THE credibility of President Bush’s multibillion-dollar missile defence plans are being questioned by leading scientists after claims that the results of key tests were falsified.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is considering an investigation into accusations that fundamental flaws in the proposed “Son of Star Wars” system have been covered up.

The criticism is led by Theodore Postol, a physicist and missile defence critic at MIT, who has said that the institute is sitting on what is potentially “the most serious fraud that we’ve seen at a great American university”.

After months of demanding an inquiry into the affair, Ed Crawley, the chairman of MIT’s aeronautics and astronautics department, has reversed previous refusals and recommended an investigation.

The issue in question goes to the heart of missile defence technology, an article of faith among right-wing Republicans and a key plank in Mr Bush’s 2000 presidential manifesto. The United States unilaterally withdrew last year from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in order to pursue the controversial proposed system, which is designed to intercept enemy warheads in flight, a feat likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet.

Dr Postol and fellow critics say the ability of an interceptor missile to distinguish between an incoming warhead and the decoys likely to accompany it is deeply suspect. Any such doubts would cripple the credibility of the system.

Such questions date back to mid-1997 when the military contractor TWR Inc was accused by one of its employees, Nira Schwartz, of faking test results on a prototype anti-missile sensor meant to tell hostile warheads from decoys.

The company and its system was given the all-clear by the Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research centre at MIT. But subsequently the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, accused TWR of exaggerating the sensors’ performance, saying its conclusions had been “highly misleading”.

Dr Postol has written to 20 members of Congress saying that MIT’s reluctance to investigate the role of its own research centre “may indicate an attempt to conceal evidence of criminal violations”.

Critics say that MIT’s independence is compromised by its interest in maintaining hundreds of millions of dollars in annual government contracts.

The missile defence system, the first steps of which Mr Bush announced in December with the aim of having ten missile interceptors in Alaska by 2004, is being built by Raytheon, which beat TWR to the contract. But Dr Postol said the TWR test, which offers a rare glimpse into the highly secretive world of missile testing and is based on the same infra-red technology used by Raytheon, suggests some flaws that challenge the overall feasibility of the entire project.

Dr Postol, a persistent missile defence critic who is accusing MIT of a “serious case of scientific fraud”, cannot be lightly dismissed. After the Gulf War he challenged the Pentagon’s claims for the success of its defensive Patriot missiles, saying they had intercepted few if any Iraqi Scuds. Despite initial ridicule, his assertion is now accepted.

Since 1999 three of the eight tests of “hit to kill” interceptors have failed. Critics say that wrapping a nuclear warhead in radar-absorbing rubber foam or releasing thousands of small pieces of metal would be enough to fool an interceptor.

Separately the State Department yesterday charged two US aerospace companies with illegally supplying China with satellite and rocket technology that could be used for intercontinental missiles.

Hughes Electronics Corp and its parent company, Boeing Satellite Systems, stand accused of 123 arms control violations by helping China with technical data after failed rocket launches in 1995 and 1996. Hughes said that it had done nothing wrong.

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