CIA Says Taylor Swift Terror Plot Aimed To Kill ‘Tens Of Thousands Of People’

 The CIA said it helped stop a terrorist attack that was being planned for a Taylor Swift “Eras Tour” concert in Vienna earlier this month.

CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen made the revelation during the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Maryland this week, per Time. He said the CIA passed intel to Austrian authorities, which they used to help shut down the scheme.

“They were plotting to kill a huge number, tens of thousands of people at this concert, I am sure many Americans,” Cohen said. “The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”

 

The information led to canceling three sold-out concerts in Austria over the second weekend of August.

The main suspect, a 19-year-old Austrian man with links to the Islamic State group, was arrested shortly after. Bomb-making manuals and homemade explosives, detonators, and hydrogen peroxide were all found in his home.

“He wanted to carry out an attack in the area outside the stadium, killing as many people as possible using the knives or even using the explosive devices he had made,” Austrian official Omar Haijawi-Pirchner said at the time of his arrest. 

He said the teen’s confession showed he had been “clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill infidels.”

Two other suspects, a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old, were also arrested for their part in planning the attack.

Swift shared a statement with fans at the conclusion of her scheduled shows in London, which had heightened security measures but ultimately went forward as planned.

 

“Having our Vienna shows cancelled [sic] was devastating,” she wrote on Instagram. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”

She went on to thank authorities for preventing a potential tragedy.

“Thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” Swift continued, mentioning how she intentionally waited to comment on the situation until her European shows were over. 

“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she shared on social media.