In a brazen effort to divert attention away from the lukewarm grilling of the Straussian neocons over the massive NSA violations of the Fourth Amendment, Bush “defended his anti-terrorist policies anew today, asserting that the United States and its allies had foiled a terrorist plot meant to bring down a Los Angeles building that is the tallest in the United States west of the Mississippi River,” according to the New York Times. “Osama bin Laden himself was involved in the plot, which was to be carried out by Southeast Asian men on the assumption that they would not arouse as much suspicion as Middle Easterners, Mr. Bush told the National Guard Association.”

In addition, the “independent [whitewash] commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks said in its 2004 report that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 assaults on New York City and Washington, had originally envisioned an even broader assault on America, with as many as 10 hijacked aircraft flying into buildings on both coasts. And last October, government counterterrorism officials provided further details, saying that Mr. Mohammed and a terrorist ally, Riduan Isamuddin (better known as Hambali), had planned a new spate of attacks after Sept. 11 and that Los Angeles was in their sights.” In essence, this is a recycling of an October, 2005, claim, warmed over as heat is directed at the Bush Straussian neocon masters of total war and Orwellian surveillance.

Hambali was fingered as “operations chief” of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian intelligence and military created terror organization, with more than a little help from the CIA. “Without the CIA’s dirty operations in Afghanistan, neither Jemaah Islamiyah nor Al Qaeda would have come into existence,” writes Peter Symonds. “The anti-Soviet war provided the money and the training, as well as forging the loose international network of contacts that was to characterize the future modus operandi of these organizations.”

In fact, Jemaah Islamiyah was fully compromised by the CIA. Omar al-Faruq, described as a senior al-CIA-duh operative, was a CIA mole. Al-Faruq “was assigned to infiltrate Islamic radical groups and recruit local agents within these groups,” Tempo Interactive reported in September, 2002. “When Al Faruq finished his assignments, the CIA created a scenario that he had been arrested,” former Indonesian State Intelligence Coordinating Board chief A.C. Manulang told Tempo. “It’s common in intelligence world,” a fact borne out by the recent and suspicious “escape” of the 2000 U.S. Cole “mastermind” bomber Jamal al-Badawi from a Yemeni prison. It is said al-Faruq escaped from the Bagram “high value” (as in goat herders and taxi drivers) detention center in Afghanistan in July, 2005. If we are to believe the corporate media, al-Farug and “three other captives picked locks, cut through barbed wire and negotiated a minefield” (see ARG’s GNN blog). If you believe this I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

As for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the “architect of the 9/11 assaults on New York City and Washington” (once again, there is a bridge in Brooklyn) and “terrorist entrepreneur,” he was supposedly captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003 by the ISI (the Pakistani intelligence organization responsible, at the behest of the CIA, for creating “al-Qaeda” and the Taliban, as a virtual mountain of evidence demonstrates). It is said he was transferred to U.S. custody and shipped off to a torture facility in Jordan (where he was “waterboarded” by the CIA; another variation has the terrorist shipped to Diego Garcia).

However, less reported as part of the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed legend, B. Raman writes for Redliff that “Pakistani authorities did a volte face within 24 hours [of Mohammed’s alleged captured] and denied that Mohammad had been taken out of Pakistan. He was being interrogated in Pakistani territory by Pakistani officials, they maintained. Faisal Saleh Hayat, Pakistan’s interior minister, even denied that the US had requested his extradition… [and an] officer in charge of the raid had submitted a report to the headquarters claiming to have killed Mohammad and buried his body without informing the Americans about it.”

Of course, since there is no independent verification of “enemy combatants” or inspection of the Straussian neocon torture gulag by humanitarian organizations, we have no idea if Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is alive, dead, or in the custody of the Pakistanis or Americans. Moreover, since most of what we know about Mohammed comes from the “independent” nine eleven lie and omission commission, anything said about him should be considered suspect.

Naturally, this whole sketchy and uncorroborated affair is simply a transparent effort to deflect attention away from congressional intelligence committee hearings supposedly empanelled to uncover details about Straussian neocon criminal behavior vis-à-vis snooping on millions of Americans. It is also intended to offer up an excuse for continued snooping and the deliberate trashing for the Bill of Rights as the Straussian neocons behind the Bush administration make steady progress in reducing America to a nightmarish Panopticon.