Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the White House, told Breitbart News exclusively that the White House intends to release the video of the successful operation conducted on Saturday morning to eliminate a top Islamic State terrorist in northern Somalia.
“We are working diligently right now—the White House Situation Room, so WHSR, the Counterterrorism Directorate of the National Security Council, and the Defense Department—are working right now as we speak to scrub the actual footage of the munitions detonating and destroying the cave complex,” Gorka told Breitbart News in a phone interview on Saturday after the operation. “We’re working right now to scrub that and make it available in an unclassified form so it can be briefed from the press briefing room so National Security Adviser Waltz and the president can share that.”
“To see it in real time, look, let me say this—it’s as if you’re in a movie but it’s so much more important because it isn’t a movie. It’s not special effects,” he explained. “It’s real, and American lives are being saved 11 days into the Trump administration.”
There are multiple reasons why the White House intends to release the footage publicly at a press briefing next week, Gorka said, including showing those who voted for Trump in November that their president and his administration are committed to acting quickly to keep them safe.
“We are working right now on converting the footage of the operation, of the neutralization, into a format that allows us to share it with America and the world,” Gorka said. “I will leave that to DOD and the White House Situation Room and the whole team responsible for that. We want the 77 million Americans [who voted for Trump] and everyone else who cares about defeating global jihadism to see what is possible in less than two weeks of a new Trump administration.”
But perhaps more importantly than that, Gorka said, the White House hopes releasing the footage will act as a deterrence to potential future terrorists and discourage possible recruits from joining ISIS down the road.
“You can think you’re safe and you can try and build a safe haven in an ungoverned part of the world like northern Somalia, but our capabilities—it’s like the president said,” Gorka said. “You can run but you’ll only die tired. We will find you, but unlike the Biden administration, we’re not going to watch you around the clock for four years. We are going to kill you if you threaten American lives and that is what the president just proved this morning at 9:50 with his incredible leadership.”
Early Saturday afternoon, the president announced on social media that he had ordered a successful strike on the “Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia.”
U.S. Africa Command in a statement announced that the operation, conducted in coordination with the Somali government, was a success. “The command’s initial assessment is that multiple ISIS-Somalia operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed. U.S. Africa Command takes great measures to prevent civilian harm,” U.S.-Africa Command public affairs said in a statement.
While the name of this ISIS leader who was killed still is not publicly available, Gorka told Breitbart News this terrorist was a “HVT” or “High-Value Target.”
“ISIS has really eclipsed Al Qaeda in recent years and with the lack of leadership from the last administration—the Biden administration—including the surrender of Afghanistan and the collapse of Syria, we’ve seen in the last four years an increase in the global Jihadi threat with ISIS in the pole position right now,” Gorka said. “They developed in northern Somalia a refuge and that is the location that was attacked today in a surgical strike by U.S. forces. This is a cave system in northern Somalia. There were multiple ISIS terrorists who thought they were safe in this cave complex, but the main justification was an ISIS leader who was responsible for external operations which means recruiting, training, and then sending Jihadists out to attack western citizens including in the United States.”
“So this was, as we use the acronym HVT, this was a very senior, high-level, High-Value Target that sadly the last administration was unwilling to kill,” he explained. “The president mentioned this in his statements today, and you’ll hear more from the National Security Adviser Mike Waltz when we’re back to the press briefings in the White House in the beginning of the week. This was an individual that our capabilities had identified and had been tracking for a very, very long. This individual was available for us to neutralize for long, long periods, and he was located when he was returning to this sanctuary complex, but the Biden administration refused to allow our brave warfighters to engage and neutralize this target that was a serious threat to U.S. citizens and to our servicemen abroad.”
“It is indicative, it is going to be a core characteristic of the new Trump administration, that when we took over government with a mandate of 77 million Americans and when we have been told by the professional within the national security enterprise that they had been stopped from neutralizing multiple jihadi targets over the last four years, we said we are going to fix this,” Gorka noted. “Under the leadership of National Security Adviser Waltz, President Trump was shown this operation and approved it within a very short order. This morning, we took the action that had been delayed for years by the Biden administration and we made America safer. As the president said, if you threaten our citizens, ‘we will find you and we will kill you.’”
Gorka said that the ISIS operatives had developed a “cave system” with multiple caves in it. When asked to describe what a “cave system” is, Gorka said it was more than a half dozen caves adding up to an operational jihadi sanctuary.
“This wasn’t one cave with one individual,” he said. “This was—I’m not going to go into exact numbers but this was more than half a dozen caves that were being exploited by ISIS to hide in and that they thought they were safe in.”
Asked what weapons and munitions that the U.S. forces used were, Gorka said “it was a combination of munitions and platforms.”
Gorka also provided this extra statement from the Pentagon regarding what was used to carry out the strike. “As of right now, the only information DOD can release is that F18s from the USS Harry Truman were utilized for the operation in Somalia,” the statement said.
What’s more, Gorka said the operation was first taken to Trump’s desk on Thursday evening—and the president immediately signed off on it.
“This operation was presented to the president by National Security Adviser Waltz on Thursday evening,” Gorka said. “The president said ‘Is this individual a threat to the United States, the homeland, and to United States citizens and servicemen?’ National Security Adviser Waltz confirmed that this was one of the most valuable targets in ISIS that because of his responsibility for external operations, by taking this person out have a very detrimental effect on ISIS’s capacity to hurt Americans. He immediately said ‘In that case, I authorize this operation.’ President Trump was immediately decisive. It was not a long meeting. We presented him with the operational concept and he said ‘Do it.’ That’s when everything was set in motion from the National Security Council, and the greatest warfighters in the world were unleashed.”
Gorka added that Trump had signed the order that Waltz drafted for him in Sharpie on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office on Thursday night. That the U.S. was able to carry out the mission by Saturday morning—less than two days later—he argued is remarkable.
“The president authorized this with his iconic Sharpie pen on Thursday night on the Resolute Desk. NSA Waltz presented the document,” Gorka said. “The president signed it. Then we were back in the White House this morning and it was happening live. That’s from Thursday night to Saturday morning. Back in the first administration I used to call it ‘moving at the speed of Trump.’ I’ve got to come up with a new catchphrase, because this is like moving at Trump speed on overdrive with turbos. This is like Trump turbo-speed. It’s faster than he was eight years ago, and everybody who has taken an oath to protect America is so grateful to the president for showing such decisiveness in less than two weeks in office.”
Gorka also said the national security professionals in the military and others involved in such operations were pleased at Trump’s and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz’s decisiveness.
“It’s kind of indicative of the broader reality between the America First leadership that President Trump and his team represents and the former establishment that just talks and talks and talks and then didn’t take action,” Gorka said. “So, I’m not going to talk on behalf of a failed establishment that refused to take action, but what I can tell you and this is not hyperbole but what we have been hearing directly from the people who wear the uniforms, who track the terrorists, who go into harm’s way to neutralize them—when this decision was communicated to the various commands, to the Pentagon, et cetera, they were ecstatic.”
He said that one such person involved in these kinds of operations said there was a “real morale problem the last four years” because they would spend “12-hour shifts tracking and surveilling the worst jihadis out there who want to kill Americans,” and then “just pleading to do something about it,” but the “Biden White House and Harris White House were saying no.”
“These people are so, so incredibly grateful to President Trump and to National Security Adviser Waltz because we did this—think of this—where the president took this decision on Thursday, 11 days into the administration,” Gorka said. “So we fixed a four-year problem in 11 working days. They are just so grateful.”
Gorka also added that the importance of Somalia’s government cooperating with the operation and being supportive of the U.S. actions is indicative of a broader America First strategy.
“The president has been very clear in terms of national security and foreign policy that this is the return of America First, but America First does not mean America alone,” Gorka said. “But the expectation is, I—as senior director of counterterrorism—all of my colleagues in the National Security Council, our boss National Security Adviser Waltz, is communicating this to all of the people who want to be our friends and allies—so allies in NATO, friends and partners outside of NATO—America is back. American leadership is back.”
“But we expect everyone who wants to be our friend to act like that and to step up to the plate,” he noted. “If you are interested in stabilizing the Middle East after Oct. 7, if you are interested in seeing an end to war with regard to Ukraine and Russia, you have to be a part of the solution. So the idea that President Trump is back and America will fix it all by themselves, that is not what America First means. America First is about our national interest and our national sovereignty, but if you share our values as members of Western Civilization we expect you to do your part as well.”
Read More: Exclusive — ‘We Will Find You and We Will Kill You’: White House to Release Video of Wiping
