CNN
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The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies provided Austrian law enforcement with information that enabled them to thwart an ISIS-inspired attack on a Taylor Swift concert earlier this month, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen confirmed Wednesday.
CNN and other media outlets had previously reported on the role of US intelligence in foiling the plot. Cohen said the intelligence service was “quite advanced” and threatened to “kill tens of thousands of people at that concert, including, I’m sure, many Americans.”
“The Austrians were able to make these arrests because the agency and our intelligence partners provided them with information about the plans of this ISIS-affiliated group,” Cohen said.
“I can tell you that there were people in my agency and certainly in other agencies who thought that was a really good day for Langley,” he said, referring to the CIA headquarters in Virginia. “And not just the Swifties on my staff.”
Swift has just finished a series of shows at London’s Wembley Stadium and the European leg of her tour. On August 7, Austrian authorities announced that they had foiled a terrorist attack planned for at least one of the Vienna dates.
In connection with the investigation, three young people were arrested on suspicion of planning a suicide attack.
Authorities said investigators found a stash of chemicals, explosives, detonators and counterfeit money worth 21,000 euros in the house of the main suspect, a 19-year-old IS sympathizer who had become radicalized on the Internet.
“The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear and enormous guilt because so many people had planned to come to these shows. But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were mourning concerts and not live performances,” Swift said in a statement earlier this month.
