What happened in a room in the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel on or around Nov. 10 involving John Chang (章孝嚴), at the time the KMT's secretary-general?
Watching the powerful slip on a banana skin or get caught with their pants down has been the stuff of low comedy since the beginning of time. But we are not interested in mining the salacious details of Chang's affair, allegedly with interior designer Wang Hsiao-chan (
What prompts this concern is simply the rumors that are being relayed among Taipei's political cog-noscenti about exactly why Chang apparently signed a note saying that he would divorce his wife by next June. They say that Chang was caught in what espionage circles call a "honey trap," where through a romantic involvement someone is trapped into becoming a target for blackmail.
What we hear is that Chang had arranged an assignation with his mistress at the hotel. Whether she turned up is unclear. The scuttlebutt says, however, that three other gentlemen did turn up, that they were armed and that they presented Chang with videos of his past romps with the lady concerned (incidentally, Wang denies that it was her while souces close to Chang assert that it was) and pressured him into signing the letter. It is also alleged that Chang offered the three blackmailers a NT$10 million payoff and that they didn't accept.
Let this newspaper stress that it does not retail this gossip as fact. And let us add that Chang has refused to comment on it. But we have heard the same story from too many well-connected sources not to wonder whether large parts of it might be true.
Two things have certainly been admitted to be true. First, that the note promising a divorce was signed by Chang. And second, that it was signed under "unusual circumstances." For these two facts we can cite Ting Yuan-chao (丁遠超), spokesman for the Presidential Office, at a news conference on Dec. 22.
Of course, there are a variety of reasons why the rumored scenario might have come about. It might have been engineered by a jealous mistress determined to become something more -- though few, perhaps, might want to video their own disporting, nor need a goon squad to make their blackmail play.
It might have been set up by professional gang-sters wanting to shake down a wealthy man, but then why take a note promising a divorce rather than NT$10 million?
Two other possibilities spring to mind. The first is that it might have been a setup by political opponents wishing to blunt Chang's effectiveness in his job. Remember that since the splitting of the KMT business assets from the political side of the party earlier this decade, the secretary-general's main job has been as an election strategist and Chang, while we deplore the methods he seemed to favor, was not ineffective in the role.
Or finally, Chang might have been cornered by the agents of a foreign power. Remember that as KMT secretary-general and previously Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chang had been privy to the country's greatest secrets; racking him could provide a gold mine of strategically valuable intelligence.
For whatever purpose Chang was entrapped, it is of little avail now that he has made his situation public and honorably resigned.
But that does not allay the security worries to which his case gives rise. If what we hear is true, then it is easy to "put the squeeze" on one of the country's most powerful men, to film him in secret, to access the places he visits without security clearance and to confront him, armed, without facing a bodyguard. How can security be so lax? And, given the resources that the hapless Chang had to offer, why take so little? Or perhaps we should ask how much of the story remains untold.
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