Terrorists planned to kill ‘tens of thousands’ of fans at Taylor Swift's Vienna concert, CIA official says
“They were plotting to kill a huge number, tens of thousands of people at this concert, I am sure many Americans,” CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen said.
A CIA official has revealed that the terrorist plot at Taylor Swift’s Vienna concert was intended to kill “tens of thousands” of fans. The foiled terror plot led to the cancellation of all three of the singer’s Eras Tour concerts in Austria earlier this month.
“They were plotting to kill a huge number, tens of thousands of people at this concert, I am sure many Americans,” CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen said the annual Intelligence Summit just outside Washington, D.C., according to The New York Times.
“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," he added.
During the summit on Wednesday, August 28, Cohen did not reveal how the CIA came to know about the alleged plot. Three people were arrested in connection with the incident, including a 19-year-old Austrian, a 17-year-old Austrian and an 18-year-old Iraqi. The plot was inspired by the Islamic State group, authorities said.
‘His aim was to kill himself and a large number of people’
On August 8, Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of Austria's Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, said in a news conference that the 19-year-old Austrian suspect confessed that they had planned "to carry out an attack” at Swift’s concert “using explosives and knives.” "His aim was to kill himself and a large number of people during the concert either today or tomorrow," he added, according to Le Monde. Around 200,000 people would have possibly attended the three shows combined.
Swift recently broke her silence on the incident in a lengthy Instagram post. “Having our Vienna shows canceled was devastating. 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 wrote. “But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”