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The arrests of top Iraqi scientists since the end of the war have revealed a startling trend in the educational background of these experts wanted for the alleged development of weapons of mass destruction: Many received training from American universities.

The United States has provided training for Iraqi scientists since 1956 – the year the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission was established.

A large majority of scientific leaders in Iraq today received training from institutions in either the United States and Europe.

Take Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, believed to be one of Iraq’s top biological weapons scientists, and the only female in the Pentagon’s list of the top 55 most wanted Iraqis.

Known as “Mrs. Anthrax,” Ammash earned her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Missouri, Columbia in 1983, after completing a masters in biology from Texas Women’s College in Denton in 1979.

Ammash was highly ranked in the regime of Saddam Hussein, having been promoted in 2001 to the Baathist National Command. She was the first woman taken into custody by U.S. forces after surrendering on May 5.

According to a study conducted by Georgia State University, 1,215 science and engineering doctorates were granted to students from nations listed as terrorism sponsors by the U.S. State Department from 1990 to 1999.

Among these, students from Iraq received 112 science and engineering Ph.D.s, 14 of which were in fields such as microbiology or nuclear/chemical engineering.

Paula Stephan, a co-author of the study, said even though numbers are disconcerting, most Iraqi students do not return home.

“The information would still be available. ... A lot of what they learn they could learn elsewhere,” she said.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has taken steps to scrutinize Student Visa applications. According to the U.S. State Department, applicants from some established nations, especially those coming to study “sensitive” fields such as microbiology, receive intense scrutiny.

Though a number of Iraqi scientists have studied at American universities, the percentage has decreased over the years, wrote Khidar Hamza, a former senior nuclear scientist for the Iraqi government and author of the book “Saddam’s Bomb Maker,” published in 2000.

In this book Hamza wrote that Hussein sought to diversify the educational background of his staff in the 1980s, and that by 1990, about half of the top 30 Iraqi nuclear experts were U.S.-educated.

Many other scientists join Ammash in the ranks of those applying skills learned in the United States to weapons programs in Iraq.

Nissar al-Hindawi, the former technical director on Iraq’s biological weapons program, is a U.S.-trained microbiologist who received a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi, Starkville in 1969.

Al-Hindawi’s efforts to weaponize anthrax became known to the world when he wrote a British laboratory requesting a sample in 1988. His whereabouts are currently unknown, but he was arrested in 1998 on suspicion of trying to defect and was sent to prison.

Even the University of California-managed Los Alamos National Laboratory provided a learning environment for the training of an Iraqi nuclear scientist.

Mahdi Obeidi, an expert in uranium enrichment, learned about the substance during a 1975 visit to New Mexico. He then returned to Iraq where he copied the enrichment techniques he learned.

Students at UCLA, in the meantime, had varying opinions regarding the education of potential terrorists at U.S. universities.

Yasser Attiga, a first-year chemical engineering student, said “there is nothing we can do” to prevent American universities from educating future terrorists.

Second-year art history student Janice Wang said despite the irony of the situation, the U.S. should allow all international students to study at its universities, regardless of their country of origin.

“We don’t want to hinder their development,” she said.

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