The CIA, in collaboration with other U.S. intelligence agencies, provided essential information to Austrian law enforcement, successfully preventing an ISIS-inspired scheme aimed at a Taylor Swift concert earlier this month. This was confirmed by CIA Deputy Director David Cohen on Wednesday, as reported by CNN. CNN and others had previously reported the role of US intelligence in disrupting the plot, which was “quite advanced” and threatened to kill “tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans,” Cohen said.
On August 7, Austrian authorities announced they had foiled a terror attack planned for at least one of Swift's Vienna dates, which were scheduled to follow a run of shows that Swift had done at London's Wembley Stadium as part of the European leg of her tour. Three teenagers have been detained in connection with the investigation and are suspected of plotting a suicide attack. Investigators found a stockpile of chemicals, explosive devices, detonators and €21,000 (about $22,944) in counterfeit cash at the home of the main suspect, a 19-year-old ISIS sympathizer who had been radicalized online, authorities said. “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," Swift said in a statement. "But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives."
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