In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the bomb vehicle's VIN number provided the crucial evidence, leading law enforcement officers to a rental company and on to the members of a terrorist cell. In examining the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103, it was the chemical makeup in a curiously pitted piece of metal that pointed investigators toward a terrorist act. After years of grim experience, the United States is becoming an expert in the tedious search for terrorists. While the nation is at peace with virtually the entire world, America's status as the world's only superpower makes it the prime target. The devastation of the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, underscores the difficulty of protecting U.S. interests abroad.
Terrorism now has a global reach, and the United States is exposed everywhere.
In these two nations, where the United States enjoys excellent relations, terrorists found a soft underbelly. In their placid surroundings, these embassies were low on the list for the improvements that have turned others into near-fortresses. But unlike in Saudi Arabia, where the FBI ran into local roadblocks trying to investigate the bombing of U.S. military barracks two years ago, U.S. official can expect full cooperation from Kenya and Tanzania. For the scores of FBI agents who began arriving in east Africa on Sunday, the initial effort in the long hunt for a suspect was to find the triggering device of the bomb or parts of the vehicle used to transport it. In Tanzania, investigators hoped that a camera atop the embassy may have recorded the terrorists moments before the blast.