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Why Hsieh was not an informant

In a recent issue, Next magazine reported that between 1980 and 1988, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) had served as a "counselor," that is, a senior informant, for the Investigation Bureau following the Kaohsiung Incident.

After Hsieh questioned the loyalty of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) about possessing a US green card, he now finds himself facing doubts over his loyalty to the opposition movement during the 1980s.

And yet, to accuse Hsieh of being an bureau informant based on the evidence revealed so far would be entirely unjustified.

The media, however, has seized upon the fact that during his tenure as a Taipei City councilor, Hsieh had contacts with former schoolmates who worked at the bureau and concluded, based on this, that he must have been an informant.

By this reasoning, all the family, friends, schoolmates and anyone who has ever spoken to investigators, would have been informants.

So far, the only physical evidence of Hsieh's status as an informant is a document that was presented by KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), sent by Wang Kuang-yu (王光宇), then the head of the bureau, to the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office.

The document states that between November 1992 and October 1993, the bureau employed Hsieh as a consultant for an advisory commission on an anti-graft crackdown.

From this, Chiu infers that the document is proof of Hsieh's long-term and intimate contacts with the bureau.

The budget of the bureau, it should be said, is assessed by the legislature.

At the time, Hsieh was a legislator and one of the judicial commissioners in the commission responsible for assessing the bureau's budget.

To hold a publicly known consultancy position in the 1990s as evidence of having acted as an informant during the 1980s is a ludicrous proposition, as the two are altogether unrelated.

In any case, during every year's budget assessment period, legislators who are part of the judicial commission, or any others who have input into the bureau's budget, would all be subject to "intimate contact" with the bureau.

The bureau's contacts at the legislature are recorded in daily reports: If the contact frequently visited Chiu's office over budget assessments, then the name "Chiu Yi" would also appear in his work report. Could we then, from this, infer that Chiu has intimate relations with the bureau, and therefore must have once been an informant?

From the bureau budget, it is easy to separate "counselors" -- or informants -- from "consultants." On page 29 of the 1997 bureau budget, under the investigative tasks rubric, there is an entry for NT$32 million (US$1 million) in "subsidies" provided to "counselors" for providing information, and NT$21,244 in "rewards."

This NT$50 million to NT$60 million is the so-called "informants' fee."

On page 34 of the same document, under anti-corruption and crime prevention tasks, there is an entry for fees paid to the anti-graft consultancy commission, public works consultancy commissions and other experts and academics, amounting to NT$120,000.

To "buy" information from 40 or 50 academics and specialists for an annual fee of NT$120,00 seems awfully cheap. From this budget, it is apparent that "counselors" are informants, whereas "consultants" are experts and academics. The two are distinct entities and must not be confused.

Prior to 1990, the budgeted fee for informants often reached several hundred million NT dollars. After the legislative elections and more than 10 years of cuts and questioning from legislators, the amount has dropped to tens of millions. The main reason for this budget slash is the difficulty in assessing the reliability of informants, so that "extras" following verification often get pocked by investigators.

For instance, certain investigators may accidentally acquire valuable information. However, their reports exaggerate the difficulties encountered and expenses made to obtain the information.

The informant's fee naturally ends up in the pocket of the informant and the individual who accidentally leaked the information may have unknowingly become an "informant" to the bureau.

Hence "informants" are not necessarily informants -- a portion of them may well have been used only for claiming investigative expenses. I suspect that this kind of scenario should be familiar to investigators above 50 years of age.

Jan Shou-jung is a legislative assistant.

Translated by Angela Hong
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