Ex-CIA Analyst Sarah Adams Warned America About ISIS Attacks—Now 2025 Begins in Bloodshed

by Steve Skojec

On the very first morning of 2025, Americans woke up to the news that a terrorist attack had taken place at a New Year’s Eve event in New Orleans, where 15 people were killed and many more wounded when an American Muslim and former US Army soldier drove a rented truck into a crowd and, when the vehicle crashed, got out and started shooting. He was flying the ISIS flag on the back of the truck. Some reporting says that the truck itself was brought in across the US-Mexico border through Eagle Pass in Texas, according to a license plate reader at a border crossing.

More:

The attacker, identified as 42-year-old Shimsud-Din Jabbar of Houston, Texas, managed to drive a rented white pickup truck between the 100 and 400 blocks of Bourbon Street in the lower part of the French Quarter, which was packed with people celebrating New Year’s Eve.

He was also firing a rifle from the truck while wearing body armor as well as a helmet, according to a law enforcement bulletin, and was flying the flag of the Islamic state (Isis) group mounted on a pipe erected in the bed of the vehicle. He exchanged gun fire with several police officers – wounding two of them – and was shot dead by the officers.

About 30 minutes after Jabbar was shot dead, investigators found a pipe bomb with nails and suspected C4 explosives inside an ice chest left near police patrol cars at the corner of Bourbon and Orleans streets, roughly three blocks from where the attack ended.

The bulletin said surveillance camera footage showed three men and a woman planted that device. But CNN later reported that investigators have since ruled out those people as having anything to do with planting the devices.

A second such device was found about a block away from where the first one had been found. Investigators spotted a third such possible device in a purple suitcase near the corner of North Rampart Street and Esplanade Avenue, toward the upper edge of the French Quarter.

Two of those devices had been confirmed as pipe bombs concealed within coolers and were wired for remote detonation, the bulletin said. Investigators discovered a corresponding remote in Jabbar’s truck, which also had mason jars containing a clear liquid consistent with explosives in his truck.

Officers determined a fourth possible device was not explosive.

Investigators learned Jabbar was staying at a short-term rental in New Orleans’ St Roch neighbourhood, about two miles from the French Quarter. They arrived to find the place had been intentionally set on fire, and – after firefighters brought the blaze under control – discovered bomb-making materials in the home.

The Houston news station KPRC2 reported capturing drone video showing a man at a home connected to Jabbar there surrendering to authorities. Earlier, the FBI said agents in Houston were “conducting law enforcement activity” at an area in the north part of the city in connection with the attack in New Orleans.

Later in the day, a rented Cybertruck filled with explosives was intentionally detonated outside Trump Tower in Las Vegas.

Although there has been no official report and there is not a single hit in a mainstream news search for the identity of the bomber, who appears to have died in the attack, he has been tentatively identified by independent journalists/investigators as Matthew Lievelsberger, a former member of US Special Forces, who served with New Orleans attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar:

 

 
Astonishingly, this is the result I got when I searched Google News for “Matthew Lievelsberger”:

 
EDIT: Coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, and I misspelled the name. Still odd that Google didn’t suggest a different spelling like it usually does, but there are results now:

 
I still don’t see him being officially named as a suspect, but this story is developing.

Fortunately, the Cybertruck is about as close as you can get to a domestic tank, and it contained the blast, sending the explosion up through the glass sunroof:

 
Even so, this is a very inauspicious start to 2025.

One theme I saw bubbling up across social media was a prescient interview on the Shawn Ryan Show last month with former CIA intelligence analyst and targeter Sarah Adams, who is an author and commentator who continues to write about national security and terrorist threats. Adams warned that terrorist attacks on the US homeland by Al Qaeda and ISIS were imminent in 2025.

So I took a look at the show, and her warnings of what is to come are pretty dire.

It’s a long episode (link at the bottom of this post) so I pulled five brief highlights to give you all a top level view:

Sarah says there are at least 1,000 terrorists that have been trained to attack the US homeland who are already in the country:

 
In this clip, Sarah and Shawn discuss WHERE the impending attacks are likely to occur:

 
Here, Sarah discusses the intelligence stating that Al Qaeda and ISIS are planning coordinated attacks in both America and Europe, and how that may play out:

 
Sarah explains the suicide bomber strategy, and how most Americans are likely not familiar with the ways suicide bombers work in waves to maximize casualties, and may fall prey to such attacks:

 
When asked by Shawn how certain she is that attacks will come in 2025, this is Sarah’s answer. New Orleans, and possibly Vegas, have already proven her correct:

 
For those who want to watch the full interview, you can find it here:

My gut feeling on 2025 has been that it is going to be both a prosperous year, and a very strange one full of surprises. That’s a weird combination I have yet to figure out, but gut feelings are what they are.

I didn’t have terrorist attacks on American soil on my bingo card, but it fits with the general sense of chaos I have about the next 12 months.

Evidently, others had better intelligence, and were far more certain.

If Sarah Adams is right — and I have no reason to doubt her — I’d personally avoid large public gatherings and keep your head on a swivel when you have to go out. Odds are that most of us will be just fine, but those celebrating the New Year in New Orleans undoubtedly thought so, too.

LINK