Press says army officer's conviction unfair

Journalists grilled the military yesterday at a weekly Ministry of National Defense press conference, challenging the recent sentencing of an army major to nine years in prison.

The ruling has struck a nerve with the media in Taiwan, as the major was sentenced for leaking sensitive information to the press.

Reporters claimed that the military's justice system was using false charges to persecute the major, Liu Chih-chung (劉持中).

Liu was sentenced last week by the military high court to nine years in prison for leaking what the military considered classified information to a defense correspondent of Power News last year.

The charge against Liu that particularly annoyed the press was the accusation that Hung Che-cheng (洪哲政), the defense correspondent with Power News, was given money for printing the story.

Hung denies that he received any extra payments from his newspaper after the story was printed.

Confession

The news reports were about the sighting of three Chinese military vessels off Taiwan's northeastern coast on May 19 last year, and another about an attack upon a radar station in Taipei's suburban Linkou by unknown perpetrators around the same time as the ship sighting.

A representative of the Judge Advocates' Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense (MND) had to bear the full brunt of the media's anger.

The representative, Colonel Chiang Ta-wei (蔣大偉) explained to the press that Liu has been found guilty of attempting to benefit from sharing information with Hung because that was what Liu had confessed to doing.

"Liu says in his confession that he thought his offer of military information to Hung might help Hung win some monetary awards from his newspaper," Chiang said.

Although Hung says he did not get any extra money from his newspaper, Chiang said the judge still found Liu guilty of attempting to benefit from the information leakage because Liu knew the consequences of his deed.

Still dissatisfied with Chiang's response, Kao Lin-yun (高凌雲), a senior defense correspondent with an evening newspaper, challenged Chiang with the question of whether former defense minister Tang Fei (唐飛) had committed similar offenses since he had also leaked vital military information to the press in the past.

Counter-charges

"Several years ago when Tang was still the chief of the general staff, he leaked information to the press at a private occasion about the military's plans to deploy the Patriot air-defense missile system in Taichung and Kaohsiung."

"Tang revealed not only the planned deployment of the Patriot missile system in Taichung and Kaohsiung but also the number of new Patriot missiles that the military planned to buy for deployment in the two metropolitan areas," Kao said.

"The information hit the front-page of almost every major newspaper the next day. Can we say Tang's act amounted to attempting to benefit the defense correspondents he met on that day?" Kao asked.

Chiang said the two cases were different and that they should not be treated as the same.

It has been rumored for quite some time that Tang Fei had been secretly passing military information to a major Chinese-language newspaper when he was still in the military.

A ministry spokesman, Major General Huang Shui-sheng (黃穗生), denied the rumor, saying it was totally unsubstantiated.