Three weeks after four suspected terrorists connected to the Islamic State were detained in Vienna ahead of an alleged plot targeting Taylor Swift’s sold-out shows there, the CIA is confirming they provided Austrian authorities with the requisite intelligence to foil it.
“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 Wednesday at the annual Intelligence Summit outside Washington, D.C., The New York Times reported.
“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 deputy director, who has held the position since 2021, continued.
The terrorist threat led concert organizer Barracuda Music to cancel all three of Swift’s Eras Tour dates at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna, which would have kicked off on Aug. 8, because the arrests made in connection to the foiled plot were too close to showtime.
Austrian police arrested the first two suspects — a 17-year-old Austrian citizen who had al-Qaida material in his home and a 19-year-old who reportedly planned to kill fans outside the venue “using explosives and knives” — two days before the first scheduled show.
Police arrested a third suspect, an 18-year-old Iraqi citizen, on Aug. 8. Cohen said Wednesday that the CIA had provided local authorities with information on four people; Austrian police did detain a fourth suspect, who is 15 years old, but released him after interrogation.
Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
Swift addressed the incident two weeks after the concerts were canceled.
“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “The reason for the cancellation filled me with a sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”
Swift continued, “But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives. I was heartened by the love and unity I saw in the fans who banded together.”
Cohen didn’t divulge how the agency learned of the thwarted plot. According to the Times, however, an estimated 200,000 fans were expected to attend Swift’s Vienna shows. The singer has since wrapped the European leg of her Eras Tour.