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Hey, there. You listen to this show because Gillian keeps it real and cuts through the noise, right?

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She asks the questions that you'd like to ask.

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She's always curious, always thought provoking. I'm Mike Baker, host of the President's Daily Brief. And every day, the PDB reports on

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B

So we're paying the Taliban extortion money

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not to attack us 100%.

B

Oh, my gosh. Why don't we just take $100 million a week and fund more CIA agents?

A

I would just take the money and get bombs and bomb all the terrorist camps in Afghanistan. We could do it every day. There's over 100 camps.

B

Sarah Adams is a former CIA targeting officer who spent her career hunting terrorists and hostile regimes for the U.S. government. And she's here today with a chilling claim that there might be thousands of Al Qaeda aligned operatives already inside America lying in wait. What are they planning? How did they slip past our defenses? And what does the raw intel actually say about the next attack on US Soil? We're asking the hard question. How come the US Is so soft on terror? How have we botched everything from Benghazi to the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan? And why are we still funding the Taliban with US Taxpayer dollars to this day? And even more explosive, why hasn't the federal government labeled organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood or CAIR as terrorist groups, despite the fact that nations across the Arabian Gulf took that step years ago? How come radical elements from the DSA who openly sympathize with terrorists and call for the fall of the west are being allowed to infiltrate our government? And finally, we're going to tackle the most critical question of all. We're at war with Iran. What happens as this continues to escalate? But before we jump in, guys, if you're digging the show, please, please drop me a comment, smash the like button and subscribe because it helps me a ton to beat the algorithm. All right, buckle up. Here we go. Keeping it real with Jillian Michaels. Let's start with. Should we start with your role at the CIA? You are part of the annexing team. Can you explain exactly what you did there for everybody.

A

Yeah, So I was there about a decade, and I was a targeter. So, like, Maya from Zero Dark Thirty is the best example of that profession. Now, when you bring up the CIA annex team, kind of later in my career, I was serving in Libya most of the year in 2012. So I served at the CIA annex in Benghazi. And, you know, we were just doing, as you can imagine, normal CIA, CIA were collecting intelligence on the ground. And then, of course, the catastrophic attack happened on both the diplomatic mission and then our annex at the time.

B

I want to circle back to Benghazi, of course, but before we do, then you went on to advise Congress, and you were recommended to do this job by the CIA. Can you talk about that for a minute here?

A

Yeah. So it was kind of funny. I got contacted by two congressmen. It was Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz at the time. And I was like, I don't really like to talk to Congress. And they're like, we're going to fly down and see you. So then they came down here, and Boone from Benghazi was coming with me, and he's like, we can't trust them. Make sure they wear, like, shorts and T shirts. And then we met him, like, in the flight path outside. So it was this really funny meeting. They probably thought I was crazy. And then after that is when they said, hey, we'd really like you to come up to Congress because you told us things we didn't know about Benghazi. So it was just this really random thing. But, yeah, we made them jump through all these hoops and they actually did it. So people should play with them a little more.

B

That's interesting. That's very interesting, because I, you know, I can see why you would be skeptical, but it's encouraging at least that you felt like they weren't as bad as so many of us think. I think Anna Paulina told me that Congress has, like, a 14% approval rating,

A

and it's like, for God's sake, that's high for them. Right?

B

I was thinking the same thing, if I'm being honest with you. I want to go right into the fire here. There is a moment that went exceptionally viral of you on Sean Ryan, and you said, and I pulled it up here, that Al Qaeda has deployed upwards of 1,000 trained fighters inside US borders for an impending domestic attack. Is this verified? What do we know about this? What would this even look like?

A

Yeah. So it was over the summer when the nctc, which is under at the time, Tulsi Gabbard's DNI did put out an official memo that Al Qaeda was plotting against the US homeland. So that was the first time the government really issued it. But Al Qaeda first told us about it December of 2023. They put out a video from their Yemen branch and then they reiterated it in June 2025 where they put out a second video. And then it was kind of after that video, the government finally started telling the American people. But this plot actually started in December of 2021. So it's very far along. And so we're at the point where they have set the terrorists to US soil. So what I like to say is we're so far along in their plotting, the terrorists are at least here. And so it's a very different situation like in the past where you could just go target a camp overseas and stop the plot. Now we have to stop it on the community level, which is so much more complicated, especially as these people came into the country, they have false identities, so they don't really have criminal records. It's very difficult in the United States to go after these actors before they do something. So it's Al Qaeda who said they sent 1,000 terrorists, but it's actually NCTC who said, well, there's actually over 18,000 known Islamist terrorists here in US soil illegally. So that doesn't even count the people who are here with a green card or a visa or Americans who have joined a terrorist organization. So we're in very, very high numbers.

B

Okay, I've heard you talk about how difficult it is to find these people all. So question one, it's a two parter. Where does that 18,000 person statistic come from? If we can't locate them, how would we know there are 18,000 of them? And subsequently why are they so hard to find? I thought the CIA is like collecting all this metadata and it helps them zero in on bad guys. And they've got informants and all these cells, like, why is it so hard?

A

So the first piece that comes from nctc, and that too actually runs tide, which is the WATCH listing program. So it's their job to make these estimates and make these determinations of who came in here. Now a lot of terrorists came in and people did share information that they're here. So I've found well over a dozen terrorists that traveled here. And I've given that information as has foreign governments, a number of people, as you can imagine. So they're getting a lot of tips. The problem though, what you're talking about is, first off, we don't have the cells infiltrated like we did in the past. Remember, we gave up 98% of our human intelligence in Afghanistan. It's kind of the same in Syria. So we're relying on like the Taliban government and the Al Qaeda government in Syria to pass on information on threats. That's how bad it is. So we don't have the human intelligence we used to have. Another thing that's changed from 15 years ago is the terrorists know we listen to them on the phone. So now they actually have meetings and discussions, say, here's what we're going to say on the phone. So even our signals intelligence, we're getting information the terrorists want us to receive. It's not actually factual information. So we don't have the level of intelligence most people believe. Now, the last piece is the most complicated. So I'm working on finding a number of these people. So what they do is they go, let's say to Afghanistan. They'll go North Africa, Afghanistan, Syria, and they go to training camp. When they go to training camp, they have an identity. It's not their real one. So they go in. Now, I'm Mohammed from Egypt. I go through training. So every person who trained with me is like, oh, yeah, I trained with this Muhammad guy. They might not believe I'm Egyptian because of how I talk, but that's all they remember. Okay. Then I deployed to the United States and now I have another identity. So I'm two steps removed from my identity. And then if someone from training camp does get picked up in secondary and said, yes, I trained in Afghanistan. I know these terrorists who came here. One's Mohammed from Egypt. Everyone's looking for Muhammad from Egypt. And now I'm Ahmed from Syria. So it's very, very, very complicated. The other thing the terrorists are doing is they're other people's real identities in some of these pieces. So, like, it would be a real passport and a real ID in someone else's photo that looks somewhat like you that you use. So it actually is a real person. We had this case recently. So there's a terrorist, he went to training camp as a Libyan. He then committed a terrorist attack in Germany as a Syrian. So we went to Libya last month and we asked about him and his family said we well, yes, that's our son's passport. That wasn't our son that was detained in Syria. So he just used another person's passport when he went to terrorist camp. So it's super, super complicated. They've learned how we track and locate them and then put all these countermeasures in place.

B

I did not know that we did not have people planted in these terror cells anymore. Why don't we do that again? Sorry.

A

So how it works now is we're not overseas, obviously, bombing and collecting on these camps. So the terrorists came here, so now it's the job of the FBI. But the FBI's main counterterrorism focus is what we call entrapment operations. So they're like an online forums or looking for people who maybe want to commit attacks, and then they engage with them and start a conversation, and they're getting the people who want to become terrorists. So we of course want these people off the streets, but they're not getting real ISIS guys, who of course aren't looking online and accidentally linking up with the FBI. So we're not focused correctly in how we find and target them here in US soil. And the FBI is not even experienced doing that. Right. Because usually we hunt them down overseas.

B

Right, I understand. Okay. That brings me to an obvious question. What about Israel and the idf? Are they sharing information with us that's valuable?

A

Yeah, but you have to remember, so Israel and the IDF have great terrorism information on two groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, if you want good information on Al Shabaab, on Al Qaeda, on all the different branches of isis, that's not their forte. They're not experts on that. So you had to be the one collecting it. Right. The U.S. government was the expert on al Qaeda and ISIS, and we've kind of dropped that now because we want to put counterterrorism in the rear view mirror. So everybody came to us previously for that info.

B

Okay, I have to admit, it's a little overwhelming to the average bear when you hear, like, the Taliban, isis, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hezbollah, Hamas. How many of these groups are there and which ones are connected and which aren't? Do they hate each other? Do they like each other? Like, do the Somalian guys work with the guys in Yemen? I know, of course, some of the most obvious Iran proxies, like Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis. But then there's like ISIS and the Taliban and Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab. Like, how does this work together? And what goal do they share? Just all of them want to bring down the West.

A

Well, the main goal they share is that concept of a caliphate. Right, like the last Ottoman Empire. So not that long ago, that was, what, the fifth caliphate. So they want to bring the caliphate back. So they all share that common goal. Of course, there's things where they differ because there's Shia and Sunni. So they have to, as you can imagine, make agreements to work through some of the things. So there's been a lot of agreements around Syria, for example, right, Because Al Qaeda did that blitzkrieg. But ISIS was there and Al Qaeda made these deals in advance with ISIS so ISIS wouldn't get in the fight when they went to take down Assad. So when we talk about just the groups, the main groups are Al Qaeda and isis. Right. If you're looking at how the US Government looks at kind of this Islamist terrorism and then you see separately have what you would call the state sponsored ones and that would be under Iran and then of course, who you said Hamas has or under the Taliban, and then there's a host of terrorist groups under that. And then they work together when it benefits them and when it suits them. So for US homeland plotting, there's a lot of cross operational work. They're jointly training in camp. So it's really interesting if you go Back to like 2001, for example, Al Qaeda was very compartmented. So if you were in the CBRN program, nobody knew anything about it. And the only people inside of the building are Al Qaeda members. Now in their CBRN program, there's ISIS members in it, there's Pakistani scientists, there's North Koreans. So they've become more open to the idea of working with other adversaries. And I think it's because we targeted them for a long time and they needed to evolve and shift and think of different ways to do things. And I don't think our understanding of them is evolving with them. And I think that's a really big problem. When we talk about the sons of Osama bin Laden. They went back to some of their dad's old ideals, of course, bring the Caliphate back. But also their dad wanted to make an entire Sunni Shia terrorist alliance. And that's what the sons have been working on for the last few years. And they had met, they've had Hezbollah members come to Afghanistan, Hamas and then of course other Sunni groups, Boko Haram, they have monthly meetings with isis. So they're spending a lot of time on, hey, we have to find and make agreements to come together. And some agreements are just right. I need money, I need weapons, I need a training location where it's safe. I need bodies. Somalia is a great example. You asked about that. So there's this huge push on Mogadishu by Al Shabaab, where Al Shabaab needed bodies. So they had to make a little bit of an agreement with ISIS to use some ISIS resources. But then, of course, they had to go to Al Qaeda and be like, you have to send us recruits. And so Al Qaeda's had this huge pipeline where they're training and sending to Somalia. And that's where the piece comes in when you ask about Yemen. So a lot of resources, if they leave, let's say the Afghanistan, Syria region for Al Qaeda goes to Yemen, and then from Yemen, it goes to Somalia. So that's the pipeline. Lots of times, if you're going to move a fighter, if you're going to move weapons, and that's all happening, and it's happening on a scale that we've never seen before, which is incredibly concerning because we're focused elsewhere.

B

I was going to say that what you're describing sounds to me like Wall street mergers and acquisitions. It's like this company is merging with that company and Trump Rx is working with Amazon. Literally, it sounds like you were describing these monster companies that are coming together to become super monster companies. But I want to get back to that because you said we're focused elsewhere. Where are we focused?

A

So there's a lot of people in the US Government that have this belief that we spent so much time in counterterrorism that we neglected China when honestly we didn't compete well with China. We didn't have good policies and objectives. And so they shifted first a ton of resources till China. Then, of course, the new administration came in. We shift a lot of resources to the border because we weren't doing that well. And then now, of course, we have this focus on Iran. But the interesting thing is we're focused on inside the country of Iran. We're not spending a ton of time on the other relationships the Iranian government is taking advantage of during this time. Right. I mean, they're meeting with the Russians, they meet with the Chinese, they're meeting with the Taliban, they're meeting with senior leadership of Al Qaeda, are other enemies. And so we're almost a little tunnel vision on this issue.

B

That brings me to a question that I had for you on Russia and China recently. Someone told me that Yasser Arafat had been a KGB agent. You're not denying that, so I guess that's true.

A

Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

B

I mean, he's a very credible guest. And it's like it did fact check. But I just thought. I thought maybe I'm not in some world you'd be like, no, Jill, I was kind of hoping to hear that. But okay, never.

A

I don't know the answer to that.

B

Having said that, the real question I'm getting at here is what role are China and Russia playing in shaping these organizations then? Because you just, you know, you brought up Iran's relationship with them. You know, I just had this conversation about how they were involved with Palestine in the early days, you know, and then you're talking about an alliance that involves North Korea and all these people coming together. What are they doing here? What are they contributing to this?

A

Sure. It's. They're both a little different. So if we just do Russia. So Russia has two sides of the coin. So there is a piece of the coin where they work with the terrorists to prevent attacks and threats against them, of course. Then there's a second side of the coin where they work with the terrorists to prod us or to affect us. Right, because we're the enemy. So they're kind of playing, I'd say, a two face game with the terrorists. And terrorists know this. So it's. So it's really, I think it's a little ironic. So they're doing a lot of this in Afghanistan right now with the Taliban, they're doing a lot of this with the new Syrian regime, etc. Now, when it comes to China, China views things very, very differently. So they have a little bit of a threat picture from. It's called etm. It's a terrorist group, and they like to collect on that. But other than that, China's preference is, hey, I'm going to work with you in this interim time to get some sort of economic benefit. And if you don't stay in power in five years, who cares? Because I'm going to spend as much time as possible in this five years cementing myself in here as much as possible. China's perfectly fine coexisting and working in a world with these terrorists. And even if you actually look at the terrorist caliphate plan, it does not include China. So when the terrorists have this grand view to take over the world, it coexists with China. Not many people are honest about that. Why? Why? Why?

B

Sorry, I was about to say to you, aren't they going down, too? They're not Islamic. Why are they spared from the civilizational jihad?

A

I think because so much of it is based on history and they want to take over where some of these battles happened historically, obviously they want North Africa back, they want the regions in Spain, and then they think the Western power is like us or they think like Israel's, who's stopping this from occurring? And so that's another reason why, of course, they target us.

B

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A

Yeah, the way I like to explain, it's not perfect, but the Muslim Brotherhood is like the political side of jihad and the Islamists. And then like a group like Al Qaeda or ISIS is like the fighter military side of it. Like, again, not perfectly defined because obviously, you know, we got like Hezbollah sits on both. But that's genuinely the way you put it. And so when you're a political organization, you can get away with a lot more things, right, because you're doing advocacy, you're doing outreach, you're working on alliances like you're playing all these games. And so the Muslim Brotherhood is very dangerous because it really hasn't been designated. So what the US Government did last November is they said, hey, we're going to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. But when you read it, it said, oh, there's like five weeks or six weeks where you analyze and make this decision. And so when that happened in January, they actually only designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. And then they took the Egypt one and the Jordan one and they said, oh, you have a special designation, which really was only sanctions, and it was already banned in those two. We actually only have this label against the Lebanese one. So a lot of Americans think, oh, we designated them. That's not true. And then we didn't do any of the Muslim Brotherhood on US Soil. But here's why they're dangerous. And one of the issues. So on US Soil, it's not like you're going to drive down the street and the building says the Muslim Brotherhood. So it's going to say like the American Saudi Friendship Pact or like the US Libyan alliance. So they made up kind of all these front companies, and our government even funds a lot of these front companies. And that's where the political influence comes in and all this type of thing. So we do have an interesting case where our government plays a game where they say, oh, the Muslim Brotherhood's all divided and we can only focus on one chapter and one chapter and one chapter. We can't view them as a whole organization. Which is funny, because al Qaeda, we have all of al Qaeda designated. We didn't just do one branch and leave like the Yemen branch of the North African branch. They play this strange game. And it's because there's a lot of Muslim Brotherhood money in politics. But if you saw late last year, two states, Texas and Florida, said, no, no, no, we're going to view this as an organization and go after it as an entire entity. So it's been an interesting shift in a way.

B

Okay, where are these guys getting their money from?

A

So the thing is, with the Muslim Brotherhood, it's legitimate and illegitimate money. So the Muslim Brotherhood is just almost like, if you set up an association, Chamber of Commerce is a really good example. So there's a bunch of people who run a bunch of different businesses. There's politicians in there. There might be, I don't know, a teacher's union, labor unions. You're all kind of members of this whole organization. That's really how the Muslim Brotherhood is. It's like A billion dollar enterprise. Now, when you talk about all the different ways it makes money, I mean, it's all over the place. It's the same as terrorist groups. I mean, they run legitimate businesses, so they run port facilities. They have stuff in the travel industry. I mean, any kind of business you can think of, the Muslim Brotherhood could have a handle on it. Now, they perform prefer like the Chinese government to really start kind of at the local level. Right. Like I said, being involved in the Chamber of Commerce, join different business and trade unions, those type of things, and then they start working their way up from the local level and they gain more influence. Right? We've seen this in a lot of places. United Kingdom, we've seen it. Switzerland, we've seen in Sweden, et cetera. And that's really their playbook. And you brought up kind of the dsa, right, the Democratic socialists. They do the exact same thing. They have the exact same operational plan. They're focused. Again, Chamber of Commerce says they're in a lot of those tenant organizations because they're saying, hey, it's expensive to live. Here's the angle we're going to take, right? We have an affordability issue in this country. We're going to sell that piece. Well, that's the same thing the Muslim Brotherhood does, you know, in Muslim lands. So they go into a place, let's say they had a crisis, there was a flood, and they're the first people there when they're, we're here to help you. And then they start weaving in kind of Islamist beliefs, Islamist candidates, which leads to Islamist governments, right? So they don't want to just kind of influence us. They want their ideology and their thought process and their governments across even the Muslim world. And so they're not just the danger to us, they're dangerous there. And that's why, like you said, UAE has a ban, the Jordanians have a ban, the Egyptians have it banned because they don't want that influence. But we act like it's nothing here. It's the craziest thing.

B

Not only do we not act like it's anything, if you're concerned about it, you're an Islamophobe. And the only thing that I've been able to default to here is I'm like, islam is not a race, so at least you don't get to pull that card. It's an idea. And political Islam is an idea and filled with ideas that I really don't like. And I struggle because, Sarah, I'm a classic liberal. I remember when Trump did His initial Muslim ban in 2016. And I was like, this is awful.

A

This is disgusting.

B

He's a monster. And now I am terrified of political Islam. Should I be? Because I am.

A

Yeah. There's two pieces to that. I first, really quickly, the Muslim ban. So it wasn't just Muslim countries. It was the fact that those countries couldn't do effective background checks on their people. Right. The Syrian regime wouldn't, the Libyan government wouldn't. Etc. Of course, some have advanced, right. Libya got some of their stuff together and can now do a better job. So then they started letting them back in again. So that was just. If I reach out to the government, they can't do a background check. How can I vet someone? That's why, like, Pakistan stayed on the list. You know, we had tons of people coming in from there, but they could at least do a background check. So that's what that ban was. I think a lot of people still don't understand it now when we talk about this movement. This is not Islam. This is Islamists. So this is the extreme piece, you know, of Muslims. And the majority of Muslims don't want the Islamist movement. Of course. I worked in Libya, and there is a lot of conflict, transportation around the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and their control and their influence and their relationships to Al Qaeda. And so we don't tell the truth enough about how in Muslim countries, they don't like the Muslim Brotherhood. We just act here, like, oh, no, it's, you know, Islamophobia to be against them. And it's like, I mean, what universe are we living in if their own people think they're us?

B

You've seen the leaders of the UAE come out and say, we're not sending our kids to Europe anymore because we don't want them to become radical Islamists. And you're just. You're like, wait, what? I mean, they're telling you. Like, I've had these fights on Piers Morgan, and the best part, Sarah, is like, you know, you got a Muslim calling me a white nationalist. I'm like, I'm Arab, you idiot. Like, what are we doing here? First of all, white nationalist Islam, again, race idea, not the same thing. And my dad's Syrian and Lebanese, so stop it right now. But, you know, you've got Piers Morgan, who I happen to love and respect a ton, and I identify with quite a bit because he's more of a moderate character that tries to see both sides. But he's like, well, what does it really mean, Jillian, this assimilation? I'm like, I don't know, Piers, don't chant Death to America. That's kind of what it means for me. Call me crazy. So, like, why are we not waking up here? And not only are we not waking up, Sarah, we've got DSA candidates who are now running New York, about to run la, running Seattle, about to run dc. They're going to end up in Congress, they're going to end up in the Senate, and they're telling you who they are. Why are so many Americans having a hard time believing this?

A

I think the first part is, even if we just talk about peers, it's they've never been in these real environments, in these real societies to actually understand this. Right? So if you don't actually really understand an Islamist, you just think good faith about everyone, right? Oh, most people are good people unless they show you otherwise. And that's. It's just not the right thinking. We put our Western lens on them and it's not even the same universe. Another really great example you brought up uae, how they don't want to send their kids anymore to the university. So how it happens is UAE actually funds their education, right? So it's like, I'm not going to fund the kids in my country to go to environment where they're being radicalized. Now that's happening because in the west, we have no real rules when it comes to freedom of speech, of course, for valid reasons. But if you went to a mosque in the uae, you would not hear the things at all that you're hearing in a lot of these kind of extreme ones in the US and in the uk because they control that. They don't allow that to occur because they know it leads to radicalization. But we don't deal with radicalization here. And it's complicated under our laws. I mean, UAE is a little bit of a police state. So the way we live our life is very difficult here. And that's why I'm kind of in the belief you got to keep the Islamists out, because once they're here, they're going to take advantage of our system and manipulate it. Just like we're seeing with the DSA candidates. They know where they can kind of pull and push and take advantage of the way we like to do things.

B

Why do you think so many young kids, you know, when you look at these DSA candidates, they're kind of like all white, privileged college kids. I mean, of course, Mamdani's not. He has a few people that are not. But the majority in these videos are like white, privileged 20 year olds that are like, we must overthrow the West. And I'm thinking, what happened to you when they, when they raised you in the suburb of Connecticut? Did you bump your head? These kids are literally sympathizing with Hamas, al Qaeda. They're reading Bin Laden's letter on TikTok. They're saying The west deserved 9 11. I'm like, you weren't even here for 9 11. It wasn't your father that jumped out of the 99th floor window. You a hole. What is happening to our young people and why are we incapable of stopping this?

A

So I feel it's two phases. So a first phase is kind of the younger school, like middle school and high school. And we really have kind of an education system where, right, we don't want the flag, it offends people. We don't want to really talk about our history in the right ways. It's, you don't want to be white or it's horrible to be American because you've done all these things and then they make you kind of hate yourself. Then you get to college and that's the time where you really figure out who you are. You define yourself, you really make kind of those circles you have for life. And that's where we do have this foreign influence. On the Islamic side we have Qatar, but we also do have nation states like China doing another kind of influence, right? So then you get into these environments and you get sucked in and pulled in. And being an activist is a really big thing now, right, because everyone loves social media and activists do really well on social media too. And so that plays out on it as well. And so they get targeted essentially for radicalization and recruitment and really don't actually understand what they're going through at all. Right? They're just parroting these things. They learn, they feel worldly even though they haven't really gone anywhere and seen actually how it works. And it's the best time to actually manipulate someone.

B

Why are we not passing laws that do not allow foreign governments to fund our universities? I don't understand it. It's not that complicated. And you know what's even crazier is, you know, people go after Israel, Israel, Israel. Oh my God, aipac. I'm like, well, what about niac? Oh, they're funding our education. We got a boycott, divest and sanction. I'm like, well, that's 400 million from Israel, but 7 billion from Qatar, $18 to 1. But yet they don't see it. I just want like, how about a Blanket ban. Why will the government not do this? No foreign governments funding education in America. Are they not allowed?

A

Yeah. So there's a couple of pieces that make this complicated. As you can imagine. There's first the research environment, right. And so there's tons of money that goes into research. And then these universities have lobbyists and they push back and they're like, we need this funding to stay ahead to compete with China even though China's in those programs, stealing it, et cetera. That's one game they play. And then of course they play the card. It's racist to say you don't want, you know, students going to study abroad in Qatar. You don't want the university taking in funds from that. Like what's wrong with you? And so again, it's people playing on the things that really divide us, but also that make us American. Because I'm American, I don't be racist. I'm an American. I want us to be at the top of tech and see how easily that can get manipulated if you're one of these bad actors trying to influence it is incredible.

B

Sarah. It's like they, they know us, they know that we're impatient. They know that we run on a two year cycle and a four year cycle with midterms and elections. And these guys have a hundred year

A

plan and I'm, they also know we're greedy. So people leave their time in the government where they have low paying jobs and then they can leave and be a lobbyist or you know, get all this money from Qatar. And so they know they can manipulate this situation because of how not just a short term, but it is a great earning potential for a lot of people. And you'll see people in the government not saying negative things about like a cutter because they want to position themselves for when they get up to maybe have an opportunity. It's a very frustrating thing to watch.

B

Well, that's where I'm going next is I've pulled out some incidents, that's the right word. Where our government is either soft on terror or has completely botched the terrorist situations. Lack of a better term. Okay, so stop me wherever. How did Benghazi get botched? Why did Afghanistan withdrawal get so botched? Why is Trump taking a plane from Qatar? How come Trump is saying that the Syrian leader could handle Iran better than the Israelis? Isn't the guy formerly a terrorist? Why are we giving money to the Taliban? Jump in, jump in, wherever. Because I'm looking at this trying to understand even Trump. I'm going, but dude, you're kind of the guy that I would expect to have the cojones to take this on. And you're like, ah, Syrian leader guy. He's chill,

A

yeah.

B

What do you mean, he's chill?

A

It's all over the place. Yeah. So Benghazi, I'm going to do Benghazi as simple as possible. So when Gaddafi fell, we're idealists, right? We're like, oh, good, it's democracy. And even our own government's like, let's get in there and make money and let's figure out how the political piece of it's going to form. And they completely ignored all these foreign terrorists were coming in and didn't want to hear about it, right? Then, of course, Al Qaeda attacked us in Benghazi, and we didn't even know Al Qaeda had a base there. That's how blind we were, because our focus was on governance, building, industry, the oil industry, all that type of stuff, right? Huge failure. Now, we could have reversed it by staying in Benghazi and going after the terrorists. We didn't. We abandoned it. We told the terrorists, hey, all you gotta do is attack us. Kill a few Americans and America is going to run away. Now Afghanistan, huge problem. What really happened that a lot of people don't talk about is Trump likes the strong man. So in Trump's first term, they made the decision, and this even happened under Obama. So he started kind of this reconciliation. And then Trump's term, they're like, yep, strongman's a Taliban. That's who we negotiate with. We negotiated with the Taliban, made this Doha deal, and then in the Biden administration, the Doha deal was going into effect. We retrograded out, pulled all these resources from the Afghanistan, you know, the Afghan military, because we were going to transition to Taliban being our partner. So it was going to happen that it fell to the Taliban. That's how everything's written. It fell to the Tal Taliban, as expected. And then we played dumb. Oh, how is that going to happen? Oh, my God. We negotiated only with the Taliban. If you read the Doha deal, it's signed between the US Government, the Taliban. The Afghan government had no role, so we made that choice. Then, like you said, you go to Syria. So Syria, the split screek was planned by Al Qaeda. So Jelani rejoined al Qaeda late 2021 to actually participate in the US homeland plotting. And then somehow that next spring, they came up with this crazy Syria thing that worked, which I can't even believe. So Al Qaeda helped train 10,000 more troops on top of Jiulani, several thousand. And they did the blitzkrieg. So they do the blitzkrieg and then you think the US Government would be like, oh, my gosh, this is now a terrorist safe haven. Al Qaeda took over. Instead, they're like, ooh, we got an awesome opportunity here to make a ton of money. Because if we take off these Caesar sanctions and all these type of things, we can, you know, pilfer off all this reconstruction money and get rich, which they tried to do in Libya. Right. So again, a lot of corruption involved, but a lot of people see Syria as a money making opportunity. I have no idea why anyone would take an airplane from Qatar. Like, oh, and then I can't remember the last thing, but I think I got most.

B

Okay, you did. We got Qatar. We got. Why are we giving money to the Taliban? Why are we giving money to the Taliban? Nancy Mace told me this, and then I said to her, why are we giving money to the Taliban? She goes, I don't know. What do you mean? Yeah, how does she not know? This is so crazy to me.

A

Like, it's so frustrating. Okay, so let me explain that as simple as possible. There's tons of money going to Taliban, but there's two main buckets. But we could talk with 10 more buckets. But two main buckets. There's a humanitarian aid bucket that goes to the State department. That's that 40 million a week everyone talks about. And the one Tim Perchette and several others, Eli Crane, et cetera, have been trying to cut off. There's a separate bucket that's 47 million a week. This is counterterrorism dollars. So it's black money. So not everyone in Congress has even seen this. That is inside the Doha deal in a classified annex. And we've promised them that we deliver that weekly, and then we give them bonuses on top of that. So this isn't even the baseline of all that money. So this is the money that definitely comes from the US Government straight to the Taliban, delivered in cash. A part of it used to be flown in to Kabul. Too many people are talking about it. So now they just deliver it all in Doha. There's a lot of other funding streams. We fund them through the un, through the World Food Program, through iom. I mean, I could go on and on. So there is money going to the Taliban from about a dozen different ways. That's US Taxpayer dollars.

B

Okay, again, I can't help but point this out, but we're angry about the money given to Israel, which buys US weapons. That's also scheduled to now be ending. But we're not angry about the hundreds of millions. I mean, that's 100 million a week that you just told me about, which will be billions a year. Why are we not angry about that? Do you think people know or how?

A

There's two kind of bad thought processes that fall in here. One is it's cheaper to fund the Taliban than to be in Afghanistan, which is true, but I don't really think that should be a benchmark. If we fund the Taliban to fight isis, we don't have to do it. But of course, they're not really funding isis. The other part of it is, is the fact that if we pay them off, they won't attack here, which is the most naive concept in the world. But that is really a belief. Hold on.

B

It's extortion money. That's basically what it.

A

100%.

B

Oh, my gosh. Why don't we just take $100 million a week and fund more CIA agents? That's.

A

I would just take the money and get bombs and bomb all the terrorist camps in Afghanistan. We could do it every day. There's over 100 camps.

B

Why aren't they? Because it's. I. Why aren't they?

A

So the problem is with the Doha deal, we now have an official relationship with the Taliban. So our partner in Afghanistan is the Taliban. Our counterterrorism partner is the Taliban. That's who the US Government is allied with. That's our partner. It's just the same as if you said, we're a partner with the French government, and that's how they're treating it. It's a very frustrating thing, and it's a little bit of insanity. And we're watching the same thing, of course, unfold in Syria. And then there's even people starting to say, hey, maybe we should do the same in Somalia and talk to Al Shabaab. It's like, what universe are you guys in? And then you saw, there's even discussions now to have the Al Qaeda regime in Syria go into Lebanon and handle that force. In what universe does that make any sense? Then you would just make Lebanon another terrorist country, which you don't want to happen. They've already gone so far away from Christianity in that country. I mean, I know a ton of people from Lebanon, both moderate Muslims and Christians, who plan to go back. And now they're like, I don't see it ever happening. And that's a very, very scary thing. As you watch these countries fall to these Islamists and Terrorists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

B

I've spoken to so many people who have escaped these countries. Whether it's like, Brigitte Gabriel, Gad Saad, Sheena Nazarian, Martin Sedron. It's like, I have Egyptian, I'm Lebanese, I'm Iranian. And each one will tell you about how the Islamic came in, killed everybody, and they barely escaped with their lives or have a bullet wound. I mean, it's just. And then I'm like, okay, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't want to listen to this because I don't want to become. I don't want to start fearing a group of people. But I'm to the point where I'm like, I think, yeah, these are terrifying ideas, and we have got to start warning more people about this here in the West. But Trump is not dumb. Maybe why, Sarah? He's the one that's like, I'm taking the plane from Qatar and I like the Syrian guy and I'm doing this Taliban deal. Is this. You're telling me it's just because he likes a strong leader, is nobody informing him? And I'm about to get to Iran. But I want to start with that question.

A

That is a huge piece of it. There is a huge chunk of the US Government who will always back the strongman. It's why we really did back the Iranian regime for so long. Hand them money, make crappy deals. And so it makes a situation easier, right? Like Trump wanted to get out of Afghanistan. Let's make this Doha deal, move on, right? We don't want to be in Syria anymore. Let's make this deal, move on. And that makes him think, hey, I move forward. We dealt with this. This is peace. But as we all know, you give these Islamists like an inch, they take a mile, they rebuild, they start plotting again because they're not going to stop going after us. So we're just kicking the can down the road. So, sure, it makes this job a little easier, but three, four years from now, you know, we're in a really tough spot again. And so we, as you know, only think in two and four years, and we don't have strategies and policies to deal with this.

B

I don't even know what question to ask on Iran. I kind of just want to do this. Iran, go, okay. So I don't know where to begin. So I'm just going to do that. I'm going to let you take it to pieces. I don't know where to begin. Iran, go.

A

I mean, it's Complicated. So I feel like last year it made a lot more sense. So last year we went in and said, hey, we have a problem with the nuclear program. It seems to be more advanced than we believe and we're going to bomb it. So everybody understood it. It made perfect sense. Now, after January, when we went in again, people first thought, well, maybe this is to back the people, which a lot of people are supportive of. And then like, no, no, no, it's only about the nuclear program again. And that's where everybody got really confused because they're like, wait, wait, I thought we destroyed the nuclear program last year. Now we're back dealing with the nuclear program. And then even if that had been the case, then of course the key leverage has now come the straight o horn moves. And that's all we're fighting over and all we're negotiating. So whatever the original plan was earlier this year, it doesn't even seem to be we're negotiating on that piece because we need to get the straight or horn moves going.

B

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A

I think we thought it was going to be so quick, like four weeks or six weeks that it would just be done. Whatever this campaign was, Iran was smart enough to realize where they had leverage and took Advantage of it. But yes, you assume that would be in the planning. But again, a lot of the public doesn't know what the key outcome is supposed to be. And I think that's why we're a little frustrated. If it was for the nuclear program, again, does that mean we missed attacking a piece of it last year? And that's fine, go back in and hit the rest of it, I'm okay with it. But we just kind of need to know what the left and right limits are. I mean, I think we're at a point, at least, where the government's focus says, let's keep Iran's program stalled or stopped for 10 years or something like that. And it sounds like that's maybe a little bit what they're pushing, besides the fact that we need to keep the straight open because it's impacting a lot of industries.

B

Right. I was at an event recently where Marco Rubio was and somebody asked him a question about Iran and he said, I happen to love him, but. So maybe I'm biased, which is why I'm asking this question. But he goes, you know, we didn't message this as well as we needed to in the beginning of this most recent, recent conflict with Iran. I'm butchering this. But he said something to the effect of the fact that they were amassing so many missiles that they were going to get to a point where they could overwhelm our ability to shoot them down. And they were about a year away from that. And all the threats that we would make of like, we're going to go in there, we're going to take out your nuclear. We're going to do this and we're going to do that.

A

They'd be like, good luck with that.

B

We're gonna hit all the Gulf states, we're gonna hit Israel, we're gonna nail Europe, and within a year's time, they would have such a robust supply of weapons and be just a little farther along with their ballistic missiles that that was also a pending problem. Do you buy that? Does that sound accurate?

A

So if that was the reason, I think that is a viable reason. Because, remember, Iran kept from us that the distance their missiles go. And so now that we know they also go farther, it becomes a different threat picture. So obviously we care about nuclear program, but we do have a lot of allies in the region. We have a lot of business interests in the region. And now knowing that they have a larger capacity and can go farther, you know, it is a concerning thing. But again, that wasn't message so it's hard for me to say if I buy it or not. They should have just messaged it that way if that was the reason. Because we do still all have a lot of questions of what's the second phase about? Because if it's not for the people. Okay, then it's for the missiles. Then why are we still bombing months later? Why didn't we get all the missiles in, like, the first six to eight weeks? So, you know, there is a lot of questions as to why it's continuing.

B

That's so true. And then it's like, well, we hit this and we hit that, and we hit that silo and this launcher. And you're thinking, but why. Why didn't you do the. That five months ago? And another question that has absolutely confounded me. Trump says to the people, like, rise up. Take your country back. With what, though?

A

Yeah, I don't.

B

Hold on. How? With, like, their bare knuckles? Did he really think that was possible? Like, why didn't we have some stuff in there? Like, there was no way to get them weapons? Like, who are the Kurds? Kurds? Why was there no ground game there?

A

Yeah, I don't. I thought that was kind of wrong of him to put out because he gave hope, and hope's a dangerous thing if there's no kind of plan to do it. Now, the Kurd piece is very, very interesting because they said, oh, we gave weapons to the Kurds. They didn't deliver them. But all the senior leaders in the Kurdish movement said, we didn't get the weapons. We didn't get the weapons. We didn't get the weapons. So either someone botched a program and briefed it wrong to the president, or, like, he needs to tell us who in the Kurds. Right. Because the Kurds are like, why is under the bus? Again, we don't have the weapons. You would see if there was this huge, large influx of weapons that then got sold off or went somewhere. So these weapons have not shown up since that was said. So I don't believe some large number of weapons were delivered. The other thing is they said they delivered to the Kurds. Okay, well, who were the Kurds supposed to give the weapons to in Iran? That's never been answered. So that whole bit's a little strange to me. I don't really believe it. If it wasn't program, I think it was obviously too small, because clearly it wasn't enough weapons. It wasn't going to the right people. It's not even maybe the best way to bring them in et cetera. So, yeah, I don't think there was any sort of real plan to use the people and overthrow the government. I know that's all what we want to see happen, but. But I never saw it that way. And especially now, if you're saying Rubio said, oh, it was, you know, these missiles, well, that wasn't a priority then to arm the people in any way.

B

That's so interesting. Is it possible? Because I'm just having the hardest time thinking that the President could pull off something like Venezuela and get the Chinese out of Panama and push them out of Greenland and he's going to get Cuba to fall. It seems like maybe I'm wrong, but. But I guess I had gotten overly confident. And I just keep looking at this and thinking, okay, what's really going on here that they're not telling us? There's no way they're this incompetent. There's no way they didn't close the straight. There's no way they didn't know the people couldn't overtake the irgc. You just connected the dots to say, like, yeah, that obviously wasn't their intention because Rubio just said this. If you had to predict, do you think the president is playing some sort of of 40 chess and just doesn't want to let us in on it, or do you think they're in over their head?

A

I think they may be underestimated. The Iranian regime, the Iranian regime has negotiated with us 50, 60 years. They know how to play the game. They have a strategic patience we don't have. So they know they just have to impose costs on the U.S. even if those costs are just kind of political, Public, public pressure. Also, how it works here, it's like, oh, well, we killed all these senior leaders in irgc. So to Americans, that seems like a huge win. They've got all these losses, but remember, this is a regime. They want people to die. So it's not viewed in the same way as the loss it is here. It's almost like a victory thing. And we have a problem where we can't think like Islamists. Now, some of the other places we had success, Venezuela, we had an inside man who was able to take out a leader, Maduro, but then we had a very corrupt government. You can negotiate with corrupt governments. Islamists are very, very different. And so you have to handle them differently. So I do think we have a bit where we did not view the regime in the way we should have. And that's happened. Right? We got played by the Taliban, etc. We got played by, we will be played by Giuliani in Syria, even if no one's being honest yet. But a few years from now, that'll be very visible. So unfortunately it's, you can't handle every enemy the same way.

B

You have said that you think October 7th was a warm up act.

A

Yeah.

B

What do you mean by that?

A

Sure, very simple. So Al Qaeda has this whole operational plan with a number of attacks. They're against embassies, they're against countries, etc. They joined forces to work on October 7th and we actually did a whole report. We laid out all the planning. We had the first two planning meetings. We put who was at them, we talked about who did the fatwa. No one tells the truth about this. The fatwa to allow that attack to occur was done by the supreme leader of the Taliban. Now all of this occurred because the Taliban offered Hamas like the training of space in Afghanistan to prepare for the attacks. So a large chunk of the terrorist trained in Afghanistan and then interestingly a large number stayed in wait in Syria. So when all those terrorists were like hooked to drugs, it's because they got hooked in Syria waiting for the attacks. So anyway, long story short, Al Qaeda wanted to use October 7th as a dress rehearsal, kind of as a practice stage. They jointly train the Hamas terrorists with Al Qaeda terrorists sent to the U.S. and then they want to take the lessons learned from October 7th for their attack against the US homeland. So anything they learn from that attack, they're going to take change some tactics employ here. And so I think that's a really important thing for law enforcement to understand because I meet law enforcement all over the country. None of them I've studied any of the tactics of October 7th. They don't even understand there's a waves of attacks. They don't understand all the key plotting pieces that went after police stations, the secondary attacks on the convoys of first responders, et cetera. So it's like this huge thing happened and no one studied it. I mean, I don't know, do we have to wait 10, 20 years? And so there's so many lessons there and we're failing miserably. Another thing is no one's being honest that Al Qaeda was involved in that, that Bin Laden's own son Abdullah was involved in the plotting of October 7th. And we only hear first Hamas, then luckily people started saying Iran. But the Taliban and Al Qaeda were involved. And there are even Taliban and Al Qaeda members killed in Israel. So I'd also like Israel to Start coming out and saying, yeah, we've had all these foreign fighters, we had ISIS there, we had all these Libyan terrorists there, we had all these terrorists from Afghanistan. And until they really come out and say that, I don't think a lot of people are going to believe it. But remember, there is somewhere between 6,500 and 8,000 terrorists on the ground. They were not all Hamas.

B

So we're paying the Taliban extortion money not to attack us. But there were Taliban fighters in Israel on October 7th.

A

Yeah. Yes. There's even some clips from some of the feeds, and they're speaking in postu.

B

Why are they not telling?

A

You know, that's not in a lot of countries.

B

Why are they not telling us? I. I don't understand. Why not be forthcoming?

A

I think the way Israel looks at it, it makes sense. You know, the majority of this plot was from Hamas. This is plot. This is our opportunity to now go after Hamas and make real gains. We don't have the capability. Israel doesn't have the capability to take on Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, who jumped in and then go against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, even, like I told you, there's elements of ISIS there. They can't spread themselves that thin. So they said, hey, we do have this momentum. We do at least have international support right now, like initially when it happened, to go and potentially eliminate Hamas. But what has happened is Hamas has now moved into 12 training camps in Afghanistan. So they're reconstituting in Afghanistan so you can go kill two in Gaza, you train four in Afghanistan. And so the terrorists are well prepared for this. They knew a lot of people were going to die, and they're okay with it. So a lot of people, like Hamas miscalculated. Oh, no. This is the beginning of a camp campaign. And until people understand that the terrorists believe they're winning and they're actually really looking forward to these future plots, you know, in Europe and in the US because October 7th was so successful.

B

Sarah, I have so many more questions for you about how people are using TikTok to cross our borders, about what actually happened in Benghazi, about. About the bio labs that Tulsi Gabbard is talking about, about how October 7th continues to unfold. Would you make this a part one and come back for me and for everybody listening, how about we do part two in a month together? Because I want to know all about your book, I want to know all about your podcast and everything that you think I missed, which I'm sure is a ton. I could literally talk to you for hours. So I want to obligate you to a part two right now on the air.

A

I'm in. I'm in. You don't have to obligate me. Okay.

B

Okay. And would you tell everybody where they can watch your podcast, read your book, and get more from you in the interim? Of course. Until you and I do our part two?

A

Yeah, really simple. The book I put out was called Benghazi Know Thy Enemy. It was an investigation into the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us in Benghazi in 2012, and we use all the proceeds and put it back into our investigation. So that's how we investigate what's happening in Syria October 7, the Taliban, et cetera. And then I do host my own podcast now. It's called the Watch Floor. And you can find it on YouTube. And then I'm easy to find. I'm just in true Name Sarah Adams

B

Onyx thank you so much. You're fantastic. And I really, really, really love this conversation and I'm looking forward to the next one. And if I missed anything that I didn't just list, make sure to tell my producer so I'm prepared for the next one. Perfectly.

A

Sounds good. Looking forward to it.

B

Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.