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Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, Pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the Pray.com app today. They had none of his criminal history, so they had no clue that there was an IITS member on campus. That was former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams talking about a terror case that shook the
nation. On March 12th of this year, a known terror threat, who had been allowed to enroll at Old Dominion University, carried out a targeted attack that left one Army ROTC instructor dead, and two ROTC conducts injured. In this episode, we're joined by Adams to discuss the alarming case what lessons have been
learned and not learned from that fatal attack, and where the terror threat stands now in the US. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley, and this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Sarah Adams, a former CIA targeting officer who's currently writing a new
series of articles for the Daily Wire, including one on the terror attack on Old Dominion University earlier this year. Sarah, welcome on. Thanks for having me.
First, can you give us a little background on your career, which is obviously very relevant
to this conversation? Yeah, I spent about a decade at the CIA as a targetter, and then after I left, I went and worked on the Hill on the Select Committee in Benghazi, where we obviously investigated the incident, and then I went on and carried out my own investigation into the attacks and I put it into a book.
The work as a targetter, can you expand on that for our audience? Yeah, long story short, how the CIA worked, they had case officers, and they had analysts, but after 9/11, they didn't have someone in the middle that they pushed operations forward and a lot of those operations and most people know our capture operations against terrorists,
“so it kind of just came out of a need, and that's what you do.”
You find it locate people. So to start on this particular incident that was really horrific and shocked the nation, who is Muhammad Baylor Jalo, and how did he originally end up in prison? Yeah, so in 2016 he got convicted for working on an ISIS plot where he was going to attack military personnel, so this wasn't just someone who was trying to wires some money to
terrorist, he had an actual plot, he ended up getting an 11-year sentence that's shortened, unfortunately, and he got released on a five-year supervised release in December of 2024, so he didn't serve his whole time, and then, you know, we have another ISIS person out out on the streets, and as you can imagine, the local community really didn't have any idea, especially the school, Old Dominion University.
It's a big clear, I mean, he was actively plotting with ISIS for an attack, but he got out, first of all, he just got out at all, which is shocking to me, and he's allowed in our country to walk free. Yeah, I mean, the negative is this is what happens when we actually put Americans in prison, we have, we put, what, 209 Americans in prison for joining ISIS, well, when they serve
their terms, they get released and not a lot of people are talking about that, but we already have 72 released right now in this country, in this case show, they're not really being monitored in an effective way. Now, Jello reapplied to Old Dominion University, and he was re-admitted, what did the university know about his criminal history?
“Did they have all the information when they chose to read mid-Him?”
They had none of his criminal history, how about it was working at the time? First Virginia law, you can't even ask for criminal history during the admissions period. Then when you get accepted, there was a voluntary questionnaire that went out, but it did
not go out to remitted students, it goes up now, but it was still voluntary, so he never
got it. It wasn't filled in FBI never told them he was on campus, his parole officer didn't inform the campus, so they had no clue that there was an ISIS member on campus. So his parole officer, I would think the parole officer would be required to inform a school of that kind of history.
So he has the ability in the freedom to tell someone who employs him or a school, he did not do that, but there is no law requiring him to inform them that he's an ISIS member, isn't that a crazy thing where he has a huge gap when it comes to terror. Freedom is given to us by God, not government, but it's ability to endure rest with the people.
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“What happened is we know he was focused on targeting military first of all, right?”
That's why he was around since 2016. So he chose the ROT-Z, so this wasn't some random event done campus, so he went in, and he actually asked is this the ROT-Z office, and then he got, you know, affirmative response, and then he said all the lock bar, and he started shooting, of course, you know, the Lieutenant Colonel got involved, and he's the one who ended up dying, got shot several times, two
other individuals got shot, and then they obviously overpowered this Paris. Hopefully we had no more loss to life, but yeah, this was a targeted attack. So this is exactly the kind of thing that he had been plotting with ISIS, and he was arrested for and convicted of. Yeah, and remember, ODU, where it's located, it has a very large military population
of its students compared to other universities, too. Now, would you know that he was dead on scene after being stabbed by one of the students in overpowered by a few students in the instructor, do we know any details about how they took him out? Yeah, I mean, he was very heroic, obviously, the individuals that are overpowered him.
Now, I don't really say how they overpowered him. They won, right? We do have unfortunately system where we may charge people for taking it to a terrace, just an unfortunate thing. So people don't really talk about the specifics of what they did to overpowered defeat
the terrace, just a good news story that they were able to, and they were brave enough to. Now in your article for Daily Wire, you say researchers were warning that an ISIS era terrorism problem was brewing by 2024. This happened this year, you know, so there's been a lot of warnings about this kind of
thing happening.
“What prompted first researchers to say that we really are bound to see some threats?”
Well, it's just the fact that about 10 years ago was the peak of ISIS, a lot of terrorists ended up with like 10-year sentences, I mean, his was 11, but you know, 8 to 10 to 12 years is what they're spending in prison, and then they're getting out. So obviously, it's important now because they're getting free again, and a lot of terrorists just go back in the fight, unfortunately, the reactivism rate is very, very high.
So that risk warning was largely in part because of these people being released back into the public. Yes, because we're getting to the phase now, they're starting to come out of prison. We do have other issues, though. We, of course, had ISIS members out of come over the southern border.
That type of thing, we have a lot of issues where ISIS has really leaned in and gotten a lot more effective in their online recruitment. So now, for example, you can do everything online, you don't have to try to travel overseas, so it makes it a lot more accessible to anyone who wants to commit terrorism. So there has been other things in evolution within ISIS, too, that makes it more dangerous
right now. As you've spilled out, I mean, there's a lot of obvious gaps here in terms of our national
Security and how we're dealing with threats known threats like this.
Are you seeing any action on that or are any changes being made policy-wise to better handle
situations like Jollos?
“So we did see at least the change with the Bureau of Presence.”
So he got out early because he went through a drug rehabilitation program that allows for early release, so they have taken that off the table if you have a terrorism offense.
So that would at least kept him in jail, what, almost three more years, but you still have
the problem when he gets out. So we don't really have a system in place, like you would have the sex, you know, the sex defender registry. We don't have anything like that in place where you can look up, do I have a terrorist in my neighborhood and maybe that's not what we should think about.
Stunning, I can't actually believe that this is how we handle this. Yeah, it's crazy.
“And think about even if you're a charge for 9/11, what do you got a 25-year prison sentence?”
30-year prison sentence. You're getting out soon and a lot of people don't realize the time that has passed in some of these cases. And you said right now, we have something like 72 known threats that are free in the country. Yeah, those are just ISIS, those are obviously other terrorists that have been released as well.
“Well, a major problem here, and thankfully we have people like you with expertise, sounding”
the alarm over some of these issues, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thanks for having me. That was former CIA Targeting Officer Sarah Adams, and this has been a weekend episode of Morningwire. Change the direction of your entire day with Pray.com.
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