A (0:01)

Hello, it's Miranda. I'm back with a new mini episode of Podforce One. This feature is a little more topical and relevant to my job as a columnist for the New York Post. Today's topic is a follow up on the troubling recent spate of Islamic terror attacks, particularly the Norfolk, Virginia attack by a convicted ISIS terrorist. On probation after being released from prison, he finally carried out the plan he'd been jailed for. But why did nobody stop him?

B (0:36)

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A (1:04)

The official response to my column Monday about the FBI's failure to prevent four recent Islamic terror attacks has been unsatisfactory to say the least. And the personal attacks by FBI Director Kash Patel's private PR operatives have been downright deranged. None of which is reassuring when it comes to the FBI's preparedness to handle a heightened terror threat on home soil. It's not Patel's fault that our foremost domestic counter terrorism agency has been degraded and politicised under his predecessors. But it's his job to fix it fast, and his defensiveness suggests a problem. The most alarming case involves Mohammad Bailor Jlo, a convicted ISIS terrorist who was on supervised federal release when he yelled Allah Akbar and opened fire on an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia last Thursday, killing the instructor before being killed himself. JLo, a naturalized US citizen from Sierra Leone, was released from federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania on December 23, 2024, having served eight years of an 11 year sentence for, quote, providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State Group. Specifically, he planned an attack on US Military personnel during Ramadan. He was placed on federal supervised release for five years until 2029. So I asked the FBI if it had forewarning of JLo's attack in Norfolk, seeing he was on supervised release. But the FBI insists that it's not their job to monitor released terrorists. A spokesman replied, quote, the FBI does not oversee supervised release from prison. That would be up to the federal district court. When the FBI has information or intelligence of a threat, the FBI works with our local and federal law enforcement to address those threats. End quote. JLo's probation officer last visited him in November 2025 in Sterling, Virginia, where he lived with his sister. According to the federal affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against the man accused of selling him the gun, Kenya Mitchell Chapman, which was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The probation visits were scheduled once every six months. I asked the FBI if it was informed by JLo's probation officer of his November visit. I received the same answer. Quote, refer you to the federal District court, end quote. JLo lived just 22 miles from the FBI's Washington Field Office, the bureau's second largest office whose jurisdiction includes Sterling. The WFO was the field office that handled JLo's original 2016 arrest. So you would think the FBI would want to know that JLO had been released from prison and would make an effort to monitor him. I asked if the FBI had kept an eye on jlo in the 14 months since his release. For instance, had they covertly tailed him, monitored his contacts, his phone and computer use, tracked his finances, or interacted with him in any way? The FBI replied open quote. As said, the FBI does not control supervised release from prison or post release monitoring, which would include some actions you are referring to, end quote. That is extraordinary. Any proactive, thorough, counterterrorism program should have had JLO in its sights as a potential threat and at least made an effort to to mitigate it. At about 12:30pm March 11, the day before the Norfolk attack, phone records show that JLO traveled to his alleged gun supplier's house in Smithfield, Virginia, where he stayed for one and a half hours, quote, and then traveled to the vicinity of the Islamic center of Hampton, Virginia, end quote. According to the Chapman affidavit, he stayed at that mosque for more than nine hours before returning to Smithfield and staying overnight with his alleged gun supplier. That activity might have raised red flags if anyone had been tailing him in the past. The FBI has conducted surveillance of convicted Islamic terrorists for years after their release from federal prison. Did something change? Did former FBI Director Christopher Wray focus all the FBI's counterterrorism efforts on the Biden administration's new designation designation of domestic terrorists as a Trump supporter? Was the FBI too Busy rounding up J6 grandmas for trespass, Catholics for attending Latin Mass and parents at school board meetings complaining about gender theory to worry about monitoring actual Islamist terrorists? Hell bed on killing infidels? And if it's not the FBI's job, then why is the Bureau automatically notified by the Bureau of Prisons when an inmate with a terrorism conviction is scheduled for Release. Quote Since 2005 the Bureau of Prisons has provided to the FBI a list of terrorist inmates who are scheduled for release from Bureau of Prisons custody so the FBI could perform appropriate follow up activities if necessary. Noted a 2020 DOJ Inspector General audit of the Bureau of Prisons confirming quote, the ongoing policy requirement for identified terrorist inmates to enable FBI jttf, which is the multi agency Joint Terrorism Task Force which is led by the FBI to enable their follow up monitoring decisions and watch list maintenance. Sure sounds like the FBI is supposed to be involved in monitoring terrorists after they're released from prison. In fact there are several well documented examples of other released Islamic terrorists being monitored by the FBI for years. For example, John Walter Lynd, American Taliban he was released from prison in 2019 on three years of supervised release, during which time the FBI tailed him and covertly photographed him meeting another released Jihadist as documented in federal court filings in 2021. The Lackawanna Sikhs, who are Yemeni American men who were convicted over an Al Qaeda plot in 2003. They were released in the mid 2010s and surveilled by the FBI for years. Director Patel placed the FBI on high alert on February 28th in response to Operation Epic Fury in Iran and he declared that the Bureau was at the forefront of a deterring attacks here at home. I asked the FBI if its field officers, including the Washington Field Office, responded to the high alert by taking inventory of potential terrorism subjects like JLo. What additional steps, if any, were taken, to locate and monitor JLo. The FBI replied, quote. Director Patel said on February 28th the FBI's Counterterrorism and Intelligence teams were instructed to be on high alert and mobilize all assisting security assets needed. The FBI's JTTFs, the Joint Terrorism Task Force throughout the country, are working 247 as always to address and disrupt any potential threats to the homeland. Well, they failed to do that four times in the past three weeks. The answers from the FBI smell like obfuscation to me. What are they trying to hide? Thanks for listening. I'll be back with another mini episode on Monday. Hope you can tune in and enjoy the rest of your week.