Hijackers Were Elite Group: PARIS -- European investigators say they increasingly believe that the Sept. 11 hijackers and their support network in Europe made up a carefully chosen and tightly insulated group that had little if any contact with other al Qaeda terror cells in Europe and learned from past terrorist failures while planning the attacks. Better educated, less visible because of their comfort in the West, and firmly committed to a goal over years, the hijackers were a group apart from the young, poorly educated men who nurtured their anger in European slums but repeatedly failed to pull off plans for atrocities in Paris, Rome, Los Angeles and Strasbourg, France.