Military experts question Lee Wen-ho Taiwan link

Military analysts in Taiwan have dismissed suggestions made recently in a US newspaper about a possible connection between the alleged leaks of US nuclear secrets by scientist Lee Wen-ho (李文和) and his native Taiwan, saying the issue could be politically motivated.

Besides, they said, Taiwan has no need for the kind of information found in Lee's possession.

An article in The Washington Post on Dec. 31, headlined "Lee's Links to Taiwan Scrutinized," claimed US authorities have expanded their investigation -- which has mostly focused on the physicist's connections with China -- to Taiwan as well.

"Taiwan does not need to obtain nuclear secrets of the kind Lee is accused of stealing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop nuclear weapons, considering its current technological levels," said Su Chin-chiang (蘇進強), a former serviceman now serving as a military analyst at Nanhua University.

"Such accusations would stand if Taiwan were at the initial stage of nuclear weapon development. But our own nuclear weapon development was initiated as early as the 1960s," Su said.

"Although Taiwan has yet to build its nuclear strike capability, it would need only to activate mass production [of weapons] to achieve that goal," he said.

Su agrees with comments made recently by former US ambassador to China James Lilley, about the possibility of political motivations behind investigations into allegations Lee leaked nuclear secrets to Taiwan.

Lilley, also a former senior CIA official, told the Post that he was suspicious of any notion that "Lee was working for Taiwan."

"My instinct is it could be a diversionary use of Lee by the Chinese, setting him up with the opposition, just like getting his wife working with the FBI," Lilley said.

Su said it is more likely that China might be using the tactic to divert US public attention from it to Taiwan.

However, China is already a nuclear-capable country, Su said, so it does not need to count on Lee for its nuclear development, either.

"If China did manage to acquire classified information through Lee, it is more likely that it just wanted to know about current nuclear developments in the US," Su said.

"The most direct connection between Lee and Taiwan's research efforts came in the spring of 1998," the Post said. That is when Lee came to Taiwan to work for several weeks as a consultant at the military-run Chung Shan Institute of Science and Techno-logy (CSIST).

"Several weeks' consulting service does not mean anything. It would mean something if the cooperation extended to several years," Su said.

Taiwan's nuclear weapon development started with the establishment of CSIST in 1968 under the command of then-President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).

The secret project was aimed at achieving a check and balance with China, which had then seen major breakthroughs in its nuclear weapons development.

However, the project was terminated in 1988 after the intervention by the US, which had obtained information about the project's efforts through a high-ranking CSIST official who defected to the US.

Shih Hsiao-wei (施孝瑋), an editor of Defense International magazine, said the US still keeps a close watch on Taiwan for any sign of re-launch of its nuclear weapon development efforts.

"The CIA has quite a number of people in Taiwan, including foreigners and locals, to monitor Taiwan's nuke development for it. These people include students, diplomats and journalists," Shih said. "It is very difficult for Taiwan to re-start its nuclear weapon development effort since the major processing equipment was deactivated by the US personnel sent to Taiwan following the defection of Colonel Chang Hsien-yi (張獻義), then deputy director of the nuclear development division of CSIST."