topless and
fully nude, frolicking with the soldiers.
He would not say what he paid for
the photographs, which he said he'd lock in a vault.
"Some things are more important
than money," he said. "You gotta do the right thing."
Flynt has been paralyzed from the
waist down since an assassination attempt in 1978. His magazine won a
landmark Supreme Court decision in 1988 that held that even pornographic
spoofs enjoy First Amendment protection.
Flynt 