71. Al-Qahtani...made it as far as the U.S., only to be turned around at the airport and deported because he seemed too suspicious. According to Sheikh Mohammed, like al-Baluchi, Al-Qahtani was too much of an unsophisticated "bedouin" to function with ease in a modern, Western society. Most of the other hijackers grew up in urban environments. The al-Shehhi brothers, for example, had grown up in a well-off family in the city and were well-traveled. Sheikh Mohammed's misgivings about Al-Qahtani notwithstanding, he blamed Al-Qahtani's failure on facilitator al-Hawsawi because al-Hawsawi gave Al-Qahtani only a one-way ticket and provided him with only limited information about his points of contacts in the U.S., which in Sheikh Mohammed's view were the causes for Al-Qahtani's deportation. According to Sheikh Mohammed, there was no reason for Al-Qahtani's late arrival in the U.S. aside from the fact that Sheikh Mohammed wanted as many hijackers in the U.S. as possible.
72. Sheikh Mohammed stated that...Al-Qahtani was a late addition to the operation, and, therefore, Al-Qahtani was not trained very well in dealing with Customs officials or the English language. Sheikh Mohammed noted that due to the success of all the other operatives making it into the U.S., it seemed that they had overestimated the security of U.S. Customs officials,
