The CIA report also dismisses a theory by some biologists that the trailers may have been used to produce bio-pesticides, though that dismissal too is less than compelling.

Biopesticide production requires the same equipment and techniques used for bioweapons agent production; however, the off-gas collection system and the size of the equipment are unnecessary for biopesticide production. There is no need to produce biopesticides near the point of use because biopesticides do not degrade as quickly as most bioweapons agents and would be more economically produced at a large fixed facility. (Italics added.)

To claim that the trailers may have been sub-optimally built for peaceful purposes does not definitively refute the possibility that they were built for such purposes nonetheless.

I don't know that these trailers weren't designed for bioweapons production. But I suspect Rumsfeld doesn't know that they were. Two bioweapons specialists I talked with say they are "agnostic" on the issue, saying more questions need to be answered (and suggest that independent biologists be sent to examine the vehicles because most people in the world won't believe a CIA report even if it's true). One biologist, looking at CIA-released photographs of a trailer, noted that the pipes feeding into the chamber appear to have threaded or bolt-flange joints, which he says would cause leaks—both from the inside and to the outside. The former might contaminate the bioproduction, the latter might kill the bioworkers. Another biologist said he would like to know whether the trailer has a thermal-control meter that could keep the chamber to within one or two degrees of body temperature; if there is such a meter, the trailer might have been used to grow toxins; if there isn't, it couldn't possibly have been.

Another question is raised by the following passage in the May 29 New York Times story about the CIA report: "And the mobile factories were poorly designed. For instance, one official noted, Iraqi biologists running the plants would have had a hard time getting raw materials into the production gear and removing multiplied colonies of deadly germs." One wonders: How hard is "a hard time"? If a worker couldn't get raw materials in or the deadly germs out, then what kind of bio-production plant was this? Was it "poorly designed" or designed for some other purpose?