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Bush officials under scrutiny in influence-peddling intrigue.
Apr 5, 2002 | An influence-peddling scandal has erupted in Taiwain, and Bush administration officials have been named in leaked Taiwanese intelligence documents as the recipients of financial support. While it's too soon to tell whether the story has the stamina to make it halfway around the world, the U.S. officials named -- including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, and two assistant secretaries of state, along with a Clinton Defense Department appointee -- have already clammed up, refusing to talk to the press.
There is no evidence of any lawbreaking, but the scandal does threaten to expose the type of political influence-peddling that Washington is both renowned -- and reviled -- for.
On March 20, two Taiwanese media outlets, Taiwan Next magazine and the China Times, published articles based on secret documents leaked from Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB), one of the main arms of Taiwanese intelligence. The leaked documents appear to show the existence of a massive secret slush fund with assets of more than $100 million, which former President Lee Teng-hui used for covert diplomatic and espionage activities abroad. Those efforts included spying in the People's Republic of China, cash donations to developing countries willing to extend diplomatic recognition to Taiwan, and cash payoffs to politicians and foreign policy hands in Japan and the United States.
Taiwanese authorities responded with an ill-advised police raid on the offices of Next, and launched an investigation of the editor of the China Times for endangering national security. But it only added fuel to the fire. In an article published Friday in the Washington Post, Taiwanese officials confirmed the authenticity of the documents. Outside the country, however, the scandal is providing the first tangible proof of what foreign policy experts and China watchers have long suspected: that Taiwan has for decades used covert cash payments to political figures and institutions in Japan and the United States to try and improve its diplomatic standing.
The most serious allegations concern Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James A. Kelly, America's chief diplomat for Asia and the Pacific Rim. One of the projects described in the secret NSB documents was an effort by Taiwanese officials to provide cash payments to officials of the Japanese government in exchange for their help in bringing Taiwan under a proposed American missile defense shield. In at least one instance Kelly helped NSB officials secretly transfer funds to a vice minister of the Japanese Defense Agency, Masahiro Akiyama, after Akiyama was forced to resign from the government because of a defense procurement scandal.
But, according to Japan policy experts, Kelly's apparent help in facilitating a Taiwanese payoff of a prominent Japanese politician may create an embarrassing situation for American diplomats in their dealings with Japan. Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan administration Defense Department official now at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Salon he didn't think Kelly's actions were "business as usual" but nonetheless defended Kelly's intentions. "Jim Kelly is as honest as the day is long," said Korb. "I'm sure that he was trying to help someone who got in an awkward situation and was trying to get the money where it needed to go."
Others, however, find the revelation more troubling and possibly more damaging to U.S.-Japan relations. According to Steven Clemons, co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, it is understood in Japan that various sorts of gift-giving and influence-peddling routinely occur. And such practices are tacitly accepted -- as long as they don't become public. "But if it comes to the light of day," says Clemons, "then the rules are different. If Kelly did this and it comes to light then it's a huge deal. It would mean he's made himself an agent, a pawn, a fixer for Taiwan in Japan. It would be extremely embarrassing to the Japanese."
According to the documents published in the China Times and Sing Tao Daily, Taiwanese officials gave small cash gifts to senior members of the Japanese government to gain their assistance in Taiwan's bid to be included under America's missile defense shield to protect U.S. allies in East and Northeast Asia. The officials named in the documents are then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (who reportedly received $10,000) and Vice Defense Minister Masahiro Akiyama ($2,000). Later, after Akiyama was forced to resign in November 1998, the NSB rewarded him for past assistance with $100,000 to support a two-year fellowship for him to study missile defense issues at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.
