'Could've been catastrophic:' How a parent and joint task force stopped a White House attack

**Christy Strawser** (0:01)
Welcome to On Deadline, your radio news from Odyssey newsrooms across the country.
I'm Christy Strawser, Odyssey's managing editor of news. Pundits had a lot to say about the UFC match held on the White House lawn for Donald Trump's birthday. But it turns out there was something insidious afoot. Here's more on a foiled terror plot from KCBS in the Bay Area.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:21)
Rich Frankel, former FBI special agent in charge and a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City.
Rich, it's great to have you on this morning. This is just breaking overnight. What can you tell us about this situation?

**Rich Frankel** (0:35)
Yeah. So from what it appears, this was a joint United States Secret Service FBI case. They got actually the lead from a local PD in Cincinnati who got a call from a parent reporting about the conversations of this quote unquote crew. And the allegations are that there was conspiracy, anywhere from 5 to 23 people who wanted to take drones, laden them with explosives, and then have them fly over the UFC event and explode either above or in it, causing injury, death, mayhem.
And they actually did do something overt in the case. I haven't heard about the drones themselves yet, but it appears that several of the individuals drove to Virginia and pre-position themselves for the event, for the UFC event, which is important because it shows that they did something overt. It wasn't just talking. If this is all accurate, that they actually did go forward.
What we don't know is the age of these individuals, because it was a parent who called in. You know, you could have teens, you could have late teens, you could have people in their early 20s. We just don't know more about this quote unquote group yet. Other than, it appears that five individuals have been arrested by the FBI on this.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:06)
Do we believe these bad actors were domestic or was there an overseas influence or do we know yet?

**Rich Frankel** (2:13)
We don't know. It appears that they're domestic in the sense that they were based in Cincinnati and other locations, but we don't know any more about it, you know, about them. It appears that they were communicating on one of the apps, you know, like a signal app, so that they were trying to keep their conversations covert.
And that's what the arrests, I believe, were made on. And right now, there are other warrants being served to identify other conversations and get more intelligence, more evidence in this case.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:50)
So, Rich, as far as we know, and again, details are just coming in this morning. So, some of them actually went to Virginia, and so it was busted up by the FBI before they had a chance to act?

**Rich Frankel** (3:01)
Correct. Yeah, the FBI was able to stop this. And in fact, we are hearing that the Secret Service actually did know, again, because it was a Joint Secret Service case, that they were aware of this conspiracy ahead of time and that they had taken actions to make the event safe and to also notify others that this was taking place and that basically be on the lookout.
In other words, it could have been even that they put out names and pictures of people so that if they were observed in the area, that they would have been arrested. So this was a well coordinated, it appears to be a well coordinated response and investigation to what could have been a very horrific attack if it came true.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:52)
Rich, you're a former member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City. So you've faced terror at the highest level. In a day and age where sometimes we don't know what to believe is a conspiracy, did it really happen?
Your read on this, does it all seem legit?

**Rich Frankel** (4:06)
It seems that there was definitely something going on. Well, let me change my... It appears that something was going on. In my opinion, it appears if I was an FBI agent and I had this information, it would be something that we would be running on immediately to identify any and all conspirators and use sophisticated techniques, which appears that they did, to identify who's talking to who, what they're talking about. Do they have the capacity to actually do what they're saying, and are they taking any overt steps? So far, we have a lot of that information, but we don't have it all. We don't know about the explosives, and we don't know if they actually put together the drones with explosives on them. If they did that, then we've got a real terrorist activity.