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

Former CIA Targeting Officer Sarah Adams reveals what she believes are some of the biggest national security threats facing the United States today, and why many Americans may have a false sense of security about the future. In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Sarah explains why the U. S. could be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than many realize, whether the U. S. is currently facing an active terrorist threat, and how the same types of intelligence disconnects that contributed to 9/11 could still exist today. She breaks down why we need to rethink what a future homeland attack might actually look like, how terrorist organizations are evolving, and why groups like Al Qaeda may be more widespread than ever. Sarah shares shocking insights into sleeper cells operating within the U. S., foreign actors intentionally fueling political division to increase influence, the strategic relationship between Al Qaeda, Iran, and Syria, and why many terrorist groups are now organized around waves of coordinated attacks. She also discusses emerging security concerns, including airport vulnerabilities, the return of threats similar to the Shoe Bomb and the rise of "invisible" bombs, and what she believes went wrong from a security standpoint during the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting incident. Drawing from years spent targeting some of the world's most dangerous terrorists, Sarah recounts how she helped capture the Taliban's number two leader, the intelligence work that made it possible, and what qualities allowed her to gather critical information in some of the most hostile environments on Earth. We also explore intelligence deception campaigns, how disinformation operations work, and the warning signs people should recognize when evaluating information online. Sarah reveals what it was like to interrogate Middle Eastern male detainees as a Western woman, how individuals become radicalized, and the indoctrination systems inside terrorist camps that determine whether recruits become fighters, suicide bombers, propagandists, or support personnel. She explains how corruption within humanitarian systems can allow resources to be diverted toward terrorist organizations and how ordinary people may unknowingly contribute to funding foreign terrorist camps. We also break downHavana Syndrome, alleged energy weapon incidents, reports involving an investigator connected to the Epstein case, and what is currently known (and still unknown) about these controversial claims. Sarah also discusses the role of social media algorithms in radicalization, whether platforms like TikTok are shaping the opinions of younger generations, and the broader information war being fought online. She opens up about living under a bounty, receiving threats from terrorist organizations, dealing with alleged surveillance around her home, and how she manages the psychological stress that comes with being a target. She shares practical advice on disaster preparedness, what average citizens can do to become more resilient during crises, and why the culture of terrorism has far more to do with ideology, power, and human behavior than religion itself. This conversation will challenge the way you think about terrorism, national security, online influence, and the risks that could define the next decade! Every self-made person started somewhere. Yours starts free at https://www.shopify.com/breakdown. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BREAK at https://www.oneskin.co/BREAK #oneskinpod Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive 20% off sitewide, 25% of Luxe Mattresses and 30% off Elite Mattresses. Get the Discounted Early Bird registration to the IANDS Annual conference before the sale ends July 15. Visithttps://conference.iands.org/https://conference.iands.org Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to https://www.quince.com/breakdown for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Sarah Adam’s Podcast, The Watch Floor: https://www.youtube.com/@thewatchfloorSarah Adams' Book, Benghazi, Know Thy Enemy: A Cold Case Investigation: https://a.co/d/09aeb3tG Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Speaker 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.

• 0:15Mayim Bialik?

  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.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  On 9/11, Al Qaeda was 5,000 members. Now, worldwide, they have over 200,000. There are sleeper cells in the United States. The public thinks terrorists haven't tried to attack us. Yes, they have. We stop them every single time.

• 0:38Mayim Bialik?

  OK, I'm officially afraid.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  It makes me really nervous that awareness is going away. More lax on security, more lax on counterintelligence.

• 0:46Jonathan Cohen?

  Are we becoming more vulnerable?

• 0:48Speaker 00

  You can't live based on a fear, but knowing the threats out there, you can prepare around them. Want to come to my country, want to be in my neighborhood? Bring it on. It's gonna be a bad day for you.

• 1:08Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Iyan Bialik.

• 1:09Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:10Mayim Bialik?

  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.

• 1:24Jonathan Cohen?

  We're also exploring the forces shaping the world that many of us never see.

• 1:29Mayim Bialik?

  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.

• 2:14Jonathan Cohen?

  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.

• 2:25Mayim Bialik?

  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.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Break it down. Thanks, thanks for having me.

• 2:54Mayim Bialik?

  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.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  Yes, I get a lot of questions, but they're always like crazy ones and you're like, this is something that should just stayed in your head.

• 3:12Jonathan Cohen?

  Go on, I'd like to hear those.

• 3:14Mayim Bialik?

  What do people ask you, like generally speaking? What do people kind of bring up when they learn that you are Sarah Adams?

• 3:22Speaker 00

  They'll do these weird things like, "In my town, there was like a CIA abduction in the 1960s. Do you know about it?" And 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 lures or something. So I think it's really funny.

• 3:40Mayim Bialik?

  Can you explain for people what it is that you are an expert in? You know, obviously, you're an analyst, you're an advisor, you held a very high and very, very significant, you know, position in our government at an incredibly important time in our history. Who are you and what do you do?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  I feel like I'm not an expert in anything. I'm just really good at common sense. But, um, so for years, I worked, of course, terrorism. I worked against Iran. So I've done a mix of like geopolitics. I've done a lot of humanitarian work. But I'm just kind of one of those people, I grew up in the Midwest. 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.

• 4:45Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, I'm just struck by like if I were to see you in the supermarket, I'd be like, that's a lady. I would not necessarily think this is someone who's operating at the highest levels, you know, of government, of terrorism, of intelligence. Is that part of the way you get information? Is there just sort of a familiarity that you're able to achieve? Because with all due respect, if I saw you working at, you know, at the local store, I'd be like, that's a nice lady. That's Sarah, right? I wouldn't say like, this seems like a CIA intelligence analyst is working at my local store.

• 5:21Jonathan Cohen?

  Who's defending America against threats and finding information about adversaries who may want to harm us.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  That's the interesting thing. People assume you're going to look a certain way, I guess, because they've seen the movies, even though there aren't tons of women in the spy movies. But they don't get that you're just like everybody else. And usually, most agency people I met, especially women, are actually from small towns. They grew up just like me. They were friends with everyone. They grew up in neighborhoods where they didn't lock their doors. It's a very, very interesting thing. We didn't grow up in environments where we are fearful in any way. So I think we also approach things differently. We're more comfortable reaching out to people. Even when we did our investigation into Libya, I put a list together of, I'm going to reach out to these Libyans and just ask them some questions. I'm going to be straightforward, right?

• 6:14Speaker 00

  I'm Sarah Adams, former CIA. My friends died here. Every single person I reached out to was at least helpful. Even if they didn't know my answer, they said, oh, I can find someone that can for you. And so it's a really interesting thing. People are good. People want to be helpful. And I think that's anywhere in the world. I think we just sometimes forget that because we see only the press version of the world. We don't see real life.

• 6:38Mayim Bialik?

  What were the skills that you had as a young person that you now see made you a good candidate for the kind of work that you do in terms of gathering information? Also, you know, I think you're being humble. It's not just common sense. It's being able to connect a variety of different pieces of information that in many cases are indicating threat. What was it about Sarah, right, that made you a good candidate for the kind of position you ended up having?

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think the best trait, and I think CIA looks for this a lot, is if you're scrappy. Because the thing is, when you're in the CIA, you fail all the time. First off, you're overseas and it's chaos. No one shows up on time. People tell you yes when it's no because they don't want to give you or no. Nothing goes right. So you can't get frustrated when it all falls apart because you gotta start over and do it again and keep moving through till you get to where you need to be. So that's a really big thing. Another thing, like you said, is the ability to connect things and understand how they connect, but also don't just connect things because, oh, you know, there's a lot of people like, everyone called this phone number. Yes, everyone calls that

• 7:54Speaker 00

  phone number in my town because it's the one pizza joint, right? The pizza guy isn't gonna link us to the whole network. So it is a little bit of, you have to have common sense, but there are people who always want to find the answer quickly and you have to be patient. You have to make those mistakes. You have to know people are lying to you and just be understanding of that and then go with the flow as it happens.

• 8:18Mayim Bialik?

  I'm just making a list of the qualities that I'm supposed to have. Patience, that's not for me. No, he's shaking his head.

• 8:25Jonathan Cohen?

  Also, when things go wrong, she does not like that.

• 8:29Mayim Bialik?

  I burn it, burn it all to the ground. Patience, scrappy, ability to kind of like roll with the punches. These are good qualities. And being friendly, which I am not from the Midwest. My people are from New York. You're not friendly to anyone.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:46Jonathan Cohen?

  You just failed your CIA entrance exam.

• 8:48Mayim Bialik?

  I think I'm more likely to be the person that Sarah's investigating than the person doing the investigating.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Oh, yes. New Yorkers? No way.

• 8:58Jonathan Cohen?

  Talk to us a little bit about the bullshit detector that you have to have because I would assume while people are friendly, there are also people who are lying to you all the time. And you know, you say common sense, but I think there's a sixth sense that's happening where you see something or you sense something that others don't, which makes you want to get to that truth.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, the easiest if you spend a lot of time with someone because then you can set a baseline and you'll notice when things go off the baseline. That's the easiest. Of course, you don't always have that luxury. So if you don't spend a lot of time with a person, in my opinion, you can't just determine it on your own. You have to collect other information. So for example, I know a lot of different Al Qaeda deception campaigns. So there are certain things when people say something to me, I'm like, oh, you know, I know this is the language they teach the recruits. I know this is how they say things. I know this is how they try to sell them. So you kind of have to have a little bit of both, as much time and time as possible.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  And then as much information of how the enemy wants to deceive you. So you have a little bit of a light bulb go off when it happens.

• 10:11Jonathan Cohen?

  Talk to us about some of those deception campaigns. What do you look out for?

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, one of the simplest ones is just downplaying of if someone's important or not. And this was actually very famously done in a Zero Dark Thirty movie. So, you know, we're in Hollywood world, but I don't know if you remember when Maya was looking for Osama bin Laden, she was questioning detainees. I fast forward through that beginning, but she's questioning detainees.

• 10:41Mayim Bialik?

  I didn't like that part, yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  I don't like it either. And she notices multiple detainees call this courier very important, saying he's always with bin Laden. And then one guy says, oh, he's nobody. Why are you even asking about that guy? And she said, that's weird because three people said he's important and one people said he's a nobody, right? So that's really interesting when they downplay someone. Another thing they like to do is they like to just tell you people are dead. I know this is crazy, but they'll report people dead all the time. So the US government has all these terrorists dead that never died.

• 11:14Mayim Bialik?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  So you have to put in...

• 11:16Mayim Bialik?

  Wait, they say people are dead, but they're not? Or they think that they're dead, but they're not?

• 11:22Speaker 00

  They say they're dead and then they tell you, oh, he was killed in a US strike. So then Americans are like, whoa, whoa, we got that guy. Who knew? Um, and then they pat themselves on the back. People get promoted and they move on and he's perfectly alive. That's another huge problem. And then just one of the simplest things, as you can imagine, is you get paid to give information. So there's a lot of information peddlers. They might be working for multiple governments. They just tell you what you want to hear. It's really funny. I used to work the number two of the Taliban and there is a guy in Afghanistan that said he met with him. I said, this guy knows nothing about him. So I captured this number two and I send the photo over and he can't ID the photo of a guy he meets monthly.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  And so I said, I told you, he's never had any info. It's crap info. And they're like, well, we get such good ratings on all his reports. We're keeping him. So they didn't even fire him. So it's just tons of crap info. So you have to also be able to go through all this noise. You know, and really determine what's quality information.

• 12:24Mayim Bialik?

  Did you just say you captured him?

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, the number two. I wish I could capture the asset though, because he's worse. Because if you have someone lying to you for years, that destroys your collection.

• 12:35Mayim Bialik?

  Sarah, you're talking so casually. It's kind of like, like I baked a cheesecake. I captured the number two.

• 12:41Jonathan Cohen?

  How did you capture him?

• 12:43Speaker 00

  So this is really funny and this is why just mistakes happen in life. We all make a mistake. So he was the best. He was like the movies. You know, in the movies, they're like, stay on the phone for like nine seconds and then hang up. He literally did that all the time. So you could never find him. Well, he went to another city for a trip and his son stole his cellphone and turned it on.

• 13:07Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  A teenager, a teenager. So the teenager takes the phone and rides with it for two days. And then they come back home with it and we captured it. So it was really, really funny, right? Luckily we had done all the work, so we were ready for it to happen, but that was pure luck that a kid did that to his father. And that actually happened very, to a very senior leader in Hezbollah. His kid put on, I think it was Facebook, hey, we're going to this location. And then they had looked for his father for like 15 or 20 years. So it is sometimes the family that messes it up for these senior terrorists.

• 13:44Jonathan Cohen?

  That kid's getting grounded hard.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, the funny thing is I met the terrorist and then we brought it up and he laughed about it. So he actually wasn't mad at us, so I guess that's a good thing. They're like us in some ways.

• 13:56Jonathan Cohen?

  How are you not mad at your kid for getting you caught by the US government after you've been evading capture for years?

• 14:04Speaker 00

  I don't think you kids think of that, so.

• 14:08Mayim Bialik?

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• 16:08Mayim Bialik?

  The casualness with which you speak about your job, right? I'm trying to picture you meeting with these high-level terrorists. And I've seen a lot of these movies depicting that. And now I'm only going to picture you when I see those movies. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit. We come from a very different culture than a lot of the countries that you're dealing with. Meaning, the West is different, and the Middle East has its own culture. And then each country has its own culture as well. What is it like for you as a Western, liberated, secular woman? What is that interface like?

• 16:53Mayim Bialik?

  What does confidence building look like? What does trust building look like? And are there cases where people do not take you seriously?

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's a really good question. First off, they tell you it's going to happen one way. And then sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. So I was first told, when you're going to find a detainee, because they're so extreme, they're not going to look at you. They're not going to answer your questions. They're going to treat you like you're invisible. And that happened the first time, and never again. So every other one engaged with me. They were curious. They were interested. And a lot of it is, as you can imagine, they have never met a Western woman. They have never looked one in the eye. They've never seen one laugh at them. It's a very interesting thing to watch. Another thing is...

• 17:45Speaker 00

  When you're in this situation, it's already an uncomfortable situation because you're in a position of power, right? They're on the other side, they're in detention. So you always have to be careful in these discussions, even if you say, oh, I'm building rapport. Are you? I have a person who's influenced his entire life in front of me. He's convinced people to blow themselves up. Like, I'm not sitting across from you, uh, doing some mind magic. So you have to be honest too about your capabilities and who's in front of you. And then it depends on who it is. So if you have someone like the, in this case, he was very intelligent.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  So he wanted to know, you knew about him, he wanted to know you're paying attention, he wanted respect. Not everybody is that way, but it depends on who's in front of you, how you interact with them. It's kind of like the know your audience. You know, I've been in front of terrorists who weren't smart at all, like they couldn't even identify their own photographs. So it is this huge spread, you know, when you're talking to them.

• 18:50Jonathan Cohen?

  I'd like to talk for a second about the bounty. Because you've described your role, but I don't think people may understand that, you know, you're really putting yourself in danger. You're known in this world. Can you talk a little bit about that bounty and describe it to people?

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the good thing is when I was in the CIA and I met with terrorists, I just use a fake name. So they knew me as this American. I literally went by the name Becky, I just picked it out of the sky. I mean Becky with the good hair now, but she didn't exist then. So it didn't matter to me, right? I was never gonna run into these people again or interact with them again. And then now I'm out of the CIA, all the terrorists I captured were released. And now I'm a public figure when I was always a private figure, so they all know me. The number two I talked about, he actually has my book. So it's really funny now because they know who I am and some have beefs with me and some don't.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  But yeah, I have this strange bounty on my head, I have a couple of things. Assassination plot I'm way more concerned about. But there is this funny bounty in Iraq by like Hezbollah in Iraq. It's the group the guy was just picked up from. You know, they picked up that terrorist in Turkey and they brought them to the United States and he was plotting against Ivanka. So it's the same terrorist group. So it started as something dinky. It was like fifteen thousand dollars, but you can come live in Iraq. And then it's been going up. So the last time, like a few months ago, it was like three hundred and fifty thousand US dollars. So it's like this, it's like a lotto pot or something. So it's very funny.

• 20:29Mayim Bialik?

  It's not funny, Sarah. It's not funny at all.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Uh, I just don't think it's a great deal. You get three hundred and fifty thousand, you gotta live in Iraq. Like, I don't know, who's jumping on that? So, uh, but I have a lot more senior people who are focused on me and they're my concern.

• 20:45Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's cover those for a minute. You mentioned while describing the bounty that there's an assassination plot. We're taking this very seriously. Mine would never sleep again, knowing that someone tweeted something mean about her, let alone has a bounty.

• 21:00Mayim Bialik?

  To say a terrorist has a beef with you, like that feels like a little bit of an understatement.

• 21:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Again, we're joking, but like, uh, these are people who have made their life mission, the destruction of the West, encouraging people to blow themselves up. Can you describe a little bit about what this assassination plot is? How did it come to be and what do you know about it?

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's very simple. So the terrorists are concerned people are gonna get in their way. I, that's just the best way to put it, right? They're putting out misinformation. They have all these future plots and some people are finding about the plots and talking about them. And I'm just one of those. So in Al Qaeda, long story short, they have a military commission. And all this group does is they plan all the operations for the group, okay, in the whole world. So that's where my plot is coming out of. And so it's to assassinate me, you know, here at my home. So we have seen terrorist surveillance here and that type of stuff. So it's pretty far along. But again, it's just to take someone up.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Out of the equation who they think could get in the way of their operational plans. Cause that's what they do. They they try to threaten and harm people. So way back in the day when I was in Libya, every day there was an assassination. And it almost became where you stopped paying attention. But if you sat down and looked at who was assassinated, it was a police officer, a judge, a woman activist. They started at that time getting kind of like these peace activists and they started being what was now would be influencers. And they're taking them out. So if you watch systematically who they are taking out, it was anybody who could get in the way of them kind of taking control, you know, in that region.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  And unfortunately, that's the way they do it. They take out, you know, their enemy as well. You don't have to be the president of the United States.

• 22:56Jonathan Cohen?

  What type of surveillance did you witness on your home that, you know, tipped you off to that, the fact that this was happening?

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it was really funny. I mean, not funny. I know you don't think it's funny. Um, it was a cold day. We're never cold here. So I was all bundled up. And then I felt this truck coming very, very slow. The funny part is when I looked at them and they looked at me. I was like, holy crap, you know, those are Libyans. And they were like, holy crap, that's Sarah Adams. She looks crazy. So the funny part is they were surveilling my home, but they rounded the corner. And so I wasn't actually at my home. And we each saw each other and we were both shocked um that we saw each other because we didn't expect to see each other. So it was one of those things that um it it was just this, they weren't ready.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  So that was good for me. But yeah, I didn't look, I was all, I had a hoodie on, big glasses. I had like three tops on. Um, so yeah, it was just this weird situation. So it was kind of good. I guess I was in like a costume or disguise in some way. But it was like, oh my God, this is real. Cause I had been told it was happening. And I had been given updates of things they knew about my house and my dog. So I knew they were doing it. But this was the first day I saw one of them and looked them in the eye.

• 24:15Mayim Bialik?

  I think we can add to the list of characteristics that are necessary to be someone like Sarah Adams. You know, that would, I would pee myself in the street. You know, like, that would send me into a nervous system overdrive.

• 24:31Jonathan Cohen?

  She gets scared sometimes when she sees me in the hallway unexpectedly.

• 24:34Mayim Bialik?

  And I know you're in the house, right.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm that way.

• 24:37Mayim Bialik?

  Are there skills that you have been taught to regulate surrounding threat and danger? Because, like, I get scared if a truck passes by and no one's trying to kill me. You know, like, what, what goes on when you contemplate the threat that you directly are living under?

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I have a high tolerance. So it wasn't actually exactly taught, it was learned. Because, you know, I've lived in Pakistan, Libya. I've lived in environments where this was happening all the time. Like, when I was in Pakistan, like, anytime I was at a checkpoint and I was like, oh, this could be the day it blows up. So I got used to kind of like being in that environment to where it's like you have a different perception of the threat or fear. And then you learn different ways to mitigate it, you know? Because at the end of the day, they're after us, but, you know, I'm also after them. I mean, this is a cat and mouse game.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  I'm not here fearful as like the victim, like, in a defensive posture. It's like, bring it on. You want to come to my country? You want to come to my town? You want to be in my neighborhood? Good luck. You step on my grass, it's gonna be a bad day for you. That's the way I look at it.

• 26:00Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, I'm officially afraid of Sarah.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  A lot of people are.

• 26:05Jonathan Cohen?

  You should channel that energy when you see me in the hallway. You're like, this is my hallway.

• 26:09Mayim Bialik?

  That's a really interesting perspective because... You know, another characteristic, you know, I do, I often go into kind of victim mode, right? This is being done to me, or I'm in a weaker position, or I'm not as smart as them, or I'm not as good as them, and I need to get smaller, you know? I just need to disappear. That's not a helpful skill, you know? You have this ability, which, you know, some of it is learned, but also some of it, you know, we've spoken to Andrew Bustamante several times, you know? There's something about the personality of the kind of people who can work in these situations that does select for that. But I really like that notion, especially hearing that, you know, from a woman, that like, I don't have to just be afraid, you know?

• 26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'll be honest, I do want to tell you something. So the person planning my assassination is 1,000 times smarter than me. And it's really funny, so I reached out, you know, to people in Libya, and I said, hey, this terrorist, you know, he's in Afghanistan, but Libyans know him, is targeting me, I want to tell, you know, the FBI something important about him, so they take it serious. And so they said, oh, tell them he successfully assassinated 400 people in the city of Benghazi. I was like, perfect! So I go to tell the FBI, and they're like, we get threats all the time against like the commander of CENTCOM. It's like they didn't even hear it. So it's really, really funny, too, because we have people who just don't listen and

• 27:36Speaker 00

  want to even understand some of these threat actors. And they are, in a lot of cases, smarter than us, you know? They've run military operations all over the world, they've influenced thousands of people to join this crazy life, where they literally harm people for a living. So it's a very interesting kind of dichotomy between the way, you know, you grew up in the, in the Midwest, and then the way they kind of get grown, grow up, and their families almost like push them into this, because this is a family affair. It's not like you usually have one terrorist in your family, there are multiple.

• 28:13Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's explore the geopolitical landscape of what we're facing right now. I think if you can start to break apart, you know, the different actors, organizations, because- When you describe the FBI's reaction to your threat, I have to also imagine that they may be mismanaging or not actively pursuing leads. Like, it sounds like there's a lot of misinformation.

• 28:43Jonathan Cohen?

  Can you describe for people sort of what the landscape is right now?

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Sure, I'll answer the last part first. One of the problems with the government is if they didn't collect something, if someone didn't directly come and give it to them on a silver platter and tell them, they want nothing to do with it, right? Because they're like, our resources don't have any of this info, so it's not good, and they move on. So it's a very, very frustrating thing. And we've seen this happen a lot with these strange threats against Trump, right? They're just behind on all of them.

• 29:10Mayim Bialik?

  Can you explain that?

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Well, we have all these wackadoodles taking shots at our president. You shouldn't get to the point where someone lets off a gun, right? You should stop someone way before they even get into the vicinity. So we're behind on every one of those. You know, for years, I wish the government was more honest with the American public because we stopped so many terrorist plots. Like, I mean, I can't even tell you, maybe 40, 50, 60, probably 100. And so we know how to do it well. So when you see things not stopped, you know it's not being done well, unfortunately. And it's just a frustrating thing. It doesn't have to be the president, but when you just see it in his case, you're like, whoa. If you're dropping the ball there,

• 29:55Speaker 00

  you know, then you're dropping the ball on these other threat issues we have, which is concerning.

• 30:00Mayim Bialik?

  That's what everything everybody's worried about. How, I'm just going to make an example, you know, how did a mentally ill individual enter, right, the White House within firing range of the president with no, like, that shouldn't happen. Like, I've been to the White House, right? I've been there more than once. Like, it's a thing. There's a way you can check people. It's like, literally. Gated four times, like that this shouldn't happen. Is that general incompetence or is it specific incompetence?

• 30:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know what's happening. I think it there is some incompetence there. People get lackadaisical, you know, like you just start going through the motions. I think we saw that the White House Correspondents Dinner. We saw people like walking through the magnetometers and setting them off and then nobody was patting them down. It was a very strange thing to see these videos come out. First off, I was also like, why are you just allowing someone to video the magnetometers and then put it on Twitter? So it's it's it's become very strange. I don't know if we're just becoming less more lax on security, more lax in counterintelligence. I don't know if that's a cultural shift or what it is.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Because remember, there are a lot of people who thought security was too much after nine 11 and the government overstepped too. So it's always kind of like this delicate balance. And in a case of at least that dinner, these are high profile people. A lot of them were in the press, so there's probably some things made too. We don't want to inconvenience them, you know, we don't want to cause issues.

• 31:45Mayim Bialik?

  But you've got people trying to actively take out the president. You know, this used to be something, once in several generations, a very unusual, you know, mentally ill individual would have some elaborate, you know, intricate way that they gained access to an event where, right? They could pull out a gun. I I'm just like, my my mind is sort of on fire right now, thinking that with a president who also is inspiring a lot of extra attention with the things that he says and the way that he says them, that, I mean, it's it's on par with accidentally leaking, you know, a Signal chat.

• 32:28Jonathan Cohen?

  Raising questions.

• 32:29Mayim Bialik?

  Feels like a Saturday Night Live skit, you know? Like, if you saw this in a skit, you'd be like, that would never happen. Yeah, we have a president who people are actively trying to assassinate and people are getting close enough to to try again. That's crazy to me.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  The crazy one too is like that Ryan Ralph, remember he was hiding in the bushes? Well, before before he did that, he built a deer blind in the tree.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Like, no one saw a guy hammering a deer blind into the tree by the Palm Beach International Airport. He was in a hunting zone. When do we stop paying attention or be observant to things going on around us? That makes me really nervous that awareness is going away, just for normal people. People walk, they have their phone. I'm almost hitting people all the time. They're like walking, like looking at your phone. It was like, you know, you're in the middle of a street. But it's just this crazy thing. It's like our heads are in the sand or something. And then that's in a lot of different ways. Because you have to remember, a lot of things get stopped or thwarted because a citizen saw something and said, wow, that's strange, that's odd, why is that here?

• 33:39Speaker 00

  And they report it. So that is super important to keeping everybody safe.

• 33:43Jonathan Cohen?

  That terrifies me. Because we're in our phones now, we're less socially connected than ever before. It used to be you would know your neighbor. So all of a sudden, if six guys moved into the apartment above you, you'd be like, that's different than the family that used to live there. Why are they going in and out? Why are all these people around? And now people may be like, okay, that's just the way it is. I'm gonna just focus on my Netflix and I'm not gonna pay attention. Are we becoming more vulnerable because our social connections are fraying?

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we're definitely becoming more vulnerable. I think there's gonna be a shift. I mean, bad things happen and then people realize, I missed it. I don't know if you remember, like, a few months back, there was like that shooting in Austin. Well, the crazy part is, the guy was in a pickup. He came by the front of the building three times and on the third time did the shot. If you're out there, this guy even comes around a second time and looks a little like a nut job. Like, wouldn't you get out of there or tell people? And so we have to start saying, hey, I missed that. I was standing there as these three things happened, like in some la la land. At least those people now are smarter for the next time.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  I mean, it's sad we have to learn that way, but I do think we will get back to a sense of awareness at some point. Because you have to, at the end of the day, keep yourself safe or your children or your family in some way. And we have to get away from this. Reliance and connection to social media and get back to real life.

• 35:19Jonathan Cohen?

  It feels like we have a false sense of security, you know, like the US hasn't been attacked on our soil since nine eleven and we assume that there aren't active threats because most of war happens on the other side of the world, but that feels like it's a very, you know, delusional sense of safety and that we may not have all the intelligence or the people working on our behalf to to prevent something else from happening soon.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's a scary thing, you know, after New Orleans, we found out that terrorists went and cased, obviously, New Orleans, but he came here and cased Tampa. So he's got his glasses on and he's walking around the Riverwalk in Tampa where I go all the time. And we didn't learn it till after he committed an attack. Well, that's a very scary thing, right? You that's not when you want to find out that ISIS has cased your city. So I do feel we're behind and a lot of it is we left Afghanistan. According to the commander of CENTCOM, we gave up ninety eight percent of our intelligence collection there, including human. So if you don't have networks collecting on the threat overseas, you then have to

• 36:32Speaker 00

  collect on them here and it's so much harder because now they're in a they're in a hidden role, right? They're not hearing their true name. They're not going around saying, I'm going to commit a terrorist attack. So it's just so much more difficult if you wait till the threat's already here to work it. And I feel like we really dropped the ball on this.

• 36:51Mayim Bialik?

  When nine eleven happened and, you know, depends on your age and where you were in life, you know, I was in college when when nine eleven happened and it was terrifying. It was really terrifying. And, you know, without freaking my kids out, I try and explain to them the immensity of that moment because in many ways it has been forgotten, right? And and one of the things that that we want to believe, right, is that our country is constantly on guard for us, right? They're constantly patrolling, monitoring, but in practicality, you you actually can't do that all the time everywhere, right?

• 37:35Mayim Bialik?

  And I think October 7th, right, was this microcosm of showing what happens in such a, such a tiny country, right? When things go unnoticed. And not unnoticed when, when, when people's reports, right, are not trusted. And, and the thing about 9/11, I remember learning that there was a group of guys taking flight lessons who ended up being the terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. And they very curiously had no interest in learning how to land the plane. And it's like if you saw that in a script, you would laugh.

• 38:15Mayim Bialik?

  Can you imagine, right, a group of individuals asking to learn how to have a plane take off, but don't worry, we don't need to know how it lands, right? Like, it's crazy. Can you talk about some of that disconnect and how that does reflect on, for those of us who wanted to believe that we had a certain amount of security? What does that mean about our country?

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that was the complaint that came out of the 9/11 Commission is we completely lost imagination, right? We heard these things, but we thought, oh, they're sensationalized. Like, we couldn't put the dots together, which is crazy, because Al Qaeda already had their Bojinka plot, which was like 11 or 12 airlines that was thwarted. So it's very strange. We had a previous plot and nobody could put that together. But I do think it's like, we're always preparing for the last event and we're not good at thinking future, thinking how things evolve or change, to where it's hard to picture it and then

• 39:24Speaker 00

  to say, oh, I have enough evidence that what I'm picturing and hearing and seeing is fact. So that's very, very difficult, because until it happens, you know, you're not right or correct or true at all. You know, even in the current new plotting, there's all these suicide bombers in it, okay? Now, in the United States, we've never had a suicide Suicide bombing. There's this strange incident in Nashville where the gentleman kind of blew himself up in a car. So that would technically be one and that's it. So think of it, we have an entire country that no law enforcement, except maybe LAPD and NYPD, have any like standard operating procedure at all for suicide bombers. So that is a strategic surprise, even though it's not some genius,

• 40:10Speaker 00

  out of the box thought. It is now something that can cause shock and awe in a way. And then you poo poo it because you're like, oh, it's just suicide bombers. Like they, they should do some big extravagant thing with drones and all those things. So we also have the other side of the coin too, where threats get downplayed. Because it's like, well, why aren't the terrorists doing something bigger? It's like, well, that is bigger. Uh, so it is a constant struggle to get out of the group think, to get out of only thinking of nine 11 and that's exactly what an attack looks like. Um, and then to really get the public aware, because the public thinks terrorists haven't tried to attack us. So, yes, they have. We stop them every single time.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  You know, we took out, gosh, eight or nine of Al Qaeda's external operation leaders, one after one after one after one to stop the attacks here. And now we're not. We have not taken one strike on the leader of external operations for Al Qaeda in a decade. So it is different than it was, you know, in the two thousand, in the mid two thousands, you know, two thousand five, two thousand 10, when we were so aggressive. We stepped back and said, hey, we're moving on to other threats. China being a great example. Counterterrorism in the past, we're done with it. And unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote and so it's not done and we are behind.

• 41:34Mayim Bialik?

  I'm glad to hear you articulate it that way. You know, I, I'm that jerk when I fly and go through TSA, who, who cannot believe that one guy put a bomb in his shoe. And now we all have to take off. Like, I'm that person. Because I feel like there's this like laser focus that makes us feel like we're protecting ourselves. And it makes us feel like we're doing something. And like, I will not show you my Ziploc of my toilet. I will not. I've never done it. Like, I've nev- I'm just like, I cannot handle this. And I know I don't need to blame, you know, the hardworking TSA people. You know, they're following the orders. But it also feels a little bit like, like literally Joseph Heller's Catch 22.

• 42:19Mayim Bialik?

  Like, it's Slaughterhouse-Five. Like, I feel like we are living in a science fiction, kind of near-apocalyptic, you know, perception of threat, of danger, and of the limitations that we have against actually understanding what's happening. And it's interesting, because when 9/11 happened, anyone that I knew who had ever flown an Israeli airline knew exactly what was happening. And like, it was like, oh, okay, now that here, right? I mean, I spent my teen years, you know, it was the first Intifada and then second Intifada. So, you know, that's what it feels like, is that it's getting easier for these things to kind of infiltrate.

• 43:03Mayim Bialik?

  But we need to get smarter, right?

• 43:06Speaker 00

  No, it's a really good example, because as you said, history's falling by the wayside. And so we ended up getting, you know, a new head of DHS. She's gone now, Kristi Noem. But it's like, she doesn't seem to have understood the shoe bomber at all. And she's like, yeah, why are we inconveniencing people to take off their shoes? And they reversed that. Well, the week after they reversed it, you know, Al Qaeda put the shoe bomb back on the table. And right now, they're testing a number of prototypes. So the shoe bomb's coming back, because we said, yeah, we're not going to scan for it anymore. If you tell the terrorists that, they should think you have the best scanning in the world, and nothing's getting through, because that's how it stays shelved. So unfortunately, the shoe bomb's coming back. But it's crazy, because we solved that issue, and then we just welcome it back.

• 43:50Mayim Bialik?

  That's the title of this episode. The shoe bomb is coming back. So I shouldn't be annoyed. I should take off my shoes and put everything in my little Ziploc. But they're gonna come up with something else?

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and they have, there is, um, there is this invisible bomb, it's very famous, it's been around for years. It's the same bomb that was used on Christmas in the underwear, remember that, like 15 years ago, same bomb? So they've now made that smaller, you can kind of like wrap it around your body.

• 44:20Mayim Bialik?

  It's Christmas in the underwear, it sounds like a holiday drink that you get at Cheesecake Factory. What is Christmas in the underwear?

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Luckily, he soiled himself. The good part is, um, remember, this is a very stressful situation for the terrorists. So they're, they're stressed, they're nervous, things happen. He soiled himself and that harmed the bomb. Even the shoe bomb, he got moisture in his shoe, that's why the bomb didn't work. So we sometimes get lucky, and so lucky is a good thing, but that's why I always say, you know, you work hard, you work hard, you work hard. But luck happens because you spent so much time trying to stop and thwart and protect people.

• 44:59Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, so what's the invisible bomb?

• 45:02Speaker 00

  It's called invisible or hidden because it has no metal components. And it's, so it's a bomb you can walk through a magnetrometer, okay? So you can't walk through a millimeter wave scanner, the weird one you put your arms on, but you can walk through like what you go into a sporting event, or what you go into the White House for a boning dinner, you can walk straight through that.

• 45:23Mayim Bialik?

  Or my synagogue, right? I mean, for, you know, like, that's the kind of detector.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Well, maybe not. Synagogues are pretty well protected, which is a good thing. But then, when you go to detonate it, it's a binary reaction. So there's a chemical in the vest, and then you have your chemical in like a syringe, or you can use a pen, and you inject it. And then that starts it. So it's really a smart invention. It's now then, okay, this is how it is, this is how it's built, how do we counter it?

• 45:56Jonathan Cohen?

  Why do you think we haven't seen more of these deployed?

• 46:00Speaker 00

  There are some rumors that they tested this bomb a couple of times in Somalia, maybe when they went after their intelligence building, but I've not actually got someone to show me a picture to prove it. So, but there are people saying they tested it in Somalia, and people in Somalia saying that. Now, the point is, is they don't want this bomb found prior to doing their next big 9/11. So that's what Al Qaeda is waiting for. So again, this is they're going to be their strategic surprise when they use these. And what they want to do is about 10% of their attackers in their upcoming plotting, they want to be suicide bombers in some form.

• 46:44Mayim Bialik?

  Sarah, I don't, I just don't feel good when we talk.

• 46:48Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, I think that's the point, right? Like, we, if we don't ever think about these things, if we don't ever realize that there are people on the other side of the world who have not just forgotten about us, who their objective in life is to cause harm in the next wave in some way, then we won't be ready, we won't have the intelligence. Can you go back a little bit in our conversation where you said in the 90s, we were actively removing heads of the planning operations of Al Qaeda? What is being planned now? What do we know is in the works? Can you give us a bit of a framework of how their organization has developed in the absence of us continuing to remove parts of their planning organizations?

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, so our last major strike on Al Qaeda Central was in 2022, and we took up the head of Al Qaeda, then Dr. Ayman al-Zar al-Hiri. But prior to that, Al Qaeda planned a number of, you said the word perfectly, waves of attacks. So they helped in the October 7th plotting, they worked on the Syrian blitzkrieg, there is a similar Iraq blitzkrieg, there's a bunch of attacks against, planned against US embassies, and then different Jewish sites overseas, being synagogues or different, kind of like cultural.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Centers and then they do have a big European plot and then the big US homeland plot. Now, the problem like we saw in Israel's, Israel got like little, little pieces, right? They knew something was coming, but they never knew it was at this scale. I had friends that passed some things to Israel saying, hey, it's very strange. Hamas is here in Afghanistan, training in the camps we're collecting in. Like, this is really, really weird. And so it was like they didn't put things together quick enough or did not think the scale. And I think we're having the same problem. We're having difficulty viewing the scale.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  And I do think Israel should put out more because nobody really knows that there were like eight thousand terrorists in that attack. And they weren't all Hamas. So there were members of Al Qaeda, there were members of ISIS, there were even members of the Taliban. They got flown back in their dead bodies to Kandahar. I had people at the airport watching it happen. So I think this kind of keeping information tightly controlled is really making us. So people lose the idea of thinking, hey, these can be connected. Hey, this is bigger than we think. Hey, these terrorists have regrouped. They can plan again. Um, they are strong again and we're their target. They've only had two real targets, the United States and Israel.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Every meeting only talks about the United States and Israel. We just have to be honest about that because we're in the crosshairs.

• 49:39Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's spend a little bit of time connecting these organizations. You said something that I, I think most people have no idea about, that it wasn't just Hamas attacking on October 7th, that they were training in Al Qaeda camps. Can you explain more about this interconnection? Because it doesn't sound like it's one organization. Most people think, oh, Hamas has their agenda and they're just, you know, upset with Israel. But you're painting a totally different picture.

• 50:07Mayim Bialik?

  I think this is also a good opening to the, the common denominator for basically every organization that you've mentioned is Iran.

• 50:16Mayim Bialik?

  That's like the, uh, the elephant in the room.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  Yes, and that's where I was gonna start. So, there is like a structure is the best way to put it, okay? In terrorism. So you have Iran, and then everybody who kind of falls under them. You have Al Qaeda and who falls under them. You have ISIS and then who falls under them. And then you have the Muslim Brotherhood all kind of interlinked, okay? So, there has been a strategic alignment first between Al Qaeda in Iran. And it happened very simply. When the US went into Afghanistan, the senior terrorists had to go somewhere. They could go to Pakistan, or they could go to Iran. So they first started going to Pakistan, and then we started picking them up, right? We got Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we got Faraj Al Libi.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Pakistan is not gonna be safe. Their government is all in with the US government. So where do we go? Iran. So Al Qaeda had to start making close relationships with the Iranians, certain units, most of the Kuds Force. So Qassem Soleimani was a big one. And he's dead now, but Mohammed Qazemian, the last head of the intelligence organization IRGC, super, super close to Al Qaeda. And so they made these historic relationships. And then Osama Bin Laden trusted these two men to protect his children and his grandchildren. And Saif Al Arab stayed with them, and he protected them. And then even the terrorist running my plot, he lived with Soleimani. So, that has happened now over 20 years. So that's a very, very close, tight relationship.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  So of course, when they started planning the attacks, you know, in Israel, they needed the leverage of where are we gonna train these people? And where are we gonna hold them? These are thousands of terrorists. So they chose six camps in Afghanistan and trained them there. And a lot of people aren't honest, but a lot of them lied in wait in Syria. And that's why so many of them were hooked on Captagen, because they're waiting to go do the terrorist attack. And they're taking drugs, because they're not doing anything. They're like locked up in a building. And so that's all this convergence of Iran linked to Al Qaeda with Taliban support. And so they kind of just gave Hamas this boost.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  But they have other plots going. So it wasn't their top priority, but it's like, let's make this successful for Hamas, because they're attacking Israel. But we're still staying focused, you know, on the US and Europe and Syria and our other plots.

• 52:51Mayim Bialik?

  We're going to pause here. There's so much more in part two of our conversation with Sarah Adams. Is modern terrorism proof that we're living in a simulation?

• 52:59Jonathan Cohen?

  Did the war on terror actually accelerate global extremism instead of stop it?

• 53:04Mayim Bialik?

  Sarah's also going to explain why sleeper cells is a misnomer and what are the influences that are infiltrating our universities and what role do they play in shaping how we view terrorism?

• 53:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Sarah's also going to describe how there are thousands of Al Qaeda members currently in the US who are undocumented and outside of our radar.

• 53:26Mayim Bialik?

  How are foreign actors exploiting and polarizing US politics and what role does TikTok play? This and so much more in part two of our conversation with Sarah Adams. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.