More than 80,000 official Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) documents from 1946 to 1955 have been organized and inspected by the Ministry of National Defense bureau, and now await declassification as part of the government’s efforts to promote transitional justice.
The bureau is to work with the National Development Council’s National Archives Administration (NAA) to transfer the documents that can be declassified to the archives.
The majority of the documents are related to assignments that were carried out over the 11 years, when the MIB was known as the Counterintelligence Bureau — or more commonly as the “secrecy bureau” (保密局) — and deal with intelligence on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) underground organization, the Taiwan Provincial Work Committee (台灣省工作委員會), an unnamed military official said.
A document showing the committee’s organization and a 1,000-plus name list of its reported members is now on display at the bureau’s newly renovated memorial to lieutenant general Tai Yu-nung (戴雨農), also known as Tai Li (戴笠), the source said.
The bureau’s investigation into the Taiwan Provincial Work Committee found that the ministry’s then-deputy chief of the general staff, lieutenant general Wu Shi (吳石), was working as an undercover CCP spy, the highest-level government official implicated at the time, the source said.
The stability of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime and Taiwan’s safety were unpredictable during that time period, the source said.
By uncovering the Taiwan Provincial Work Committee and undercover CCP spies, the bureau secured the stability of the Chiang regime to a fair degree, the source said.
However, in the process of doing so, the abuse of power and incidents of personal revenge occurred, pointing to the White Terror era, the source said.
The bureau organized and inspected the documents so that their contents could be made public in an objective manner and historical truths restored, the source said.
In an age of democracy, establishing trust and support in the society would allow intelligence work to develop more smoothly, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said during a recent inspection visit to the bureau.
The Legislative Yuan on Dec. 5 last year passed the third reading of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) and made collecting political documents a priority.
As part of the effort, the council established a 20-member consultative committee that will visit and collect political documents from 32 key government agencies.
The NAA has asked for classified documents to be declassified or changed to a lower level.
However, documents that were meant to be classified forever will not be transferred to the archives or made public, although regular reassessments of their classification would be made.
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