CIA official: Planned terrorist attack on Taylor Swift concert was intended to kill “tens of thousands of people”

The foiled terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert in Vienna was intended to kill “a huge number, tens of thousands of people,” including Americans, according to the CIA’s deputy director.

At the annual Intelligence Summit outside Washington on Wednesday, David S. Cohen announced an update on the investigation into the terrorist attack planned earlier this month, which led to the pop star cancelling all of his performances in the Austrian capital.

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“They planned to kill a huge number of people, tens of thousands at that concert, I'm sure many Americans,” Cohen said, as reported The New York Times“The Austrians were able to make these arrests because the agency and our intelligence partners provided them with information about the plans of this ISIS-affiliated group.”

On August 7, Austrian concert promoter Barracuda Music announced that the three planned concerts of the Eras Tour at the Ernst Happel Stadium would be cancelled due to an apparent terrorist attack. Austrian authorities have since arrested three people accused of planning the attack, including one in whom bomb-making materials were found.

Cohen stressed that there was no doubt that the goal of the plot was to attack the Eras Tor show and kill a large number of concertgoers.

Weeks after the shows were canceled, Swift broke her silence about the planned attacks and thanked the authorities. “The cancellation of our shows in Vienna was devastating,” she wrote on Instagram. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear and enormous guilt because so many people had planned to come to these shows.”

The superstar continued: “But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them we mourned concerts and not live performances. The love and unity I saw among the fans who stuck together encouraged me.”

Cohen did not disclose how the CIA learned of the planned attack. The times reported that 200,000 people were expected to attend Swift’s shows in Vienna.

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