How A Terror Suspect Was Allowed Back On A College Campus

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Sarah Adams (1:02)

They had none of his criminal history, so they had no clue that there is an ISIS member on campus.

John Bickley (1:09)

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 cadets injured.

Georgia Howe (1:29)

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.

John Bickley (1:46)

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.

Sarah Adams (1:59)

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

John Bickley (2:01)

First, can you give us a little background on your career, which is obviously very relevant to this conversation?

Sarah Adams (2:06)

Yeah, I spent about a decade at the CIA as a targeter. 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.

John Bickley (2:22)

The work as a targeter, can you expand on that for our audience?

Sarah Adams (2:26)

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 could push operations forward and a lot of those operations, and most people know, are capture operations against terrorists. So it kind of just came out of a need. And that's what you do, you find and locate people.

John Bickley (2:44)

So to start on this particular incident that was really horrific and shocked the nation, who is Mohamed Bailor Jalloh and how did he originally end up in prison?

Sarah Adams (2:57)

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 wire some money to terrorists, he had an actual plot.

He ended up getting an 11-year sentence, it got 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 we have another ISIS person out on the streets. And as you can imagine, the local community really didn't have any idea, especially the school, Old Dominion University.

John Bickley (3:35)

Just to be clear, he was actively plotting with ISIS for an attack, and 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.

Sarah Adams (3:46)

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.

Georgia Howe (4:08)

Now, Jalloh reapplied to Old Dominion University and he was readmitted. What did the university know about his criminal history? Did they have all the information when they chose to readmit him?