It depends on what the meaning of "on" is

In a McClatchy Newspapers report on a dire pre-9/11 briefing George Tenet gave Condoleezza Rice and, later, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft, an unidentified former senior intelligence official tries to explain things away by saying that the briefing didn't say al-Qaida was planning to attack "within the United States." "It said on the United States, which could mean a ship, an embassy or inside the United States."