FBI Says No Fifth 9/11 Cell

[sabra]

Source: washingtonian

WikiLeaks cable fuels conspiracy theories, not investigations, says senior official

A senior FBI official yesterday moved to quash rumors that the publication of a secret State Department cable by Wikileaks points towards a so-called “fifth 9/11 hijack team.”

The cable, sent February 11, 2010, by the US Embassy in Doha to the National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia, recommended adding a Qatari citizen to the air-travel watch list because he was one of four individuals “currently under investigation by the FBI for his possible involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks. He is suspected of aiding people who entered the U.S. before the attacks to conduct surveillance of possible targets and providing other support to the hijackers.”

The cable, the FBI official said, was not accurate. “They’re not sought by us and they’re not 9/11 plotters,” the FBI official said, speaking anonymously so he could speak candidly.

The man named in the cable, Mohamed ali Mohamed al-Dahham al-Mansoori, was indeed investigated in the wake of the 2001 attacks, but after interviewing him, the FBI eventually decided that he did not play any role in the plotting. Officials remained concerned, however, that he might be a future threat to the US and revoked his visa and deported him.

According to the cable, three other Qataris—Meshal al-Hajri, Fahad Abdulla, and Ali al-Fehehaid—entered the US on August 15, 2001, on a British Airways flight from London. The cable says, “The men first visited New York, New York, and Washington, D.C. They visited the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, and various areas in Virgina (sic).”

Read more: http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/people/capitalcomment/18223.html

[rfranklin]

1. Unfortunately, we will probably never know the truth...

about the plot that lead to 9/11.

[slackmaster]

5. Kitteh knows

[fatbuckel]

2. So the cable was accurate , but the notion didn`t pan out. Why say the cable wasn`t accurate?

[jobycom]

4. Hard to say if that's what he said, or if that was the writer's comment.

The source could have said the impression left by the cable was inaccurate, and the writer boiled that down to the cable being inaccurate. Or it may have been a poor summary by the writer. That comment isn't in quotes.

[leveymg]

3. Anonymous source. Not a very convincing denial. Central fact is, FBI never found the other 3,

after looking for them, and the whole thing was kept secret for nine years.

Here's the key paragraph later in that blog:

However, while the FBI did interview al-Mansoori, according to this FBI official, the Qatari men were never located after 9/11. Thus the FBI kept an unofficial “tickler” on the men in case they ever surfaced. A year ago, the official said, there was unspecified intelligence that led Doha authorities to believe that Mansoori might surface along with the three other men. That intelligence is what triggered the February 2010 cable, the official said, adding, “Would it be nice to sit down and look them in the eye and ask them about their involvement? Sure. But we ran it to ground and the information we collected is probably more reliable than what they’d tell us anyway.”

In other words, the Bureau screwed up in the initial investigation, so let sleeping dogs lie.

Not satisfied with that response.

[go west young man]

6. The anonymous source still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Why the pilot uniforms? Who received the packages the maids saw? Why can't they physically find them even after 9 years?
They were able to board planes across the globe and acquire visa's so shouldn't they have a physical home address? Why did they cut their trip short?
The anonymous source doesn't provide any real info on what they were doing only on what they supposedly weren't. How about some
corroborating data. I'm sure they don't need to worry about these guys privacy as they haven't seen them for 9 years! If they put out a "tickler" as
the anonymous source say's that also implies the 3 men haven't flown in 9 years. They toured the U.S. but have never traveled since? All 3 of them?

[sofa king]

8. Well, as for the last question....

Once the operation was completed, those three guys were a liability, because they were privy to the plan and the planning process. And they were expendable.

So they were likely... expended.

[kickysnana]

7. You mean the FBI that refused warrants for Mousui, that had pilfered mementos from ground zero..

and failed to do anything about the plot in motion that I knew about stuck in my living room in Minnesota. Who ruled that Sen. Wellstone's crash was "accidental" thus blocking any criminal investigation by the NTSB and managed to drive there at what had to be 180 mph to reach the crash site when they did. That FBI?

I soooo believe them.

:sarcasm:

[Devil_Fish]

9. Well, the FBI would know since they planned the whole thing... NT