The United States has said that the haul of seized materials from terrorists during its recent raid in Nigeria was the largest amount of enemy electronic equipment recovered since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.
This was disclosed by the United States Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Sebastian Gorka, during an interview with Marissa Streit, the CEO of PragerU, a US media organisation.
Gorka said that the US government had to deploy an additional aircraft to evacuate electronic devices and other intelligence materials seized during the counter-terrorism operation, owing to the sheer size of the equipment.
He also revealed that US intelligence agencies had begun to examine the devices confiscated to gain deeper insight into the communications, networks and operational methods of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Gorka described the Nigerian mission as one of the most significant counter-terrorism successes recorded by the administration, comparing the operation to scenes from a Hollywood movie.
He said that the particular operation resulted in the killing of 199 jihadists in a single raid, describing it as the largest enemy neutralisation in a single counter-terrorism operation since the September 11 attacks.
“I can talk about this because it has been declassified. The President is not nation-building; he’s not going around the world like some lunatic neocon saying, ‘we will turn the world into America’.
“But if you’re threatening Americans, or if you’re targeting Christians, because they are Christians, he has a very strong message to send to you, whether it was his Christmas Day strike, or three weeks ago, what we did in Nigeria.
“Three weeks ago in Nigeria, and I watched it live from the Situation Room. It was like being in a Tom Clancy movie, but it’s better because it’s real. I watched our operatives kill 199 jihadists in one operation.
“Now, why is this important? That is the biggest neutralisation enemy killed in action since September the 11th — 199 jihadists who will not harm Americans again.
“Not only that, from that raid we brought home, we needed an extra plane to bring home all the electronic material that we captured in those camps. And the haul was three times bigger than any enemy electronics haul since 9-11.
“And that is priceless, because now our experts are taking apart all of that information, looking at how ISIS is communicating with each other. We are so back in the game of counterterrorism. It is just superlative to watch our professionals,” he explained.
Gorka also said that President Donald Trump’s administration has killed over 1,000 Jihadists across the world.
The counter-intelligence official also explained why his focus is on Africa.
“Terrorists need ungoverned space. They need somewhere where they can hang out and rebuild. Africa has a lot of ungoverned space. That’s why I focus a lot of my attention on that region of the world where ISIS is trying to reconstitute a caliphate,” he said.
The operation was done in collaboration with the Nigerian government.
The US has since December 2025 expanded counterterrorism cooperation with Nigeria, centred on intelligence exchange, counterterrorism strategies, and military capacity building.
This was strengthened with the meeting between US government and top Nigerian officials led by the National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu in Washington in November 2025.
The meeting led to both countries agreeing to establish a Nigeria-US Joint Working Group on security.
The US and the Nigerian military had in December 2025 carried out raids against terrorists in the northern part of the West African nation.
