How A Terror Suspect Was Allowed Back On A College Campus

Morning Wire

Former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams discusses the March 2024 terror attack at Old Dominion University, where Mohamed Bailor Jalloh— a c

Key takeaways

• Jalloh was released early from prison after serving part of an 11-year sentence for plotting attacks on military personnel, despite a high reactivation risk.
• Old Dominion University had no knowledge of Jalloh's criminal history because Virginia law prohibits asking about it during admissions and the voluntary questionnaire wasn't sent to readmitted students.

Main topics

• Terrorist recidivism in the U.S.
• Gaps in post-prison monitoring for extremists

Notable quotes

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

Conclusion

The attack at Old Dominion University underscores critical failures in how the U.S. manages

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day? With Pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, Pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the Pray.com app today. Speaker 1 (0:33) 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. Speaker 1 (1:17) 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. 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 case officers and they had analysts. Speaker 1 (2:02) 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, 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. Speaker 1 (2:52) 2024, so he didn't serve his whole time. And then, you know, 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. Just to be clear, I