FBI agents investigating an online child pornography ring wound up targeting one of their own after AOL handed over subscriber information on an anonymous user who'd received kiddie porn at his AOL address. His phone number was FBI headquarters.

The Smoking Gun has the story: After the FBI arrested an Illinois man named Ronald Norweathers in December 2009 for distributing child pornography over the internet, agents assumed his online persona and kept up correspondence with many of his kiddie porn buddies. When they looked through Norweathers' inbox, they found an e-mail sent in March 2009 from the address nomoreravens@aol.com complaining about a batch of 78 pictures Norweathers had sent, including pictures of a boy "performing oral sex on [another] boy": "I don't want kiddie porn scary." Norweathers had responded: "well duh pick through for the teen stuff i sent it how it came to me."

When agents sent AOL an administrative subpoena seeking the identity of nomoreravens@aol.com (whose preference for "teen" child pornography over "kiddie" child pornography is unlikely to constitute much of a defense), they got back Joseph Bonsuk of Baltimore, Md., phone number "(202) 324-8494"—which, according to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in the case "is a number at FBI Headquarters."

Bonsuk, according to the Smoking Gun, is a management and program analyst for the FBI. He told the site that he is "totally innocent," that his apparent receipt via e-mail of child pornography was a "mix-up," and that he's cooperating with the investigation by his colleagues. Before tipping Bonsuk off to the fact that he was a target, the agents copied his work computer and found evidence that he'd used it to access his AOL e-mail, but no traces of pornography. (That photo of Bonsuk is from his Bebo profile, which features a lot of friendships with buff young men and hasn't been active for a year.)

The FBI declined to comment to the Smoking Gun on the investigation, which is now being conducted by the bureau's inspector general.

[Photos of Bonsuk and Norweathers (inset) via The Smoking Gun]