The moral of this story may be that sometimes it’s better not to have friends, especially the sort with easy access to the op-ed page of the New York Times, or “The Newspaper of Record,” as it sometimes bills itself.

About a week ago, in the guise of defending us against an imagined prosecution for materially assisting a foreign terrorist organization based on our comments at a conference where we urged that Mujahadin e Khalq (“MEK”) be removed from the State Department’s list of such organizations, Prof. David Cole of Georgetown Law School took to the op-ed page of the Times with a bit of rhetorical jujitsu designed to enlist us in his campaign to change the federal statute that bars such assistance. The liberal blogosphere salivated at the suggestion that four conservative Republicans were providing material support to a terrorist organization, notwithstanding Professor Cole’s tongue-in-cheek defense.

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MEK, which opposes the current regime in Tehran and has provided valuable intelligence to the United States on Iranian nuclear plans, was placed on the State Department list during the Clinton administration as a purported goodwill gesture to the mullahs, in aid of furthering dialogue. Regrettably, it was kept on during the administration of George W. Bush, in part out of fear that Iran would provide IEDs to our enemies in Iraq, which of course the mullahs are doing anyway. Both the European Union and the United Kingdom have removed the organization from their lists, with the result that MEK is now designated a terrorist organization by only the United States and Iran. More than 100 members of Congress have supported a resolution to undo this designation. We appeared at a conference two weeks ago and described why we thought the designation was anomalous and unwarranted.

Professor Cole’s arch suggestion that our conduct raises a question under the material-support statute is undone by the text of the law itself. The statute barring material assistance to organizations on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (“FTO”) says that although “material assistance” includes “personnel,” and although “personnel” may include the person providing the assistance — here,