Alleged double agent back home, military confirms

The Military Intelligence Bureau yesterday acknowledged that a former agent of the bureau has returned to Taiwan after being imprisoned in China for more than three years. But it denied that the agent bore any message from the Chinese government.

Yeh Ping-nan (葉炳南), who had been the bureau's Hong Kong branch leader, came back to this country early last month, a spokesperson for the bureau said.

"Yeh did not return as a messenger for the Chinese government. His release from prison was not necessarily a friendly gesture from China," the spokesperson said.

The bureau was responding to a front-page report in a Chinese-language newspaper yesterday that Yeh had been released by Beijing, which had arrested him in 1999 for what it said was Yeh's spying activities in China.

At the time he was arrested, Yeh had already retired from his position as head of the Hong Kong branch of the intelligence bureau and was making a business trip to Fujian Province.

Yeh said to be a double agent, who benefited from both Taiwan and China by selling to either side information about the other.

But no direct evidence could be found to sustain the allegations against Yeh, a defense official said.

The bureau declined to reveal what it would do to Yeh now that he has returned to the country. But it is clear that the allegations against Yeh could be now investigated by the bureau.

In the past, the intelligence bureau has handled agents who have returned from China after imprisonment by putting them in solitary confinement and using a variety of means to find out whether the agents had compromised national secrets or had changed their loyalties.

Following Yeh's arrest, the bureau's intelligence network in Hong Kong broke down and two People's Liberation Army officers who were said to have sold vital information to Taiwan were discovered by Beijing authorities, a Chinese-language report said yesterday.

The bureau refused to say whether there might be any connection between Yeh and the collapse of Taiwan's intelligence network in Hong Kong and China.

A defense source, who had links with the intelligence community, said that if Yeh were really the cause of the largest setback for the bureau in recent years, he might not have dared to come back.

"The bureau's intelligence branch in Hong Kong did not have too many people. It was doomed to be closed after Britain's return of Hong Kong to China in 1997," the source said.

"Most of the intelligence gathering jobs in Hong Kong were actually done by the KMT's local workers. The KMT maintained quite an extensive intelligence network in Hong Kong for many years," he said.

As for the two Chinese officers who were said to have sold information to Taiwan, Yeh should not have any connection with them, the source said.

The Chinese officers were subsequently executed on charges of leaking vital information to Taiwan about the missile tests that the PLA launched during the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis.