This month, the FBI announced it had interrupted a plot to attack one of America's busiest airports - JFK International in New York. The target was the airport's complex of airline fuel storage tanks and the pipelines that feed them. At a news conference, Roslynn Mauskopf, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said, "Had the plot been carried out, it could have resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths and destruction." She added that "The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable." Some of the media later dismissed this threat as ill conceived and technically beyond the...