How A Terror Suspect Was Allowed Back On A College Campus

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They had none of his criminal history, so they had no clue that there was an ISIS 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 cadets 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 U.S. 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 Washington. Sarah Adams, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Georgia Howe, and this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Thanks, 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 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. The work as a targeter, can you expand on that for our audience? Yeah, long story short, how the CIA worked. They had KSA. They had KSA 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, as 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. So to start on this particular incident that was really horrific and shocked the nation, who is Mohamed Baylor Jalloh, and how did he originally end up in prison? Yeah, so in 2016. 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, you know, we have another ISIS personnel out on the streets, and as you can imagine, the little guy who's been in prison for a long time, he's been in prison for a long time. And he's been in prison for a long time. And the local community really didn't have any idea, especially the school, Old Dominion University. Just to be 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, Jallo 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? They had none of his criminal history. How it was working at the time, first Virginia law, you can't even ask for criminal history during the admissions. Then when you get accepted, there was a voluntary questionnaire that went out, but it did not go out to readmitted 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 and 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? We have this huge gap when it comes to terror. Freedom is given to us by God, not government, but its ability to endure rests with the people. We're seeing our God-given rights tested, threatened, and violated. It's violated right now, and we must stop it before it's too late. 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Walk us through what happened the day of Jallo's attack for people who maybe didn't follow that story. What happened? We know he was focused on targeting military personnel, right? That's why he was arrested in 2016. So he chose the ROTC. So this wasn't some random event on campus. So he went in and he actually asked, is this the ROTC office? And then he got, you know, an affirmative response. And then he said, Al-Akbar. And he started shooting. Of course, you know, the lieutenant colonel got involved. He's the one who ended up dying, got shot several times. Two of them died. Two other individuals got shot. And then they obviously overpowered this terrorist. Thankfully, we had no more loss of 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, 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 soldiers? He was dead on scene after being stabbed by one of the students and overpowered by a few students and the instructor. Do we know any details about how they took him out? Yeah. I mean, he was very heroic. Obviously, the individuals there overpowered him. Now, I don't really say how they overpowered him. They won. Right. We do have, unfortunately, a system where we may charge people for taking it to a terrorist. It's just an unfortunate thing. So people don't really talk about the specifics of what they did to overpower and defeat the terrorist. It's just a good thing. It's 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 get out of jail. starting to come out of prison. We do have other issues though, We, of course, had ISIS members that have 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 and evolutions within ISIS, too, that makes it more dangerous right now. As you've spelled 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? Are any changes being made policy-wise to better handle situations like Jalos? Well, we did see at least a change with the Bureau of Prisons. So he got out early because he went through like a drug rehabilitation program that allows for early release. So they have taken. 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 with the sex, you know, the sex offender 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 something 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 charged for 9-11, what if you had a 20, 25? 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. So there's 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. Of course. Thanks for having me. That was former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams. And this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire. This has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire.