Details, details

Great article in Slate.com about how Scotland Yard does terrorism forensics. All I have to say is, these guys are good.

British and American investigators of the December 1988 downing of Pan Am 103””?the deadliest terrorist attack in United Kingdom history, with 259 killed on board the plane and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland””?ran through three theories for the crash before hitting on the right one. Initially, London and Washington believed that Syria had hired a Palestinian hit squad; next they thought Iran should be held responsible. Then, more than a year after the attack, a massive sweep of the Scottish countryside paid off. Police moving slowly, shoulder-to-shoulder, discovered unimpeachable forensic evidence: a sliver of a circuit board from the bomb’s timing device the size of a thumbnail. A match between the circuit-board fragment and a Libyan-built timing device photographed in Africa revealed Tripoli’s role.

A thumbnail?! At a the site of a plane crash?! Holy crap!