NEW
YORK, June 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - U.S. and British
intelligence analysts who have examined mysterious trailers found in
Iraq are repudiating claims they were used for making deadly germs, a
leading American newspaper reported Saturday, June 7.
They
said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and
charged that the CIA evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to
judgment, said the New York Times.
"Everyone
has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted
to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert
who has seen the trailers.
"I
am very upset with the process," the man, who declined to put his
name, told the American daily.
According
to the Time, intelligence analysts stationed in the Middle
East, the U.S. and Britain, are disclosing serious doubts about the
administration's conclusions in what appears to be a bitter debate
within the intelligence community.
At
least three teams of Western experts have examined the trailers and
evidence from them.
While
the first two were largely convinced that trailers were intended for
producing germ agents, several members of the third group, which
comprises more senior analysts, are expressing strong skepticism.
"I
have no great confidence that it's a fermenter," a senior analyst
with long experience in unconventional arms said of a tank allegedly
for multiplying seed germs into lethal swarms.
The
government's public report, he charged, "was a rushed job and
looks political."
A
May 28 CIA report, although admitting no traces of biological warfare
agents were detected in the trailers, concluded that production of
biological warfare agents was their "only consistent logical
purpose."
Not
everyone within the intelligence community agrees, stressed the Times.
Skeptics
cite three flaws in the government's argument, zeroing in on a central
processing unit, or fermenter, needed to multiply germs to a level of
concentration that makes them deadly.
First,
the trailers lacked gear for steam sterilization, described as "a
prerequisite for any kind of biological production." Without it,
the germs would likely become contaminated, the experts said.
William
C. Patrick III, a senior official in the germ warfare program that
Washington renounced in 1969, told the Times the lack of steam
sterilization had caused him to question the germ-plant theory he had
once tentatively endorsed.
"That's
a huge minus," he said. "I don't see how you can clean those
tanks chemically."
Second,
each unit could produce only a small amount of germ-filled liquid,
which would then require further processing at another facility.
Third,
technicians would have no easy way of removing germs from the
processing tank.
Iraqi
scientists have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for
weather balloons -- an assertion some analysts now view as
"potentially credible," the Times said.
Some
administration officials disputed the skeptics and provided alternate
explanations.
Iraq
could have used a separate mobile unit to supply steam to the trailer,
or sterilized the tanks with pure water instead of steam, they argued.
They
disagreed that the trailers could only make a small amount of
concentrated weapons and said Iraqi scientists could drain the tanks
of germ-laden liquids through a pipe on the trailer's bottom, using an
air compressor to speed the process.
But
even if the skepticism turns out to be a minority view, it is
significant given the image of consensus Washington has projected and
how much administration officials exaggerated the mobile units find,
said the Times.
It
recalled that at his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin, U.S. President George Bush cited the trailers as evidence of
illegal Iraqi arms.
Some
doubters noted that the intelligence community was still scrambling to
analyze the trailers, suggesting that the CIA report may have been
premature.
They
said labs in the Middle East and the U.S. were now analyzing more than
100 samples from the trailers to verify the intelligence findings.
