All intelligence officials soon to face lie detectors

All intelligence officials will be subjected to polygraph tests in future in a bid to root out spies, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced yesterday.

Legislators said they support the ministry's policy, but that they hoped the ministry would take human rights into consideration when implementing the tests.

"Officials of the Military Intelligence Bureau, the military's electronic information department, the ministry's security unit and the National Security Bureau will randomly undergo psychological and polygraph tests on a regular basis," Deputy Minister of National Defense Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) told legislators yesterday.

In the most recent case of espionage, Major Chuang Poh-hsing (莊伯欣), a former official in the ministry's electronic information department, had on six occasions downloaded secrets form the ministry's computers and passed them on to China, Tsai said.

"I would like to apologize for the espionage on behalf of the ministry," Tsai said.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Shuai Hua-min (帥化民), a former head of the National Defense Management College, said he supports the polygraph policy, but that the ministry should conduct the tests properly.

Shuai said the ministry should pay more attention to intelligence officials who are soon to retire, as experience has shown that these officials are more likely to sell secrets to China.

People First Party (PFP) Legislator Nelson Ku (顧崇廉), a former chief of the navy, said the US has expressed concern about whether Taiwan's military would be able to effectively control military secrets if it were to share more intelligence with Taipei.

According to news reports, Ku said, the US decided not to sell destroyers equipped with AEGIS defense systems to Taiwan because of concern that it would not be able to adequately safeguard the related military secrets.

He said the US and other countries would not enhance military exchanges with Taiwan until intelligence control has been tightened.

Ku said it was ridiculous that the MND had allowed military officials such as Chuang to download information from the ministry's computers so easily.

The ministry should have developed technology to prevent officials from taking information out of the office, he said.

Tsai said the documents Chuang had leaked did not contain any sensitive information.

However, PFP Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said Chuang was in charge of taking records for the department's intelligence meetings, and consequently would have had access to at least some secrets.

Liu said he suspects that Chuang had leaked more secrets to China than the ministry claims.