I love falafels. They are right up there with tacos in my list of favorite foods. Does eating falafels make me a terrorist? I don't think so. Apparently some FBI types think there is a link between falafel consumption and terrorism. What nonsense.
We pay these guys to protect us. I feel safe. Do you?
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 and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didnt last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBIs criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous and possibly illegal.
A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.
Source: CQ Politics | FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here. By Jeff Stein.
I smoke a hookah too. That must qualify me for the most wanted list. Oh wait a minute, I smoke cigars too, that must make me a Cuban terrorist.
Hat Tip: nazqulnarsil of digg for the story FBI hunted terrorist by checking falafel sales in San Francisco. His tag line is great.
further plans to stop illegal immigration through sales records at taco shops along the border were also abandoned
6 comments:
Too funny. This ranks right up there with US military's plan to invent a gay bomb.
You have GOT to be kidding me. And here I've been eating falafels in San Francisco for years! No wonder TSA give me the third degree every time I fly!
I shudder to think what the FBI makes of all my visits to Chinatown. . .
As much as I like reading your posts, this one makes me wish I were basking away on a Hawaiian beach. Oh, to be at the Hanalei Hotel in Kauai! Sigh. I guess I'll have to settle for a gyro. There aren't any Greek terrorists, are there?
I love felafel too!!! Sorry to be dense, but even if one were to grant that terrorists are felafel-eaters, I don't see any reason why their felafel-eating would spike just before they attack.......
how was there not a bill o'reilly joke in this post?h
The scary thing is that I recently read terrorists have tried to turn the tables on this kind of thing. Bin Laden just released a new videotape calling on terrorist cells to hunt down idiot law enforcement agencies by keeping track of donut sales.
you might be interested in this parody of the Fundamentalist "Left Behind" books
it's a book called:
Raptured: The final Daze of the Late, Great Planet Earth.
http://www.amazon.com/Raptured-Final-Great-Planet-Behind/dp/1884365426
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