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FBI official says new drone school, interagency effort helped secure World Cup
Summary
An FBI official described setting up a drone training school at Redstone Arsenal, embedding foreign police in Northern Virginia and deploying ground-intercept teams that the official said interjected "700 plus drones" at World Cup venues; the claims were presented by the official and not independently verified in the transcript.
An FBI official described a nationwide, interagency security operation centered on a new drone program and intelligence coordination the bureau used to protect the recent World Cup.
The official said the FBI "resourced and stood up the 1st ever drone program school to train state and local officials ... at our Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama," and that teams across the country supported venue security. According to the official, FBI ground-intercept teams "interjected Sean's 700 plus drones ... at all 11 venues surrounding the World Cup in 38 days," a figure the speaker used to illustrate the bureau's operational output.
The training program and tactical deployments were presented as part of a broader, 24/7 intelligence and coordination effort. The official told listeners the FBI established a joint operations center (JOC) at headquarters "where the interagency was there 24 7" and added an "International Coordination Center, the intelligence center," that embedded partners from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). "We cut over a 100 intelligence reports, the largest dissemination, for a World Cup ever," the official said.
The official also described on-the-ground measures: mobile command centers at each venue and deployments of tactical operators, SWAT and bomb technicians. The official said foreign police officers from every participating nation were flown in, embedded with FBI teams and hosted in Northern Virginia for the final two months before the Cup.
Throughout the remarks the speaker framed the work as national in scope: "We did this from coast to coast," the official said, and added, "The men and women of the FBI did not sleep. They delivered the safest and most secure World Cup in history." These characterizations and numerical claims were made by the official in the transcript; the transcript does not include independent verification or external corroboration of the figures cited.
What happens next: the transcript records this as a single set of remarks by the FBI official; no formal actions, motions or outside questions disputing the claims appear in the provided excerpt.
