{"id":1459,"date":"2007-11-06T15:41:24","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T22:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2007-11-06T15:41:24","modified_gmt":"2007-11-06T22:41:24","slug":"fbi-hoped-to-follow-falafel-trail-to-iranian-terrorists-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/06\/fbi-hoped-to-follow-falafel-trail-to-iranian-terrorists-here\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cqpolitics.com\/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&#038;docID=hsnews-000002620892\">CQ:<\/a><i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.<\/p>\n<p>The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.<\/p>\n<p>The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn\u2019t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI\u2019s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous \u2014 and possibly illegal.<\/p>\n<p>A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not even close to having the skillz of an FBI agent, but I can tell you three reasons why this plan was doomed from the beginning &#8212; beyond than the fact that it&#8217;s totally illegal.<\/p>\n<p>1) Falafel isn&#8217;t a Persian food at all. When was the last time you saw an Iranian eating falafel? (And the one time I went with Boyk to Sunshine Caf\u00e9 in Berkeley two weeks ago doesn&#8217;t count.)<\/p>\n<p>2) Iranian terrorist? Seriously? Think about that for a second. Name one Iranian terrorist. Go ahead, I dare you.<\/p>\n<p>3) While the Bay Area may have some Iranians, we&#8217;re dwarfed by the number that are in LA and Orange counties. Plus, everyone knows that real Iranians (&#8220;terrorists&#8221; or otherwise) hit up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mashtimalone.com\/\">Mashti Malone&#8217;s<\/a> for totally sweet <i>bastani<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>[via <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.foreignpolicy.com\/node\/6925\">FP Passport<\/a>] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CQ: Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists. The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area. The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64,87,96,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-food","category-i-love-the-bay-area","category-iran","category-wtf","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-nx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}