Analysts said the cleanup will hinder a proposed investigation by international nuclear inspectors and suggests Syria is trying to conceal evidence.
"It took down this facility so quickly it looks like they are trying to hide something," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which analyzed the images.
Albright said Syria may have acted so swiftly because the Israeli attack blew a hole in the roof, which would have exposed the building's contents to spy aircraft and satellites.
Had the building not been razed, inspectors would have been able to tell from its construction whether it was meant to house a North Korean-style nuclear reactor, Albright said. He said the fact that the structure got a roof so early in its construction also suggests that it was a reactor.
Apparently, the construction had been going on since at least September 2003, based on a commercial satellite photo taken then (but not intepreted back then, indicating one weakness of assuming that we can spot anything being built because of our satellites) that showed the building under construction. Clearly it began earlier than that. And the decision to build was earlier, certainly. We shall see if new information comes up that pushes the building date back to an earlier verifiable date.
Give the Syrians another month and they'll scrape the earth to eliminate radiation traces, build an orphanage, drop some bombs on it, and then invite the press in to see what the Israelis did.
