The National Security Bureau (NSB) yesterday denied it had found simplified Chinese characters on a computer disk containing classified documents that were recently leaked to the press.
NSB Deputy Director Huang Lei (黃磊) said the disk contained computer terminology commonly used in China but which was printed in complex characters, rather than the simplified forms of Chinese characters used in China.
"We also found Taiwanese computer terminology on the disk, so we can not jump to the conclusion that China was involved in the information leak. We have to find more clues," Huang said.
Huang made the statement yesterday as he visited the legislative caucus of the opposition PFP, which also received a copy of the disk.
TSU lawmakers on Thursday said they had been told of the existence of the simplified Chinese characters on the disk during a legislators' visit to the NSB's offices on Yangmingshan that day.
During the tour, NSB Director Tsai Tsao-ming (蔡朝明) told lawmakers that former NSB chief cashier Colonel Liu Kuan-chun (劉冠軍), who fled the country in 2000 facing embezzlement charges, could not have leaked the documents on his own.
Lawmakers differed in the accounts of what they had been told on the tour, but Huang said yesterday that the TSU lawmakers had not been told of the simplified Chinese characters.
He added that the NSB did not know how many copies of the disk had been made.
He said that only three copies of the disk, all found to have been made from the same source, had been recovered.
One copy was seized during a raid on Next magazine last Thursday after it published a story based on the disk's files that detailed two secret NSB accounts containing more than NT$3.5 billion.
Another copy of the disk was handed in by the PFP and the third by an anonymous person calling himself a "patriot," Huang said.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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