More 9/11 plotters???

Looks like the conspiracy was slightly bigger...

A newly released U.S. diplomatic cable discloses the existence of previously undisclosed participants in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot: a group of Qatari men who conducted surveillance of targets in New York and the Washington area before leaving the United States on the eve of the attacks.

The three men flew into the United States on Aug. 15, 2001, and "visited the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, and various areas in Virginia" before flying on to Los Angeles, according to the cable, part of the cache of documents obtained by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

But a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to comment on classified material made public by WikiLeaks, said that the three men were "looked at" within days of the attacks and that investigators concluded they could not be charged.

"There is no manhunt," said the official, playing down a report in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper that disclosed the contents of the cable. "There is no active case. They were looked at, but it washed out."

The cable, sent on Feb. 11, 2010, from the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar, to various agencies in Washington, including the FBI and the CIA, recommended that an individual named Mohamed al-Mansoori be added to a government watch list. The cable said he was a threat to civil aviation in the United States and abroad.

The cable goes on to explain that Mansoori assisted the group of three Qataris - identified as Meshal Alhajri, Fahad Abdulla and Ali Alfehaid - while they were in the United States.

Mansoori, from the United Arab Emirates, lived in Long Beach, Calif., in September 2001. "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 states.

The existence of a surveillance team supporting the 19 hijackers led by Mohammed Atta appears to add a new element to the narrative of the plot's execution. There is no direct mention in the 9/11 Commission report of such a team.