The director of the FBI, Kash Patel, stated that the agency thwarted 715 terrorist plans in the United States during 2025, a figure until now unknown and which does not appear detailed in any public report of the agency.
Patel made the revelation in an interview with The Epoch Times. According to him, during December alone the FBI dismantled four alleged attacks that were to be carried out in California, Texas, Florida and New York. Targets included places of worship, schools, businesses and people gathering during the holidays.
The official maintained that the cases were not related to each other, but shared the same intention: to cause victims within the United States. He also assured that some investigations were linked to ISIS and other extremist organizations.
The figure of 715, however, raises questions. Until now, the FBI has not published a list of the cases, their distribution by state, or the methodology used to define which episodes were counted as “terrorist plans.”
It was also not reported how many were in an advanced phase, how many led to arrests or accusations, and how many corresponded to preliminary threats detected during an investigation.
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Some plots were publicly reported
Among the known cases is an alleged plan to detonate bombs in Southern California businesses on New Year's Eve.
The Justice Department accused four members of an anti-capitalist, anti-government group of preparing explosive devices to attack several locations in the Los Angeles area. The suspects reportedly gathered materials and wrote instructions for making the bombs before being arrested in the Mojave Desert.
In Texas, federal prosecutors charged a man with delivering explosives components and money to people he believed linked to ISIS. The communications, in reality, were with undercover agents.
Another file released by the Department of Justice involves an 18-year-old from North Carolina. According to the complaint, he was preparing an attack with knives and hammers against a supermarket and a restaurant on New Year's Eve, inspired by ISIS.
All defendants retain the presumption of innocence until there is a court ruling.
The difference between a threat and a foiled attack
The main problem with interpreting Patel's figure is that not all threats represent the same level of danger. An investigation can begin with violent messages on social networks, searches for materials or contact with an alleged member of a terrorist organization. In other cases, the suspects already have weapons, explosives, defined objectives or a date to act.
Without knowing the criteria used by the FBI, it is not possible to determine how many of the 715 cases were close to becoming actual attacks.
An example of this breadth appears in the balance sheet of the FBI office in Detroit. During 2025 it reported disrupting more than 200 specific and urgent threats, in addition to two ISIS-inspired plots. The document does not clarify whether all of these threats were incorporated into the national figure mentioned by Patel.
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What needs to be explained by the FBI
The director's statement leaves several questions open: how many plans were linked to foreign organizations, how many corresponded to domestic extremism, how many ended in federal charges and which were the states with the greatest number of investigations.
Patel also noted that the suspects included American citizens, foreigners and immigrants without legal status. The interview does not offer figures for each group nor does it allow us to establish what proportion they represented within the total.
For now, what is verifiable is that the FBI and the Department of Justice announced several operations against alleged plots during 2025. What cannot yet be independently verified is that the 715 episodes meet the same definition of a foiled terrorist attack.
