U.S. Journalist Josh Meyer, Co-Author Of The Hunt For KSM: In The Years Before 9/11, The FBI Attempted To Capture Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, When He Was A Bureaucrat In Qatar, But He Was Tipped Off And Slipped Out The Back Door (Archival)

American journalist Josh Meyer, the co-author of The Hunt for KSM (2012), said in an interview that was posted on the YouTube channel of the New America Foundation on April 26, 2012 that in the years that preceded the September 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI had attempted to coordinate the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad with the Qatari government while he had been working as a bureaucrat in the country at the time, but that he had been tipped off and "slipped out the back door." For more information, see MEMRI Daily Brief No. 651, Qatar Is Responsible For Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's 2,977 Murders On 9/11 – At The World Trade Center And The Pentagon, And On Two Other Hijacked Flights – That Are Only Some Of 31 Attacks And Plots That He Outlined In His Own Confession, September 13, 2024.

Interviewer: "Tell everybody the nearest point in which maybe KSM had been found and arrested in Qatar, maybe 9/11 would have turned out very differently. So what happened there?"

Josh Meyer: "Well, I personally believe that 9/11 would have never happened if KSM had been caught there. I mean, clearly Al-Qaeda would have had other plots and attacks, but this was KSM's baby. This was his plot that came out of the attacks or the plots in Manila, and there was good work by the FBI and the CIA that led them to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. He was for the Ministry of Water and Electricity in Qatar.

"One of the members of the royal family in Qatar had... I don't know if it's a guaranteed employment program, but he had brought a lot of the mujahideen over to Qatar and let them hang out on a farm just because he though that they were an important service to the Islamic world. KSM was one of them, but he clearly was using his job as a bureaucrat there as a cover and was traveling around the world, so the FBI very much wanted to get him when they were there. We have a letter from FBI Director Louis Freeh at the time, who was writing the Qatar government saying: 'You have a very, very dangerous terrorist there, we want to come in and get him, and we need your cooperation.'

"And so, as we say in the book, there was a lot of back and forth. It went up to the deputies' meeting of the National Security Council, and ultimately instead of doing a snatch and grab, or even pushing him out or finding... They were trying to find a way to get him to fly out of the country so they could grab him in another country. They were working on that, but ultimately the U.S. government decided to go through the front door and ask the Qatar government for permission to get him, and a lot of people warned them that that wasn't a good idea, and it turns out that it wasn't. While Frank Pellegrino and some other agents were on the ground in Qatar trying to get KSM, he slipped out the back door."

Interviewer: "And he was tipped off?"

Meyer: "Yeah."