FBI boss Kash Patel details how agency and partners secured record-shattering FIFA World Cup
EXCLUSIVE – 78 Super Bowls in 38 days. This was the scale of the task facing the Federal Bureau of Investigation going into the first World Cup final the United...
By Fox News · Fox News
EXCLUSIVE – 78 Super Bowls in 38 days. This was the scale of the task facing the Federal Bureau of Investigation going into the first World Cup final the United States has hosted in more than thirty years. "That’s what we executed on," FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview detailing the largest commitment of the agency’s resources ever devoted to securing a sporting event – the 2026 FIFA World Cup. "We’re proud to report that, thank God, and thankfully to the men and women of the FBI and our partners, we had no significant criminal attacks during this World Cup," Patel said. "And just to put that in perspective, we had 6.5 million people attend the 78 matches in the U.S. across 11 venues." Patel said the planning and execution had to be "mathematically precise." FIFA WORLD CUP COMES TO THRILLING END WITH WINNING GOAL SCORED IN EXTRA TIME The tournament shattered previous attendance records and brought millions of international visitors to the country. The FBI dedicated nearly 5,000 personnel to the effort, including more than 4,000 from field offices, 800 from FBI Headquarters and two Legal Attaché offices, along with support from 59 Homeland Security Task Forces. The Bureau also conducted approximately 300,000 background checks on players, coaches and other accredited personnel. All told, nearly 7 million fans from all over the world attended World Cup games in the United States, Canada and Mexico, all with no reported major security incidents. In fact, getting into the stadiums often took fans less than 15 minutes for games that averaged more than 65,000 in house. A defining element of the FBI’s security operation was its aggressive response to the rapidly evolving drone threat. Recognizing that even a low-cost unmanned aircraft could be used to surveil players practicing at the dozens of team base camps around the country, track their movements to and from hotels, probe for security tactics at stadiums or fan zones, disrupt an e…