FEATURE/Spies in DPP government expose weaknesses in vetting system for aides

By Joseph Yeh, staff reporter

Recent discoveries of people within the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government spying for China have exposed potential flaws in Taiwan's security vetting system and highlighted the difficulties involved in fixing them.

The scandal over the alleged Chinese spy network within Taiwan's government that has blown up in recent months has largely involved aides to senior national security officials and other prominent figures in power.

One of them was Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑), who worked for Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) when he was National Security Council (NSC) secretary-general from May 2016 to May 2017, Presidential Office secretary-general from May 2017 to February 2018, and foreign minister from 2018 to 2024.

Ho was arrested and detained on April 11.

Other suspects in the case include Wu Shang-yu (吳尚雨), who worked as an adviser in President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) office; Chiu Shih-yuan (邱世元), former deputy head of the DPP's Taiwan Institute of Democracy, and Huang Chu-jung (黃取榮), an aide to DPP New Taipei Councilor Lee Yu-tien (李余典).

Prosecutors believe that Huang was at the center of the large-scale espionage operation within the ruling DPP government, which has been in power since May 2016.

He is thought to have been recruited by Chinese intelligence services when he was doing business in China, and he started working with Ho, Wu Shang-yu and Chiu soon after returning to Taiwan.

Their goal was to gather confidential information about Lai's trips, including flight schedules, accommodation, and meeting locations and lists, in exchange for tens of thousands of Taiwan dollars, according to prosecutors.

What was different, though not unprecedented, about this spy scandal was that it largely involved political staffers and civilians rather than military or intelligence personnel, among whom most Chinese spy cases have been concentrated.

While Taiwan has anti-espionage laws and is in the process of amending them to prevent the recurrence of future cases, the alleged spy network within the DPP has exposed vulnerabilities in the existing system that could lead to more such cases.

At the top of the list is the vetting system for people with access to confidential information. In the latest spy case, some political workers who later became aides for top officials were vetted based on legal requirements but still fell through the cracks.

In Ho's case, for example, he was vetted in 2016 when Joseph Wu was about to serve as NSC secretary-general.

Investigation Bureau Director-General Michael Chen (陳白立) said in mid-April that Ho received a more rigorous "special background check" before working for Wu that year.

Ho then underwent an additional standard background and security check in 2018 before he was hired as a senior level contract-based assistant to then-Foreign Minister Wu, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) told CNA in a statement.

Range of vetting

According to a list contained within a law on officials subject to special background checks, there are 1,328 positions that require such vetting, most of them involved in national security or major national interests, including 96 at MOFA.

These positions are determined based on each individual agency's own list that has to be approved by the Presidential Office, the NSC and the government body they are under.

Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a division director at the Taiwan military-funded think tank Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told CNA that MOFA did the background check on Ho by the book in accordance with the Public Servants Appointment Act.

The act only stipulates, however, that a background check should be done before hiring a person to work in a public office. It does not stipulate follow-up checks after a person has taken up the post, Su said.

Of course, figuring out who does and who does not have access to confidential information is also a problem, especially given the vagueness of the laws and standards.

Ho, for example, may not have reached the threshold for a thorough background check at MOFA, but Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) of the Taiwan People's Party said he was told by somebody at MOFA that Ho was the first person to see faxes sent directly from Taiwan's representative office in Washington, D.C.

That was why DPP lawmaker Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), a member of the Legislature's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, proposed to the Ministry of Justice that it revise laws to establish a more comprehensive national security vetting procedure.

Such a system would particularly target top officials' assistants and political appointees, said Chen, who also pushed to establish rules for vetting lawmakers' aides.

According to Chen, all legislative aides are currently hired based on the Labor Standards Act and none of them have to pass even the most basic security and background checks in accordance with the Public Servants Appointment Act and/or National Intelligence Act even though their jobs give them access to confidential information.

Separately, the government is planning to expand the scope of special background checks to include an additional 1,008 positions, most of them at the level of aides or contracted workers who might have access to confidential information.

Alexander Huang (黃介正), chair of the Taipei-based think tank Council on Strategic & Wargaming Studies, said governments need to be determined to take security clearances seriously and build a long-term system that applies to all because it costs money and time.

"Do the politicians at the top really want to wait so long for their preferred candidate to take office...for fear of being manipulated by unnecessary politics or disruption [before taking office]." he said.

One way Su proposed to enhance the security vetting system was for each government unit to add a more in-depth security clearance process before hiring a person, especially those who work closely with a senior official who has access to more confidential and sensitive information.

That would not be too difficult because each government unit only has to update their own administrative order accordingly without the need to go through a lawmaking process, according to Su.

More important than a pre-recruitment check, however, are regular follow-up screenings of all staffers who work closely with senior officials, which could involve the assistance of technology such as lie detectors, he said.

Cultural differences?

Meanwhile, Huang, who served as deputy chief of the Mainland Affairs Council under the previous DPP administration and now heads international affairs for the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), suggested that cultural differences between the two parties may partly explain the recent espionage scandal.

He told CNA that the DPP often hires close aides from campaign team workers with diverse, sometimes murky connections, while the KMT typically appoints bureaucrats vetted through internal personnel systems.

"Such complex networks, including ties to business or even organized crime, can create openings for the PRC to exploit personal relationships," Huang said.

Junzhi Wu (吳峻鋕), director of DPP's China Affairs Department, disagreed with Huang's assessment.

He said other countries in the world have cracked down on a number of large-scale Chinese espionage operations in recent years, and the latest incidents highlighted that Chinese intelligence activity abroad has continued to intensify over the years.

Instead of blaming the DPP and tying the ruling party to a Chinese spy network, it is more important for all parties in Taiwan to reinforce the country's anti-espionage measures, Wu said.

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