In a recent speech at San Francisco�s Commonwealth Club, Attorney General Michael Mukasey defended the Bush-Cheney administration�s illegal domestic spying agenda by proclaiming that the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to monitor overseas phone calls to the United States.

Like every other member of the Bush-Cheney administration, Mukasey is lying. Lying about the fact that the �war on terrorism� is a fabrication. Lying about the pervasive worldwide eavesdropping capabilities of US intelligence agencies. Lying about the fact that 9/11 was a long-planned Anglo-American false flag covert operation.

According to Mukasey�s spin on the now-classic 9/11 fiction, Bush-Cheney �knew there had been a call from some place that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn�t know precisely where it went. We�ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn�t come home, to show for that.�

In typically wide-eyed fashion, the San Franciso Chronicle report proceeds to add more red herrings to the proceedings, noting that �Mukasey did not specify the call to which he referred. He also did not explain why the government, if it knew of telephone calls from suspected foreign terrorists, hadn�t sought a wiretapping warrant from a court established by the Congress to authorize terrorist surveillance, or hadn�t monitored all such calls without a warrant for 72 hours as allowed by law.�

Mukasey did not bother to mention any of these things, because he knows that the US government�s spying capabilities are overwhelming, and that their continuous (illegal) use trumps congressional oversight, and the law itself.

Investigators such as former NSA operative James Bamford (author of the expose of the NSA, Body of Secrets) and Mike Ruppert�s Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil have thoroughly detailed the pervasiveness and effectiveness of a wide range of spying and intelligence programs used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. These include Echelon and PROMIS, which are used by operatives in criminal fashion, as ordered by high-level officials, specifically to get around all oversight.

As written by Ruppert: �Echelon is a highly secret technical intelligence gathering system used to monitor worldwide communications and coordinated in the U.S. by the National Security Agency. Participating countries, who eavesdrop on the citizens of the other member countries -- to avoid civil restrictions preventing governments from spying on their own citizens -- then pool and share their information. Participating countries include the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain and Germany. The eavesdropping covers both telephone and email communications.

"According to a Feb 13, 2001, UPI story detailing Echelon's use against bin Laden and other terrorist organizations, �The targets of Echelon center on the penetration of the major components of most of the world's telephone and telecommunications systems. This could cover conversations NSA targets. Also included are all the telexes carried over the world's telecommunications networks, along with financial dealings: money transfers, airline destinations, stock information, data on demonstrations or international conferences and much more.��

In Crossing the Rubicon, and in his many investigations for From The Wilderness, Mike Ruppert exposed the fact that intelligence agency penetration and foreknowledge leading up to 9/11 was complete: �Long before 9/11, US and foreign intelligence had achieved penetrations of al-Qaeda by human, signal and electronic intelligence,� and that �there was very little that al Qaeda did that the Bush administration and many other governments were not aware of.�

Furthermore, Ruppert noted that �based upon what is known about successful intelligence penetrations for years prior to the attacks of 9/11, Osama bin Laden could not have sneezed without the CIA or the NSA knowing about it.�

�Al-Qaeda,� an Anglo-American covert operation, was not only thoroughly penetrated, but guided and manipulated into fulfilling their roles.

As exposed by Michel Chossudovsky in his book, America�s �War on Terrorism�: �The foreknowledge issue is a red herring. The �Militant Islamic Network� is a creation of the CIA. In standard CIA jargon, Al Qaeda is categorized as an �intelligence asset� . . . support to terrorist organizations is an integral part of US foreign policy. Al Qaeda continues to participate in CIA covert operations in different parts of the world.�

Anglo-American involvement with �the terrorists,� and the Bush-Cheney administration�s role behind 9/11 are, of course, the focus of a gargantuan cover-up at the highest levels of world governments. �Al-Qaeda� is a perpetual covert operation, supported by a bipartisan consensus. (See "Who is Osama bin Laden?" and "Al-Qaeda:the database".)

It is no surprise that Mukasey (who was installed specifically to continue Bush-Cheney�s torture, domestic spying and world war agendas) and other members of the Bush-Cheney criminal syndicate will never stop lying about the overwhelming and complete surveillance that agencies such as the CIA and NSA have enjoyed over the US population (and, indeed, the entire world, including pinpoint real-time penetration of terrorist and intelligence-supported �terrorist� groups) for decades.