Taiwan's military officials have admitted they made a mistake in issuing a statement during the March 1996 Chinese missile launches that discounted the firings as no threat to Taiwan, as it revealed top Chinese officials were spying for Taipei, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The defense ministry statement said the missiles were unarmed, with warheads that held only a device to determine the projectile's accuracy. The missiles launched on March 8, 1996 were part of Beijing's efforts to intimidate voters ahead of Taiwan's first direct presidential election.
Quoting an unnamed source, the Post article said Chinese authorities started a massive investigation because of the statement that resulted in the execution last August of a Chinese general, his mistress and a senior colonel.
The report said other espionage cases also grew out of the initial investigation, damaging Taiwan's ability to infiltrate China.
Quoting the same unnamed source, the Post's Beijing-based reporter John Pomfret, the author of the article, said Taiwan then compounded its error when bureaucratic red tape prevented its intelligence agents getting the general out of China and over to Taiwan. The article says such a move could have perhaps helped protect other Taiwan spies as well.
Media in Taiwan, as well as Reuters, reported last September that Major General Liu Liankun and Senior Colonel Shao Zhengzhong of the People's Liberation Army were executed following a lengthy counterespionage investigation, but did not provide details.
Promfret wrote in his Post article that people he interviewed in Taiwan said Liu provided Taipei with the information about the missiles in 1996.
The Post article went on to detail how Liu had been recruited by Taiwan and his downfall at the hands of Chinese security.
He and Shao are believed to have been the most senior Chinese military officers convicted of espionage since 1949, said the Post article.
The Post noted that damage to Taiwan's intelligence services is also bad news for US intelligence-gathering efforts as well, since Washington relies heavily on Taiwanese reports on China's activities, according to sources quoted in the article.
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