18,000 Terrorists Are Already Living On US Soil. Former CIA Targeting Officer Sarah Adams Explains The Deception Campaigns They Use To Hide And How Al-Qaeda Grew To 200,000 Members

**Sarah Adams** (0:00)
Terrorism today is much bigger than terrorism on 9-11. We have over 18,000 known foreign terrorists on US soil. They're collecting money, they're doing influence media operations, they're doing surveillance. People need to know the truth.

**Mayim Bialik** (0:15)
Sarah Adams, former CIA targeting officer and global threat advisor, explains how the US may be more vulnerable to a terrorist threat than ever before.

**Sarah Adams** (0:24)
In 9-11, Al Qaeda was 5,000 members. Now, worldwide, they have over 200,000. There are sleeper cells in the United States. It's a public thing, so terrorists haven't tried to attack us. Yes, they have. We stop them every single time.

**Mayim Bialik** (0:38)
Okay, I'm officially afraid.

**Sarah Adams** (0:40)
It makes me really nervous that awareness is going away. More lacks on security, more lacks on counterintelligence.

**Jonathan Cohen** (0:46)
Are we becoming more vulnerable?

**Sarah Adams** (0:48)
You can't live based on a fear, but knowing the threats out there, you can prepare around them. You want to come to my country? You want to be in my neighborhood? Bring it on. It's going to be a bad day for you.

**Mayim Bialik** (1:08)
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

**Jonathan Cohen** (1:09)
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

**Mayim Bialik** (1:10)
And welcome to our breakdown. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into national intelligence gathering, terrorism, Iran's role in global politics, and the future of global conflict.

**Jonathan Cohen** (1:24)
We're also exploring the forces shaping the world that many of us never see.

**Mayim Bialik** (1:29)
Our guest today is Sarah Adams.
She's the host of The Watch Floor, and she's a former CIA targeting officer and global threat advisor. She served in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the Near East Division, and the Iran Operations Division, and she advised the US House of Representatives on national security matters, and later led the Department of Defense Research and Development efforts focused on intelligence, modernization, and operational capability development. She lived in Libya for many years and wrote Benghazi, Know Thy Enemy, a cold case investigation. Sarah's going to talk about the current threats that the United States is facing, what we've done wrong, how we are vulnerable, and how we can turn that around.

**Jonathan Cohen** (2:14)
We're going to talk about how the shoe bomb is making a comeback, how terrorists have developed an invisible bomb, and that the next 9-11 is already being planned.

**Mayim Bialik** (2:25)
This isn't a conversation just about terrorism, though. It's about how we can be manipulated. The role of propaganda, psychological conditioning, intelligence operations. What are the narratives in the media that influence the way we see our role in the world? And whether global chaos is being engineered by forces that most of us don't even know are there. It's a pleasure to welcome to the breakdown, Sarah Adams.
Break it down.

**Sarah Adams** (2:53)
Thanks. Thanks for having me.

**Mayim Bialik** (2:54)
Let's just start here.
Sarah, how much fun are you at cocktail parties? I'm assuming everyone wants to ask you about the things that you're an expert in.

**Sarah Adams** (3:04)
Yes, I get a lot of questions, but they're always like crazy ones. And you're like, this is something that should just stay in your head.

**Jonathan Cohen** (3:12)
Go on. I'd like to hear those.

**Mayim Bialik** (3:15)
What do people ask you, like generally speaking, what do people kind of bring up when they learn that you are Sarah Adams?

**Sarah Adams** (3:22)
They'll do these weird things like in my town, there was like a CIA abduction in the 1960s. Do you know about it? It's like, or they'll be like, we had a secret CIA base in our town. And so it's always these strange, I guess, town lords or something. So I think it's really funny.

**Mayim Bialik** (3:40)
Can you explain for people what it is that you are an expert in? Obviously, you're an analyst, you're an advisor, you held a very high and very, very significant position in our government at an incredibly important time in our history. Who are you and what do you do?

**Sarah Adams** (4:03)
I feel like I'm not an expert in anything. I'm just really good at common sense. But so for years, I worked of course terrorism, I worked against Iran, so I've done a mix of geopolitics, I've done a lot of humanitarian work. But I'm just one of those people, I grew up in the Midwest, I'll talk to anyone. I'm really good at going out and getting information from any human on Earth, because I just think we're all human to human.
So I'm mostly known for like going out and collecting information and then sharing it with the public, because I feel like we don't do a lot where we pass down to the public what's going on.