Physicists challenge US missile defense claims

September 27, 2007
Physicists challenge US missile defense claims

WASHINGTON - A number of top U.S-based physicists have concluded that the Bush administration used inaccurate claims to reassure NATO allies about U.S. missile defense plans in Eastern Europe.

But the six scientists, whose backgrounds include elite American universities, research labs and high levels of government, said in interviews that Russia's concerns were justified.

"The claim by the Missile Defense Agency is not correct," said Theodore Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a longtime missile defense critic. "And it is hard to understand how they could get something so basic wrong."