Morning Wire - How A Terror Suspect Was Allowed Back On A College Campus

Episode Date: September 5, 2026

Former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams joins Morning Wire to break down the Old Dominion University terror attack that left an Army ROTC instructor dead and two cadets injured. Adams details how suspect Mohamed Bailor Jalloh returned to campus despite his criminal history, what happened during the attack, and why researchers were warning of a growing ISIS-era terrorism threat in the U.S. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3076- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit https://JoinADF.com/WIRE or text WIRE to 83848 Horizon3 - Visit https://horizon3.ai/WIRE and request your free NodeZero demo- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tired of your car insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record, you're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.a.i.

Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger than life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house. Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-I-R.com. 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. 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.

But after 9-11, they didn't have someone in the middle that they push operations forward. And a lot of those operations, and most people now 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 Muhammad Baylor Jalo? 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 tear. If 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 24th, 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 mean, he was actively plotting with ISIS for an attack. But he got out, first of all, he just got out at all, which is shocking to me.

And he's allowed in our country to walk free. Yeah, I mean, the negative is this is what happens when we actually put Americans in prison. And we have, we put, what, 209 Americans in prison for joining ISIS. Well, when they serve their terms, they get released. And not a lot of people are talking about that. But we already have 72 released right now in this country. In this case, showed they're not really being monitored in an effective way. Now, Jallo reapplied to Old Dominion University and he was readmitted.

What did the university know about his criminal history? Did they have all the information when they chose to readmit him? They had none of his criminal history. How it was working at the time, first Virginia law, you can't even ask for criminal history during the admissions period. Then when you get accepted, there was a voluntary questionnaire that went out, but it did not go out to readmit his students. It goes up now, but it was still voluntary.

So he never got it. It wasn't filled in. FBI never told them he was on campus. His parole officer didn't inform the campus. So they had no clue that there is an IAS member on campus. So his parole officer, I would think the parole officer would be required to inform a school of that kind of history. So he has the ability and the freedom to tell, like someone who employs him or a school, he did not do that. But there is no law requiring him to inform them that he's an ISIS member.

Isn't that a crazy thing? We have this huge gap when it comes to Tara. Freedom is given to us by God, not government, but its ability to endure rests with the people. We're seeing our God-given rights tested, threatened, and violated right now, and we must stop it before it's too late. Our friends at Alliance defending freedom are fighting some of the most critical legal battles of our generation, upholding biological truth, defending free speech, preserving religious liberty. But they depend on friends like you to keep up this work. Your gift today powers the very legal battles that are defining,

freedom's future. Every dollar you give today will be matched by a special grant while funds last. Visit joinadf.com slash wire or text wire to 83848 to make twice the impact for freedom today. That's join adf.com slash wire or text wire to 83848. Cybersecurity has a pretty simple problem. You don't know what you don't know. A company can have security tools, a great IT team, and every reason to believe its systems are protected. But the real test is what happens when someone actually tries to break in. That's where Horizon 3 comes in. Their Node Zero platform is essentially an autonomous AI hacker. It attacks your own environment the way a real attacker would, looking for vulnerabilities across your cloud, internal systems, identities, web apps,

and more. Then comes the useful part. Hack, fix, verify, repeat. Node Zero finds the problem. Your team fixes it. And with one click, you can verify that vulnerability is actually secure. It's already run more than 225,000 production safe test with zero downtime, and it's trusted by organizations including the NSA, CISA, and Fortune 100 companies. I really like the idea of testing your security against simply assuming it's working. If I were responsible for protecting a company system, this is exactly the kind of visibility that I'd want. See exactly what an attacker would find in your environment before they do. Go to Horizon 3.AI slash wire and request your Node Zero demo. Visit Horizon3.AI slash wire. Again, that's Horizon 3.com.

3.AI slash wire. No commitment required. Results in hours, not weeks. Walk us through what happened the day of Jallo's attack for people who maybe didn't follow that story. What happened is we know he was focused on targeting military personnel, right? That's why he was arrested in 2016. So he chose the ROTC. So this just wasn't some random event on campus. So he went in and he actually asked, is this the ROTC office? And then he got, you don't know, affirmative response. And then he said, Al-Awokbar, and he started shooting. Of course, you know, the lieutenant colonel got involved. He's the one who ended up dying, got shot several times, two other individuals got shot. And then they obviously overpowered this Harris.

Thankfully, we had no more lost the life. But yeah, this was a targeted attack. So this is exactly the kind of thing that he had been plotting with ISIS and he was arrested for and convicted of. Yeah. And remember, Odu, where it's located, It has a very large military population of its students compared to other universities, too. Now, would you know that he was dead on scene after being stabbed by one of the students and overpowered by a few students and the instructor? Do we know any details about how they took him out? Yeah, I mean, he was very heroic, obviously, the individuals that have overpowered him.

Now, I don't really say how they overpowered him. They won, right? We do have, unfortunately, a system where we may charge people for taking it to a terrorist. It's just an unfortunate thing. So people don't really talk about the specifics of what they did to overpower and defeat the terrorists. It's just a good news story that they were able to and they were brave enough to. Now, in your article for Daily Wire, you say researchers were warning that an ISIS-era terrorism problem was brewing by 2024. This happened this year.

So there's been a lot of warnings about this kind of thing happening. What prompted first researchers to say that we really are bound to see some threats? Well, it's just the fact that about 10 years ago was the peak of ISIS. A lot of terrorists ended up with like 10-year sentences. I mean, his was 11. But, you know, 8 to 10 to 12 years is worth they're spending in prison. And then they're getting out. So obviously, it's important now because they're getting free again.

And a lot of terrorists just go back in the fight, unfortunately. The reactivism rate is very, very high. So that risk warning was largely in part because of these people being released back into the public. Yes, because we're getting to the phase now. They're starting to come out of prison. We do have other issues, though. We, of course, had ISIS members that have come over the southern border. That type of thing.

We have a lot of issues where ISIS has really leaned in and gotten a lot more effective in their all-line recruitment. So now, for example, you can do everything online. You don't have to try to travel overseas, so it makes it a lot more accessible to anyone who wants to commit terrorism. So there has been other things and evolution within ISIS, too, that makes it more dangerous right now. As you've spelled out, I mean, there's a lot of obvious gaps here in terms of our national security and how we're dealing with threats, known threats like this. Are you seeing any action on that or any changes being made policy-wise? wise to better handle situations like Jalos? Well, we did see at least the change with the Bureau of Prisons.

So he got out early because he went through like a drug rehabilitation program that allows for early release. So they have taken that off the table if you have a terrorism offense. So that would at least kept him in jail, what, almost three more years. But you still have the problem when he gets out. So we don't really have a system in place like you would have with the sex, you know, the sex offender registry. We don't have anything like that in place. Well, you can look up. Do I have a terrorist in my neighborhood? And maybe that's something we should think about.

Stunning. I can't actually believe that this is how we handle this. Yeah, it's crazy. And think about, even if you're a charged for 9-11, what if you got a 20, 25-year prison sentence, 30-year prison sentence? You're getting out soon. And a lot of people don't realize the time that has passed in some of these cases. And you said right now we have something like 72 known threats that are free in that. the country. Yeah, those are just ISIS. So there's obviously other terrorists that have been released as well. Well, a major problem here. And thankfully, we have people like you with expertise sounding the alarm over some of these issues. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on. Of course. Thanks for having me. That was former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams,

and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long.

Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.