CIB urges Li to submit `CIA data'

Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) Commissioner Hou You-yi (侯友宜) urged independent Legislator Li Ao (李敖) yesterday to provide police with a copy of an intelligence document that Li claims to have gotten from the US to help solve the presidential election-eve shooting last year.

Li told a press conference earlier in the day that he had obtained a CIA document saying President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) staged his own election-eve shooting to win sympathy and ensure his winning re-election.

Li said he had obtained the CIA document through unofficial channels and that the document says Chen hired two snipers to carry out the shooting on March 19. The purpose was to kill or wound Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) so that Chen would get sympathy votes and win re-election in the March 20 election, Li said.

"One sniper, named Chen, is dead. The other sniper, named Lee, has gone abroad," he said.

The lawmaker showed the document, entitled Formal Report, to reporters and said he was going to mail it to Lu.

He called on Lu to speak out on "the truth" and stop assisting Chen.

Tainan Prosecutor Wang San-jung (王森榮) , the prosecutor in charge of the March 19 shooting case, asked Li to let him read the CIA document. Li declined, telling him to get the document from Lu.

Hou urged Li to provide the information to the CIB, saying that the police hold no prerequisites or assumptions of any kind regarding the case and that his bureau would welcome any information that could lead to solving the case.

A "March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee" was formed last October under a statute passed by the Legislative Yuan, but the committee got nowhere because it encountered heavy criticism and the Council of Grand Justices ruled the committee unconstitutional and the administration refused to cooperate with it.

In response to Li's claims, the Presidential Office yesterday said it would not respond to Li's charge until it had seen the so-called CIA document.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Lai Ching-te (賴清德) yesterday dismissed Li's document as "fake," claiming that he has inquired its authenticity via an "appropriate channel."

Lai also questioned the timing of Li's revelation of the document. The High Court is scheduled to deliver its verdict on June 17 on the lawsuit filed by the pan-blue alliance to void the presidency of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Lu.

Earlier this year the CIB announced it had traced the would-be assassin, Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), whom committed suicide by jumping into the sea shortly after last year's presidential election.

A US official in Taipei declined to comment on the alleged CIA report.

Additional reporting by Huang Tai-lin and Ko Shu-ling