FRANKNOTE

"Many of the early details of the alleged terror plot that unraveled in London Thursday echoed warnings that terrorism experts have repeated for five years: Al Qaeda and like-minded groups remain dangerous, are determined to exceed the devastation wrought in the Sept. 11 attacks and retain a near-obsession on using airplanes, one way or another, as weapons.

All of those predictions appeared to have been borne out by Thursday's events, with one significant exception: The fact that such a massive, seemingly sophisticated terror scheme was apparently laid by a homegrown group of British citizens traveling on legal passports rather than by hard-core foreign jihadists infiltrating Western countries."