How a Spy Left Taiwan in the Cold
A United States spy whose role was cultivated for two decades rose to the top of Taiwan's secret nuclear weapons program and, at a crucial moment, stole vital documents that stopped the program in its tracks, according to former intelligence officials.
The theft by the spy, a colonel in Taiwan and longtime Central Intelligence agent, halted a program that 20 years of international inspection and American intervention had slowed but never stopped, the officials said.
The covert American operation culminated 10 years ago this month. And though it was reported then that the colonel had defected, dealing a crippling blow to Taiwan's nuclear effort, his work has never been acknowledged openly or described in detail by United States officials.
That weapons program had the potential to ignite a war; China had threatened attack if Taiwan deployed a nuclear weapon. And Taiwan was closer to developing a nuclear weapon than was previously known, according to a study to be published next month in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The study provides lessons for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons today. It shows how a nation can secretly and patiently assemble a nuclear weapons program, as several American allies and enemies -- among them Israel, Iraq and Iran -- have done with varying success. And the study also demonstrates how international political and diplomatic pressure can disrupt a nation's dreams of possessing nuclear arms.
The story of the spy who stopped the nuclear weapons program -- Col. Chang Hsien-yi, who was deputy director of Taiwan's nuclear energy research institute -- has never been fully told. The C.I.A. refuses to discuss it, and Colonel Chang effectively disappeared after he defected to the United States 10 years ago.
He was recruited as a C.I.A. agent in the 1960's, when he was a military cadet, according to former intelligence officials. In the 1970's, as he rose through the ranks of Taiwan's secret weapons hierarchy, Colonel Chang was nurtured and cultivated as a spy for the United States. And in the 1980's, he provided the United States with a unique inside look at the burgeoning nuclear bomb program -- secret information that could not be obtained by electronic eavesdropping or spy satellites.
Of the former intelligence officials who discussed the case, only James R. Lilley, a former United States envoy to Beijing who earlier served as C.I.A. station chief there, agreed to be quoted by name. Mr. Lilley said it is time for the case to be publicly acknowledged as a success, a classic in the annals of intelligence.
''You pick a comer, put the right case officer on him and recruit him carefully, on an ideological basis -- although money was involved -- and keep in touch,'' Mr. Lilley said. ''Then, in the early 80's, it began to pay off.''
''You couldn't get this stuff from intercepts and you couldn't get it from overhead,'' he added, referring to covert electronic-eavesdropping and satellite reconnaissance systems. ''You had to get it from a human source. And you had to use it very carefully.''
In December 1987, as the secret program was gaining steam, Colonel Chang defected to the United States, with the C.I.A.'s assistance, smuggling reams of documents out of Taiwan: damning evidence of the progress Taiwan had made toward building a bomb. State Department officials pressured Taiwan, which agreed to halt the program.
''This was a case where they actually did something right,'' Mr. Lilley said, referring to the United States intelligence and diplomatic communities. ''They got the guy out. They got the documentation. And they confronted the Taiwanese.''
Taiwan's official position ever since has been that it will not use its scientific and technical expertise to build nuclear arms.
The Republic of China on Taiwan was established by Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalists, who fled with two million followers after Mao's Communist forces took control of the mainland in 1949. China regards Taiwan as a ''renegade province,'' and from time to time has threatened to attack if Taiwan develops a nuclear bomb.
These tensions rise and fall; after China test-fired missiles into the waters off Taiwan's coast in 1995, Taiwan's President, Lee Teng-hui, told the National Assembly that Taiwan should consider reviving its nuclear weapons program. Days later, he said that Taiwan would ''definitely not'' resume work on a bomb.
The article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, written by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, and Corey Gay, a policy analyst at the institute, is the most thorough study available on Taiwan's nuclear weapons program.
The program dates back at least to China's first nuclear test in October 1964, though its roots may lie in the 1950's. When China developed the bomb, Taiwan wanted one, just as Pakistan went to work on building a weapon after its neighbor and archrival India tested one. Ownership of a nuclear weapon is a matter of national pride and status as much as a matter of national defense.
After the Chinese test, President Chiang pressed the United States to attack China's nuclear installations, the study shows. Rebuffed, Taiwan went to work on developing the know-how, the technology and the techniques for building a bomb.
Taiwan's work on the bomb took place at the Chungsan Institute of Science and Technology, a military installation, and the adjacent Institute for Nuclear Energy Research. The authors of the study say the energy institute, known as INER, was set up to produce plutonium metal, the desired form for the fissile material in a nuclear bomb.
INER bought a 40-megawatt nuclear research reactor from Canada, the same model India used to produce the plutonium it used for its first nuclear test explosion.
The institute also bought nuclear equipment, supplies and expertise from the United States, France, Germany, Norway and other nations. South Africa supplied 100 metric tons of uranium. The United States supplied a form of plutonium. All of this material was ostensibly for civilian research.
But by 1974, a decade after China exploded its first bomb, the C.I.A. concluded that Taiwan's nuclear program had been run ''with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so.''
That Taiwan was potentially within five years of becoming a nuclear power was a clear and present danger. In the early 1970's, Taiwan had lost its international status as an independent nation. The United Nations had recognized Chairman Mao's People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people.
With that loss of diplomatic status, Taiwan was no longer a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear programs. And Canada, which had supplied the nuclear reactor at INER, was no longer safeguarding it.
The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency agreed informally with Taiwan on independent inspections. It took years of work, but by 1976 the international agency concluded that Taiwan could be secretly reprocessing plutonium-laden fuel rods from its research reactor. The agency also concluded that Taiwan could make plutonium metal from ingredients supplied by the United States, the new study said.
In late 1976 or early 1977, the inspectors found a trapdoor at the INER complex through which Taiwan could divert fuel rods from the reactor into a weapons program, the study said. This proved the last straw. Washington insisted that Taiwan shut its weapons research program and return the plutonium that the United States had supplied.
On the surface, it appeared that Taiwan's drive for nuclear weapons had been stopped. But under President Chiang Ching-kuo, who succeeded his father in 1978, the program continued, in greater secrecy.
Just how much progress Taiwan made in the following decade remains uncertain. The authors said in interviews that they believed Taiwan was perhaps just a year or two from completing a bomb in December 1987, when Colonel Chang fled Taiwan carrying the documents. The authors also said they had been actively discouraged by United States officials from inquiring into the role played by Colonel Chang and the nature of the information he relayed to the United States. They report nothing that has not been previously revealed about the colonel.
They said their research showed how concerted international pressure can make it harder and harder for countries to hide secret weapons programs. They also noted that until the late 1980's, the news media in Taiwan were tightly controlled, military budgets were secret and public debates over national security were stifled by the Government's control of information.
Mr. Albright said he thought Taiwan's nuclear race had been ended, for the time being, by a combination of forces: ''Democratization, the colonel's defection and pressure from the United States.''
But, he added, ''it may not be over yet.'' With a crash program conducted in secrecy, he said, Taiwan could still build a bomb in a year or two.
