Comments on the Arrested Doctor in Pakistan

A senior government lawyer writes in with the following thought on the Pakistani sentencing of Dr. Shakil Afridi, the doctor who helped the CIA locate Osama Bin Laden:

it’s possible that others may have made this point (which seems obvious to me) but I haven’t seen it. Imagine the tables turned--that a doctor in the U.S. cooperated with the Iranian Government to provide information that led to the killing of an Iranian dissident in the U.S. by the Quds Force. There’s no doubt that this conduct would violate U.S. law, at least in the event that the doctor knew who he was providing information to. Even if the doctor couldn’t be prosecuted for conspiring in the killing, it’s a clear violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, of a sort that is routinely prosecuted in the U.S. Thirty three years is a long time, but there have been Cuban spies in the U.S. who have gotten pretty long terms for FARA violations. Hey, espionage is a dirty game.