The former director of the National Security Bureau's special service center, Peng Tzu-wen (彭子文), has said that he would not "take a bullet for President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁)." This was the first such "confession" from a bureau official. Peng has since been a frequent guest on TV talkshows, showing off his professional knowledge.
All this grandstanding is making Taiwanese nervous, because they are afraid that it might not be just Peng acting as an individual, but that it reflects the collective ideology created by a single-party state. How many people like Peng will emerge in Taiwan? What is even more scary is that, with people like him around, Taiwan has no national security to speak of. We needn't wait for China to "decapitate" Taiwan; people like Peng are sufficient to do that.
Peng's continuous chatter on TV has finally led to accusations that he has leaked military secrets and violated both his oath of service and the official secrets provisions that he signed on retirement. These are criminal offenses, and if they are proven to be true, Peng will go to jail.
If behavior like Peng's is not eradicated, will there still be respect for the government's authority? Without legal restraint, what will prevent similar people from emerging? And then there will be no more need for China to send spies to Taiwan, and no quantity of missile defense systems will be sufficient to protect us.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Chiu Yi-ying (
When Peng discovered that things were going badly for him, he hastily sought help from people such as journalist Huang Kuan-chin (
His guilt can be seen from the following: First, if Peng doesn't have a guilty conscience, then why does he want to silence his critics?
Second, he has argued that the information he revealed in his TV talks had already been published in the media. But Huang, during a call-in program, implied that Peng was the person who originally leaked the information.
Third, if we accept the far-fetched proposition that Peng did indeed only discuss information that had already been revealed in the media, this still does not excuse him, for while the media muckrakes as part of the public's right to know, can the same be said of Peng, a member of the National Security Bureau?
Fourth, even if the information had been previously revealed in the media, Peng still violated the code of conduct for a national security officer by commenting publicly on it.
Fifth, media reporting is not proof that something is true. By publicly presenting his interpretation of these reports, Peng was giving them credibility. How can he say that he didn't leak national secrets?
Any one of these points is enough to make Peng a criminal.
The accusation made by Chiu and Kao demands not only a formal response from the National Security Bureau, but also requires the intervention of government prosecutors and the Control Yuan.
Chin Heng-wei is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine. TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry