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According to the document, three men from the Gulf Arab state of Qatar visited target sites in New York and Washington in the month leading up to the attacks before leaving the country on Sept. 10, 2001.
The British newspaper The Telegraph, which published the document, reports that the FBI has launched an international manhunt for the team. However, a U.S. official told The Washington Post that prosecutors studied the case in the days following the attacks and concluded the men couldn’t be charged. “There is no manhunt,” said the official, speaking under condition of anonymity. “There is no active case. They were looked at, but it washed out.”
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Three Qataris identified in a classified diplomatic cable as having visited target sites before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had reportedly bought tickets on the flight that eventually crashed into the Pentagon, above, but failed to board the flight.
The cable — sent in February 2010 from the American embassy in Doha, Qatar, to various agencies in Washington, including the FBI and CIA — reports that on Aug. 15, 2001, three Qatari men flew to New York from London. The men are identified as Meshal Alhajri, Fahad Abdulla and Ali Alfehaid.
The alleged plotters started their stay in the U.S. with visits to “the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the White House and various areas in Virginia.” Then on Aug. 24, they flew to Los Angeles and checked into a hotel near the airport, paying for their single room with cash.
Cleaning staff at the hotel became suspicious of the group, the cable states, “because they noticed pilot type uniforms, several laptops and several cardboard boxes addressed to Syria, Jerusalem, Afghanistan and Jordan in the room.” The men also had “a cellular phone attached by wire to a computer,” and their room reportedly “contained pin feed computer paper print outs with headers listing pilot names, airlines, flight numbers, and flight times.”
During the last few days of their stay, the men asked that cleaners stay out of the room.
On Sept. 10, the group checked out of the hotel. They had previously bought tickets to fly on an American Airlines Boeing 757 jet from Los Angeles to Washington but failed to board. They flew to Doha via London instead.
A day later, the 757 was flown into the Pentagon, killing 184 people.
According to the dispatch, an FBI investigation later revealed that the man who made the Qataris’ hotel reservation and paid for their plane tickets was a “convicted terrorist.” The document contains no more information on the moneyman’s identity.
The men were also allegedly helped by another suspicious figure during their U.S. trip: a United Arab Emirates resident named Mohamed Al Mansoori. While in Los Angeles, the group reportedly spent a week traveling with him to “different destinations in California.” Mansoori has never been publicly named in connection with the 9/11 attacks, but the cable states that he is suspected of “aiding people who entered the U.S. before the attacks to conduct surveillance … and providing other support to the hijackers.”
He is believed to have left the U.S., and his location is currently unknown.
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The 9/11 Commission report into the attacks noted that two of the 19 plane hijackers — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2001, and plausibly may have had a “friendly contact” in California.
The report also states that there is evidence a second wave of attacks was being planned. Philip Zelikow, a member of the commission, told The Washington Post that the Qataris might have been connected to that plot. He added that it was unlikely the group was working as a surveillance team for the 9/11 hijackers, because by the time they arrived in the country in August, plans for that operation were already largely in place.
“Not everything is in the report, and my memory of the details has dulled with time so I can’t say if we had some trace of this group,” Zelikow told the newspaper. “They might have been seen by us as a group that was part of a second wave, and if that was the case, we wouldn’t have named them for obvious reasons.”
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