They were sanctioned by the UN.

Cite, please.

Can anyone honestly recall anyone ever talking about the USA as the or a "homeland" before 9/11?

Jawohl. I remember the chill I got when that term first reared its Teutonic head in 1996. IIRC it was Gary Hart who proposed merging the CIA with the FBI in the panicky aftermath of OKC, so that spying and police work would become the same thing. I remember thinking that these people would be back after the next disaster.

It was about a year later when I read some mainstream coverage of the Ramzi Yousef trial that said that "top US law enforcement and intelligence officials" were "very concerned" about evidence gathered in the Philippines regarding Ramzi's uncle. These brave protectors of the realm didn't give their names, and I still wonder who they were, because at the time, they said they suspected that "foreign-born terrorists" were already training at US flight schools and conspiring to fly hijacked airliners into the WTC, the Pentagon, and maybe also a nuclear plant. They also said that they suspected some of them were training and living at "secure US military bases." It occurred to me that the team who prosecuted Ramzi Yousef were precisely the people who most needed to know about the plot, and now it was public.

Well, those bases weren't very secure if "foreign-born terrorists" could live there, looking for gaps in US air defenses. But now that the plot had been exposed, creating the danger of copycats, I knew that NORAD and the FAA would begin preparing for such an attack. Nonetheless, I expected we'd never hear the end of the story until it resulted in some arrests. For the next two years I scoured the papers every day. Nothing. Those officials who had been "very concerned" were surely not growing less concerned as years passed with no arrests.

It wasn't until Shrub announced that I remembered what a classmate had told me about the Bushes in 1980. I'd asked her whom she liked in the campaign. She was horrified. "That's a very personal question! I can't believe you asked me that!" I reassured her that I only wanted to make a more informed choice, and would likely vote the same way as her once I knew her reasoning. The word genius is often too loosely applied, but she was a genius. She failed to persuade me, though.

She explained that all she cared about was having nice things. She said she hated Reagan because he was stupid, but now that he had broken his promise not to run with Bush, she would vote for him. Congress, she explained, was the problem, because members of Congress just want to be popular so they can be re-elected. (Would that it were so!) They couldn't be counted on to do the unpopular things necessary to maintain our standard of living, but with the CIA in the White House, they wouldn't pose much of an obstacle. "Let's face it," she said, "sometimes you have to move fast."

"Bush will use his CIA connections to become president, and when he does, there will be three Supreme Court justices who will be too old to continue in their jobs. And that's the beauty of this plan," she said, "because when he replaces them, those appointments are for life, and that leaves his mark for the next generation, when one of his sons might be eligible. Let's face it, if I were starving, and Lenin promised me food, I'd fight for him, too."

Clearly, one voter could not make it so, but I watched Iran-Contra unravel, and when a certain element began praising Ollie North for lying to Congress and the nation, it was clear my friend was just one member of a voting bloc. It was also clear that with no real penalties imposed on the gang, they had no incentive to stop, and that the terrorist tactics they supported could not be kept out of this country forever.

However, when Shrub announced, I looked at his record in Texas, and it was clear he had no record on which to run. With such long-range plans at stake, and a lot of skeletons to hide, it might be worth it to try to rig or steal the election. If that happened, it would be exposed within the first year. As long as Bush could count on a well-timed disaster, a stolen election would become moot. We'd already been told what the targets and the methods would be, and it might be possible to determine the date by logic and strategy. I had a hypothesis to test.

In these innumerate times, cashiers at McDonald's no longer count change. The US doesn't produce many math geniuses. There was only one number with emotional resonance for all US citizens regardless of age, gender, class or ethnic background. It also fell before the anniversary of the election, and in the first year of the new millennium.

This all came together for me on July 2, 1999. I couldn't find a good argument against it. Someone had already gagged the officials who had exposed the plot, or we would have heard from them again. The media didn't want to touch this sensational story. Why not?

I know, I know. I posited a conspiracy theory. It's only a theory now because my hypothesis had predictive value. Let's hope it's not repeatable. As it happened, the networks' analysis of the popular vote was scheduled for release on 9/11/2001.

Some of this embrace of spying power is driven by technology. All leaders have enemies, so it is only natural for them to want to spy on their subjects. The temptation only grows stronger as technology makes it easier to monitor everything we do. Nonetheless, it would take a special kind of leader to take on the role. It's been twenty-eight years since an insightful and amoral teenager told me who was being positioned for it.

The 9/11 cOmmission report defined the "Homeland" as comprising the entire planet.