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Former CIA officer Sarah Adams sat down with former Navy Seal and agency contractor Shawn Ryan during the latter’s December 13, 2024, episode of The Shawn Ryan Show.
In it, Sarah Adams, who’s an ex-CIA targeter and counterterrorism analyst, claimed that over 1000 Al-Qaeda-trained militants were in the USA and were seemingly planning a coordinated attack on American soil, something similar to the Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.
"The thousand is all of them, so we're calling it -- it's an Al-Qaeda-planned attack. But within those thousand terrorists, some of them are ISIS," Adams claimed.
When asked how “certain” she was that something would happen in 2025, Sarah told Shawn:
“I’m certain we’ll either have embassy attacks in 2025 or the homeland attack or both.”
She explained that the homeland attack could be a retaliation for Soleimani while discussing the threat of “invisible bombs” that are undetectable under magnetometers, involvement of “sleeper cells,” and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED).
Sarah Adams' comments came less than a month before back-to-back attacks in the USA on New Year’s Day 2025 in New Orleans and Las Vegas, both suspected terror attacks. Amid these, her interview has now gone viral.
All you need to know about Sarah Adams
Sarah Adams is a former intelligence analyst and targeter with the Central Intelligence Agency. She has served as the Senior Advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, Libya.
Adams has co-written The Benghazi Committee Report: Proposed Report of the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, published in July 2016. She has also penned Benghazi: Know Thy Enemy.
Sarah Adams has also worked for the Department of Defense’s (DoD) research and development and has helped find solutions to national security challenges. She has served as a program analyst for the U.S. Air Force and project manager for the U.S. Navy and has overseen intelligence missions in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Some of her other career highlights include serving as the Chief of Operations at the Ukraine NGO Coordination Network (UNCN), a senior consultant at Wolf Global, and a senior analyst and security intelligence officer at JetBlue Airways.
Sarah pursued an M.A. in international relations from the University of San Diego and a B.S.B.A. in international business from UCF College of Business. According to her LinkedIn bio, Adams is an industry expert on matters such as intelligence and investigations, emergency management, operational planning, government relations, policy and oversight support, and risk and threat analysis.
Exploring Sarah Adams’ latest predictions on Shawn Ryan’s podcast
During last month’s appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, Sarah Adams made multiple predictions about the threats on U.S. soil in 2025. For instance, she claimed nearly 1500 Al-Qaeda-trained fighters were already inside the country planning an attack on the level of the Hamas attack on Israel or the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.
“We have not had a man walk up to a building with a suicide vest on the United States. Americans don't understand this. Al-Qaeda knows this. So this is new and innovative. Especially now, you don’t have to walk up to the side of the building. You can walk in the building 'cause of the advancement of the vest,” Sarah Adams explained.
“The other thing is in the United States, we haven't had fedayeen attackers. So the concept is the terrorist fights to the death. So, he is not exactly a suicide bomber, but he will fight till either all of us are dead or all of his people are dead. We think it's gonna be a swarming attack. Right. Multiple different attacks at one time across multiple cities.”
Apart from suicide bombers, Sarah Adams thinks the fedayeen attackers will also join the plan and carry on “until they are killed” as they were “trained” to do so. She mentioned that Americans need to be “careful” and “not let our guards down,” as these alleged militants knew their “weaknesses” and had all kinds of backup “tactics” in place.
When asked for clarification as to whether she was “100 percent certain” that there were 1000-plus Al-Quaeda-trained fighters within the country, Sarah Adams claimed that the prediction was based on the information provided by the terrorist group itself.
“First off, I think there are more than a thousand Al-Qaeda members in the United States, but for the Homeland Attack, that number is based on what Al-Qaeda is saying, so they could exaggerate it; however, they did have about 1,400 in the Hamas Attack so the number is not off from what they did in the first round of attacks,” she said.
Elsewhere, Sarah Adams mentioned how ISIS-affiliated attackers and sympathizers made the threat far more “complicated.” She explained a situation where a terrorist might have the “goal” of bombing the “metro in Washington D.C.” However, at the last minute, they could “change locations.”
"So, the ISIS guy might go down [to] the metro and say, 'There's not many people down here. I'll kill 20. But there's [an] event going on. I'm gonna go up there,' right? Because ISIS is a little different. ISIS just wants mass casualty," she added.
In conclusion, Sarah Adams explained that the open border in the south of the USA has worsened the threat, claiming that such militants were entering the country "through the Darien Gap." She also agreed with Ryan when he said that the United States government wasn’t “prepared for anything that’s coming.”
Shawn Ryan's show wasn't the only place Sarah Adams made the claims. During her last month's appearance on Shark Coast Tactical Podcast, she alleged that Al-Qaeda aided in the Hamas attack, which was a "dress rehearsal." She added that the "real" one was reserved for the USA as a "2025 multi-coordinated, multi-city, um, plot to avenge the death of Osama Bin Laden."
Two back-to-back attacks have rocked the US
In the January 1 New Orleans incident, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar has been identified as the attacker. He rammed a Ford F-150 pickup truck into a crowd of revelers early in the morning on Bourbon Street.
The attack killed at least 15 people and injured more than 30 before the local police gunned down Jabbar. While the exact motive continues to remain under investigation, it is being suspected as a terror attack as a black ISIS flag was found hanging at the back of the truck.
Another incident happened in Las Vegas around 8.40 am local time on the same day. A Tesla cybertruck exploded and engulfed into flames in front of the Trump International Hotel. It has been referred to as an “act of terrorism” by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a post on X. It claimed the life of the driver and injured seven others.
