The military today rejected online claims that its intelligence officers held secret meetings with Dutch counterparts earlier this year, saying the allegation was spread by an overseas Chinese group working with the Chinese Communist Party.
In a statement, the Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) said a post uploaded on Saturday to a Hungarian-based Web site, the Europe Wanshida Web, was later shared as a Facebook post yesterday.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
The site is operated by a group of overseas Chinese, it said.
The post alleged that six MIB officers secretly traveled to the Netherlands in May for a half-day meeting with the Dutch Defense Intelligence and Security Service, and that six officials from the Dutch agency and the General Intelligence and Security Service visited Taiwan last month for a follow-up meeting.
The MIB said the contents of the post were "distorted" and "inconsistent with what actually happened," without elaborating.
The post also included purported photographs of the alleged meeting in the Netherlands, a flight ticket for one of the MIB officers said to have traveled there and the names of Taiwanese and Dutch intelligence personnel.
It said such exchanges were rare due to the absence of official diplomatic ties.
Asked about the matter earlier today, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said he had instructed the MIB to conduct internal checks.
Tsai neither confirmed nor denied the alleged exchanges, saying only that the bureau would examine whether the post breached information security rules or was part of China's cognitive warfare.
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