Chertoff: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Excuse me for feeling skeptical. This plot may very well have been as nasty and as ready-to-go as Michael Chertoff says, but how can we know? Time after time, we hear some huge terrorist plot has been--barely--thwarted; only to find out later (with much less fanfare) that it was pretty much a load of hooey. So, just like the boy who cried wolf, when the crisis is real, will anybody believe it?

[Excerpt]

'Plot Would Have Killed Thousands'

Terrorists who had planned to detonate gel-based explosives on U.S.-bound flights from London last August would have achieved mass devastation, according to new information from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

"I think that the plot, in terms of its intent, was looking at devastation on a scale that would have rivaled 9/11," Chertoff told ABC's Pierre Thomas. "If they had succeeded in bringing liquid explosives on seven or eight aircraft, there could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous economic impact with devastating consequences for international air travel."

Read on at: ABCNews.GO.com