FBI: No Falafel Probe

Remember the mini-flap over the CQ Homeland Security report that FBI agents in San Francisco were tracking sales of falafel and other Middle Eastern foods at local markets in the hopes that the data might lead them to Iranian secret agents? Well, FBI higher-ups have looked into the whole situation and their official response is that the story is "too ridiculous to be true."

"I spoke to the counterterrorism managers, who in the story were identified as having hatched the plan, as well as everyone else who would have had any knowledge of it," says John Miller, head of the FBI's Office of Public Affairs. "Nobody did."