A new report by Jane's Defence Weekly reveals how Taiwan in recent years has joined hands with the US to spy on China.
But as intelligence sources here point out, such contacts between both sides have long existed, even after the US broke off diplomatic ties with Taiwan over 20 years ago.
In the latest issue of Jane's, Taiwan is said to be operating a major signals intelligence facility in cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA) on Taipei's suburban Yangmingshan Mountain.
The facility is identified as a "data processing center," located at a military camp on Yangmingshan, which is quite noticeable with its many giant satellite signal receiving disks.
The data processing center is the Taiwan headquarters of a commercial front for the NSA, the report says. The NSA front in Taiwan operates under the name of a high-tech company.
The Ministry of National Defense declined to comment on the report, saying only that whether or not the information was true would be known sooner or later.
At the data processing center on Yangmingshan, an unidentified number of retired and inactive duty US military personnel work together with Taiwan's military officials, the report says.
The NSA has just completed for the center a five-year upgrade and training program, which features the development, design, implementation and operation of a variety of special-purpose telecom and data processing systems, it says.
The upgrade program is said to incorporate new processing capabilities and provide a 10-fold rise in total system capacity.
The training program reportedly allows the Taiwan military to be less reliant on NSA assistance, which in turn enables the transition of support and development responsibility to Taiwan's military.
A senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there has always been intelligence cooperation between Taiwan and the US despite the severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979.
"The US has its own reasons for strengthening its intelligence gathering facilities in Taiwan," the official said.
"There is nothing surprising about the development since it falls within what is normally expected. What is really surprising is how the US is able to maintain intelligence links with Taiwan and its archrival China at the same time," he said.
"We know the US has set up intelligence stations in inland China to collect information on countries like Russia. We are not sure what the US has given to China in return for the help," he said.
"We have proof that the US sends, on a regular basis, C-130 transport aircraft into China to deliver supplies to its intelligence stations in the interior. We have seen reports of Chinese fighter planes escorting the C-130s to their destinations," he said.
The intelligence official, however, declined to comment on whether Taiwan also has intelligence links with China as suspected by the US.
According to information obtained by the Taipei Times, Taiwan's intelligence links with China date to the 1960s or earlier, as the two sides sought to subvert each other with secret operations by spies.
At that time, Taiwan's intelligence chiefs would leak to their Chinese counterparts information about where and when certain agents from Taiwan would enter China.
The intentional sacrifice of the agents was justified so that other spies could infiltrate China.
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