History - Taiwan & N-weapons

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This is a collection of articles that mention Taiwan activist Chang Hsien-yi, who defected to the U.S. in 1987, claimed Taiwan was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Chang was a researcher at the military-run Chungshan Institute of Science & Technology.

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Deutsche Presse-Agentur, "Taiwan drafts law to ban nuclear arms, nuclear energy", May 7, 2003 11:04 Central European Time

Taipei -- Taiwan on Wednesday drafted a law to ban developing nuclear arms and the use of nuclear power to generate electricity.

The No Nuclear Homeland Bill pledges that Taiwan will not use or develop nuclear weapons, will stop building nuclear power plants and will properly handle nuclear waste. "To build a safe environment for our children, we will stop issuing licenses for new nuclear power plants and gradually cease using nuclear power to generate electricity," Premier Yu Shyi-kun told a cabinet meeting.

The draft bill will become law after passing three readings in parliament.

Both China and the United States have warned Taiwan not to develop nuclear arms.

China, which sees Taiwan as its breakaway province, said in the 1950s that if Taiwan developed nuclear arms it would be one event which could lead it to invade Taiwan.

The U.S. has also warned Taiwan not to develop nuclear arms because this would tip the regional military balance.

Taiwan has denied it possessed or was developing nuclear arms.

But Taiwan activist Chang Hsien-yi, who defected to the U.S. in 1987, claimed Taiwan was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Chang was a researcher at the military-run Chungshan Institute of Science & Technology.

Taiwan has three nuclear power plants and is building the fourth. Environmentalists have demanded that the government shut the three power plants to prevent potential leakage and contamination.

Taiwan environmental groups on Wednesday welcomed the cabinet's drafting of the No Nuclear Homeland Bill, but said the bill should set a goal of banning nuclear power to generate electricity.

"The government should set a date, like saying Taiwan will shut nuclear power plants in 100 years, 50 years or 20 years. This draft bill is too vague," Hsu Wen-long, from the Green Formosa Front, said by phone.

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http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/tainuke.htm

TIM WEINER, "CIA Spy Kept Taiwan From Developing Bomb, Former Officials Say," New York Times, December 20, 1997

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. 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 documentation that stopped the bomb 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 U.S. intervention had slowed but never stopped, the officials said.

The covert U.S. 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 weapons program, his work has never been acknowledged openly or described in detail before by U.S. officials.

That weapons program had the potential to ignite a war; China had threatened a military 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 piece by piece, as several U.S. allies and enemies -- among them Israel, Iraq and Iran -- have done with varying degrees of 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 CIA refuses to discuss it, and Chang effectively disappeared after he defected to the United States 10 years ago.

He was recruited as a CIA agent in the 1960s, when he was a military cadet, according to former intelligence officials. In the 1970s, as he rose through the ranks of Taiwan's secret weapons hierarchy, Chang was nurtured and cultivated as a spy for the United States. And in the 1980s, 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 Lilley, a retired U.S. ambassador and former CIA station chief in Beijing, agreed to be quoted by name. Lilley said he believed it was time for the case to publicly acknowledged as a great success, a classic in the annals of intelligence, which should be made known to the American public.

"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," 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 said, 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, Chang defected to the United States, with the CIA's assistance, smuggling reams of documents out of Taiwan: damning evidence of the progress Taiwan had made toward building a bomb. State Department officials confronted Taiwan, which agreed to halt the program.

"This was a case where they actually did something right," Lilley said, referring to the U.S. 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 expertise and technical abilities to build a nuclear weapon.

The Republic of China on Taiwan was established by Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalists, who fled with 2 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 over the years 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 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 as deep as the 1950s. When China developed the bomb, Taiwan wanted one, just as Pakistan went to work on building a nuclear weapon after its neighbor and arch-rival India tested a device. 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, 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 latter 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 facility 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 CIA concluded that Taiwan's nuclear energy 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 1970s, Taiwan had lost its international status as an independent nation. The United Nations had recognized 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, no longer took responsibility for 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 says.

"It did not appear that the United States was aware what Taiwan was doing with the plutonium," one author, Albright, said in an interview.

In late 1976 or early 1977, the inspectors found there was a trap-door at the INER facility through which Taiwan could divert fuel rods from the research reactor into a weapons program, the study said. This proved to be the last straw. Washington insisted that Taiwan shut down 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 away from completing a nuclear bomb in December 1987, when Chang fled Taiwan carrying documents on the secret program. The authors also said they were actively discouraged by United States officials from inquiring into the role played by 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 note that until the late 1980s, the news media in Taiwan were tightly controlled, military budgets were secret and public debates over national security were stifled by that secrecy.

Albright said he thought the race for nuclear weapons in Taiwan 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 great secrecy, he said, Taiwan could still build a bomb in a year or two.

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http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19971222/35650653.html

The Indian Express, Dec 22 1997

Spy helped US thwart Taiwan's N-weapon programme

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

WASHINGTON, December 21: The United States pressurised Taiwan to stop development of a nuclear weapon at its finishing stage with the help of documents collected by a CIA spy positioned at a high rank in Taiwan's nuclear development programme.

Taiwan can however ignore the American advice if it feels the need of a nuclear weapon to prevent Chinese invasion and can do so within a year since it already has the know-how, former US ambassador to China James R Lilley told newsmen here yesterday.

Chang Hsien-Yi, the CIA spy, was employed in the Taiwanese nuclear programme and rose to the post of deputy director of the nuclear energy research institute with the rank of colonel. Chang defected to the US in December 1987 as the secret Taiwanese programme was gaining steam, and with CIA's help smuggled reams of documents about Taiwan's progress in making a bomb. The documents were used by the US to pressurise Taiwan to halt the programme. The Taiwanese programme is described in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in an article by David Albright, president of the Washington-based institute for science and international security, and Corey Gay, a policy analyst at the institute.

According to the article, the programme dates back to China's first nuclear test in 1964 though its roots may lie in the 1950's. When China exploded the bomb, Taiwan, feeling threatened, pressed the US to attack the Chinese nuclear installations. On America's refusal to do so, it decided to develop the know-how, technology and technique 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. Taiwan undertook the nuclear programme and advertised it as for peaceful purposes. An institute "Iner" was set up to produce plutonium for a bomb and a 40 mega-watt nuclear reactor was bought from Canada for the same.

Other nuclear equipment was bought from the US, France, Germany and Norway ostensibly for civilian research. South Africa also supplied 100 metric tonnes of uranium.

However, by 1974, a decade after China exploded its first bomb, the CIA concluded that Taiwan's nuclear programme 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".

It then staged the defection of Chang, smuggling all key papers out of Taiwan, and the state department stopped the programme.

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http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/20000106/20000106p5.html

Former top general reveals secret nuclear weapons program

Source: The China Post, January 6, 2000

In an autobiography released yesterday, former Chief of General Staff Hau Pei-tsun revealed the details of Taiwan's abortive nuclear weapons program and the United States' eventually successful effort to stop it.

The book, a diary of Hau's eight years as the nation's top military commander, offers the first confirmation by a military official that not only was Taiwan close to producing its own nuclear weapons, but that the program was explicitly killed by then U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Hau's account picks up shortly after the nuclear program's deputy research chief Chang Hsien-yi had fled to the United States in January 1988 after passing on details of project to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

According to Hau, who later went on to serve as premier and then as running mate for Lin Yang-kang's 1996 independent presidential bid, Washington had also secured spy satellite photos of the Taiwan Research Reactor, at the army's Camp Chiupeng to back up information from Chang.

The photographs had served as a deep embarrassment for Taiwan, as the previous government under President Chiang Ching-kuo had assured the U.S. that it was not pursuing nuclear arms capability.

Shortly after Chang fled the country, Reagan called his former unofficial envoy to Taiwan David Dean to the White House asking him to have President Lee Teng-hui - who had just assumed office - to sign a guarantee that Taiwan would stop the program and close the reactor.

Hau indicates that by then, scientists from the military's Chungshan Institute of Technology running the project had already achieved a controlled nuclear test reaction, the last step before producing nuclear weapons.

Hau says that Dean was told by Reagan that "If (Lee) doesn't put his signature on this within a week's time, don't bother coming back."

With a crisis brewing in ROC-U.S. Relations, which had continued on a semi-official basis after Washington cut ties in 1979, the government decided to end the program.

However, Hau suggests in his Feb. 13 entry that "unofficial research" may have continued despite Lee's signing of the memorandum brought by Dean.

"That a small number of scientists won't give up their achievements is natural and not necessarily incompatible with our non-nuclear policy. Really, do we have to kill these scientists before America will be put at ease?" Hau writes.

However, the former chief of general staff notes that Chang was believed to be merely one of the CIA's intelligence assets involved in the program, and fear of causing a crisis in relations with Washington finally put an end to the island's nuclear ambitions.

A United Daily News report accompanying excepts of the book claims that the new revelations are only "the tip of the iceberg" and that further details may emerge in coming years - perhaps if other top military leaders publish books of their own.

Defense Minister Tang Fei, when asked to comment on Hau's account, told reporters yesterday that the current government has no nuclear weapons program whatsoever. As to the 1980's project described in Hau's book, Tang claimed no knowledge, saying he was not involved in defense policy at that time. In 1988, Tang was the head of the Defense Ministry's Political Warfare Department, the agency in charge of the ROC military's ideological training.

In related news, Tang also spoke about recent reports claiming that mainland China was seeking spy satellite photos from Russia.

He said that if any such sales were to take place, they would be no doubt limited to commercial rather than military usage.

The concern had been raised after former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's recent trip to Beijing.

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http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Jan/25435.htm

People's Daily January 17, 2002

High-level US Delegations Visit Taiwan: Analysis

Following are excerpts of the article written by Peng Ming, a special correspondent of the Global Times, on the United States sending four delegations to Taiwan for secret talks and its tightening control over Taiwan.

Four US expert delegations hurried to Taiwan recently. The questions regarding what tasks these high-level delegations are entrusted and what information or "instructions" they would transmit to the Taiwan authorities have aroused the close concerns of various social circles on the Island.

The first one was a five-member delegation from the "US Taiwan security examination committee". This committee was set up with allocations from the US Congress, which submits a classified report on the security of the Taiwan Straits to the Congress in June every year, exerting significant influence on American arms sales to Taiwan.

After hearing the two-hour report given by Cheng Chien-jen, "representative of Taipei to the United State" on December 31 last year, the delegation set out for Taiwan on the morning of January 1. After arriving in Taiwan, the delegation immediately unfolded a series of activities. On January 7, it met with Chen Shui-bian and had talks with officials from Taiwan's "defense ministry" and "foreign ministry" to get to know Taiwan's "defense needs", military training, US-Taiwan military exchange, etc. They showed much more concern about security matters after WTO entry by the two sides of the Taiwan Straits.

A member, "a friend of Taiwan", named Teh-fang Kim, of the delegation, is a university professor. When interviewed by Taiwan media on January 6, she agitated that Taiwan and the United States not only should share intelligence, but also should carry out joint military maneuver. She even said that strengthening military cooperation between the United States and Taiwan would, of course, enrage the Chinese mainland, but "we shouldn't care too much about this".

The second one going to visit Taiwan on the heels of the "US Taiwan security examination committee" was a US scholar visiting delegation. Setting out from the United States on January 6, the delegation planned to stay in Taiwan for a week.

The third US delegation went to Taiwan "to attend a symposium" which was scheduled for January 11, the theme of which was related with maritime rights and interests. At the invitation of the Taiwan authorities, the delegation would visit a naval base of the Taiwan armed force.

The fourth one was the Atlantic Council visiting delegation which arrived in Taiwan at midnight of January 9. It was a very high-level delegation, the most attractive delegation member was a former US deputy defense secretary who had been in charge of US defense policy for seven years and had held an important post related to national security. He once declared that "Taiwan's military vessels are in urgent need of modernization". He vigorously stood for arms sales to Taiwan. It was reported that before the visiting delegation started off, it had prepared an outline for discussion. It repeated the same old tune on the question of Taiwan, claiming that any use of force would entail inestimable consequences". During its visit in Taiwan, the delegation would conduct "exchange of views" with senior Taiwan government officials and would hold a small-scale seminar with the Island's scholars on the afternoon of January 11.

Of these four delegations, some "went to Taiwan to attend an academic symposium", some aimed to acquire on-the-spot knowledge about the status quo concerning the cross-Strait relations, so as to write a relevant report", but their common point was related to the movement of Taiwan armed forces and US arms sales to Taiwan. The most attractive one was related to the plan for the sale of an early warning radar system.

In 1999, the then US President Bill Clinton agreed to sell the early warning radar system worth US$1 billion to Taiwan, pro-Taiwan elements all regarded this as "a major breakthrough". However, senior officers of Taiwan armed forces and many members of the "Legislative Yuan" opposed the purchase, thinking that the cost was too high and would thus affect the purchase of other weapons; in addition, the target of such warning radar was too large, being as high as a 10-floor building, making it prone to be locked and destroyed. So the Taiwan authorities purposefully delayed the dealing, and even wanted to cancel the purchase.

This practice of the Taiwan authorities sparked the dissatisfaction of some personages of the US side, they repeatedly warned, saying that the early warning radar concerned whether Taiwan could set up a missile defense system, and that "Taiwan shouldn't think the United States would provide Taiwan with a protective umbrella when it was subjected to attacks"; Besides warning, they also sent someone to Taiwan to ask Taiwan's "defense minister" Wu Shi-wen to "report" to them about the plan for the purchase of long-range radar.

Under American strong pressure, the senior officers of Taiwan's "defense ministry" submissively indicated that the early warning radar was an established item in US arms sale to Taiwan, and the Taiwanese side had no intention to change the decision. For this arms deal, Taiwan had to waste a lot of money on buying the "good thing" peddled by the Americans.

While "extending political support and exercising military control" over Taiwan, the CIA of America stepped up its infiltration into Taiwan.

On January 3, the Taiwan "national security bureau" proved that the American CIA attempted to buy over an official just quitting his post in Taiwan's "Administrative Yuan", but CIA attempted to recruit him at high salary, and put him in charge of "collecting information about the Taiwan government, but this offer was rejected.

The fact that the United States carries out intelligence activities related to Taiwan has long been an open secret. A widely known case was Chang Hsien-yi with the "Sun Yat-sen Academy of Sciences" who leaked the secret of Taiwan's R&D of nuclear weaponry, causing Taiwan's nuclear weapon R&D plan miscarried. After the "severance of diplomatic relations" between the United States and Taiwan, America still maintained intelligence cooperative relations with Taiwan, and had not mitigated its infiltration into Taiwan, there has been constant talks about US buying over people in Taiwan. Taiwan media hold that the targets for the CIA to buy over are the "cipher officers of the government", thus laying bare the American strong attempt "to control Taiwan's official trends at any time".

Although the senior officials of the Taiwan authorities were "quite astonishing", they, however, dared not offend the "big boss". The "Administrative Yuan" deliberately kept a low key, only stressing that they would "henceforth go all out to guard against the occurrence of similar incidents".

US high-level delegations visited Taiwan at a special time, and the CIA directed its targets at Taiwan authorities, the political connotations revealed behind this are naturally extraordinary. Analyses said that CIA's buying over men in Taiwan was a visible act of infiltration, whereas large batches of US delegations visiting Taiwan not only contain the elements of infiltration, but "controlling Taiwan" seems to have a stronger flavor.

After the occurrence of the "September 11" incident, the United States needed to enter into anti-terrorist cooperation with China, thus objectively providing an opportunity for improving China-US relations; after the APEC summit in Shanghai, the trend of China-US cooperation strengthened. The Taiwan authorities fear that the "US Taiwan Strait policy would be partial to the mainland"; in addition, after the Chinese mainland and Taiwan joined the WTO, there was a growing demand for starting the three direct links of mail, trade and transport in the Island, thus putting the Taiwan authorities' mainland policy in quite a passive position.

It was against the above special background that the United States organized four delegations within a short space of time to visit Taiwan, especially the delegation from the "US Taiwan security examination committee" with a semi-official nature, its aim was no more than indicating that the United States would not change its strategy of "using Taiwan to contain China", and that it would, as always, support the Chen Shui-bian authority, thereby lifting Chen Shui-bian out of his "internal affairs, foreign affairs and mainland policy" predicament. The-fang Kim said undisguisedly that "it is impossible for the military cooperation between Taiwan and the United States to end in the signing of a treaty", adding "but there is, in fact, a "hidden defense treaty" between both sides. It is not hard to see that these words spelled out a strong flavor of backing Chen Shui-bian up.

At the end of January, the "cabinet" reshuffle of Taiwan is imminent, the United States is eager to see who will be appointed as the new "defense minister". It expects that a person who understands the United States and can work in coordination with America would be elected, and who can "continue to boost military reform". Since last September, there have been unceasing talks about the shake-up of ranking army officers by Taiwan authorities. The United States is worried that it would be impossible for it to control the future development of Taiwan military forces in the name of "US-Taiwan military cooperation". When a senior US visitor met with Chen Shui-bian, he showed particular interest in the feasibility of a man of letter to take up the post as Taiwan's "defense minister", his intention to influence the selection of person to be Taiwan's "defense minister" and convey the American wish to the Taiwan authorities is quite evident.

(People's Daily January 17, 2002)

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http://taiwansecurity.org/TT/TT-991014-stopped-Taiwan's-bomb.htm

Taipei Times, Oct. 14, 1999

How the US stopped Taiwan's bomb

Details of Taiwan's bid to join the nuclear community have always been shrouded in secrecy. Previously classified US documents shows just how close Taiwan came to developing the technology to produce thermonuclear weapons

By William Ide

Declassification and release of archive documents from the United States today, shows that Taiwan attempted to build nuclear weapons, despite government denials and US government opposition.

These formerly confidential files detail how the US State Department used its diplomatic influence and intelligence sources to promote non-proliferation and halt Taiwan's secretive nuclear weapons program.

But what the US government failed to do, the evidence suggests, was stop Taiwan from giving up entirely its ambition and ability to develop weapons of mass destruction

The story begins in 1964, after China conducted its first nuclear test. Shortly afterward, Taiwan launched its own nuclear weapons program, dubbed the "Hsinchu Project."

There is contention over who was the principal figure behind the programme. Wu Ta-you (¤d?já§) -- a former Academia Sinica president and, at the time, a member of Taiwan's National Security Council -- said it was the son of the then President Chiang Kai-shek (*±?¦´ó). who was responsible. Chiang Ching-kuo (*±üg¡), who was then director of the Science Development Advisory Committee, conducted the nuclear programme behind his father's back, Wu said.

This view was contradicted by National Taiwan University professor of history, Hsu Cho-yun, in a 1966 interview at the US Embassy in Taipei, who said Chiang Kai-shek was the motivating force.

"At the direction of President Chiang, the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, which superintends science research and development for the Ministry of National Defense, is continuing to push ahead with its program of developing an atomic weapon."

The quest for friends

Hsu said that Taiwan had difficulty finding nuclear materials for its research and its plans were often blocked.

Initially Taiwan asked the US and Israel for assistance, but the US flatly refused and Israel had its own security problems. Japan was approached but "reacted negatively, as it does to any effort to involve it in the development of nuclear weapons," an embassy document reported.

When Taiwan tried to buy a 50 megawatt heavy water nuclear power plant from the Federal Republic of Germany-based power company Siemens in 1967, the US issued a caution.

Nevertheless, that same year, the US' General Electric Corporation began construction of Taiwan's first nuclear power plant in the northeast part of the island.

So the State Department asked the US ambassador in Taipei to represent its views in a strong a manner as possible to the Taiwanese. The carrot it held out was that it would reprocess Taiwan's spent fuel in the US, thus cutting its costs considerably, while the stick it followed up with was that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would likely terminate all further involvement in Taiwan's nuclear energy development program. Taiwan dropped its bid for the reactor the following month.

Victor Cheng, Secretary General of the Garrison Regiment Command (GRC) Atomic Energy Council, was quoted in a US Embassy, Feb.1967 memorandum of conversation, as saying he "saw no relationship between the proposed purchase of the reactor and nuclear weapons research."

The US government later consented to support the sale of the German reactor, so that it would not appear to be contradicting itself and the reputation of the International Atomic Energy Agency to uphold safety standards.

"In view of unequivocal US statements of confidence in IAEA safeguard systems and US assurance to FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] that IAEA safeguards would not hinder German sales of nuclear equipment for peaceful purposes, the Department does not consider we should attempt to forestall sale through approach to either Siemens or FRG."

However, the telegram to the US embassy in Bonn added: "The Department (of state) intends to furnish FRG through other channels USG [US government] information on GRC purchase of Siemens reactor ... we are not yet convinced that purpose motivating GRC desire to buy Siemens reactor is unrelated to interest in nuclear weapons."

Intelligence information confirming this suspicion did get to the State Department, in December 1972, but by this time Taiwan's position in the international arena was already beginning to fade due to the emergence of China.

In 1971 Taiwan was pushed out of the United Nations and its continued participation in international organizations like IEAE was threatened.

After Taiwan lost its membership in the IEAE, a bilateral agreement with the United States -- which had backed efforts to build all three of the island's nuclear power plants -- continued to ensure that safety standards were being met.

"We recently learned that the ROC is considering the purchase of the essential parts for nuclear materials and reprocessing plant from commercial sources in the FRG. Such a plant reprocesses spent reactor cores and also produces significant quantities of plutonium, an essential component of nuclear weapons," a Dec. 14, 1972 memorandum said.

Cheng was advised of the US concern and "described the proposed reprocessing plant as a small scale laboratory exercise designed to develop experience in the reprocessing field," the memorandum added.

Small-scale research

Cheng further downplayed the matter, saying the facilities would cost US$250,000 and would be used to reprocess small amounts of spent reactor cores on an "experimental basis."

The US immediately pointed out to Taiwan that, according to the IEAE, strict standards had to be enforced for such a transfer to take place and that, in principle, the IEAE opposed the transfer of reprocessing plants to a "non-nuclear weapons state."

The US then began plying pressure on Germany and other countries that would be involved in the process. The IEAE board of governors in China also said they would not approve of the transfer.

In January 1973, US Embassy officials in Taiwan spoke to the foreign minister and urged him not to go ahead with the purchase.

The foreign minister, Shen Chang-huan, agreed to the US demand, but in return asked for help so that Taiwan could meet its future fuel needs, particularly when its planned six nuclear reactors were on line.

Shen denied the idea of building a reprocessing plant had been approved by Taiwan's government, and did not tell the US that Taiwan had already signed a contract with a German firm to purchase the reprocessing plant.

The US confronted Shen over the matter, after which he told the US embassy that Taiwan would not be involved in the construction of a reprocessing plant, a February, 1973, memorandum confirms.

The US continued to monitor Taiwan's attempts to go ahead and construct a reprocessing facility on its own, but documents do not detail how Taiwan achieved this feat.

According to research by David Albright and Corey Gay, published in a "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" article, entitled "Taiwan Nuclear Nightmare Averted," Taiwan continued on its own.

Their findings show that Taiwan began work in 1969 on uranium fuel, a reprocessing facility, and a plutonium chemistry laboratory.

These facilities were built with the help of equipment from France, Germany, the US and other countries, the article said.

From 1972 to 1974 Taiwan purchased about 100 metric tons of South African uranium, it said. It was also discovered that in 1970 a "Hot Laboratory" was being built and was expected to be completed in 1976.

Cheng, the AEC's secretary-general claimed the lab could only produce about 15 grams of plutonium a year, far short of that needed for a nuclear weapon, the article said.

The CIA concluded in 1974 that "Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so," Albright and Gay wrote.

Under increasing international pressure on Sept. 14, 1976, Chiang Ching-kuo, then premier, said Taiwan would not engage in any reprocessing activities. That was not, however, the case.

It wasn't until over 10 years later, however, after the defection of a locally-recruited Central Intelligence agent, that Taiwan's program was brought to a halt.

Colonel Chang Hsien-yi, former deputy director of the Institute for Nuclear Energy Research, revealed to the US Taiwan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb.

Taiwan's official position since then has been that it will not use its scientific abilities to build nuclear weapons. But experts note that if Taiwan wanted to it could develop these weapons quickly, possibly within a year.

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http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1998/jf98/jf98albright.html

January/February 1998 Vol. 54, No. 1

Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted By David Albright & Corey Gay

From time to time, officials in Taiwan admit they once had a nuclear weapons program, but they have rarely discussed details. Instead, they enjoy the widespread perception that Taiwan is a "virtual proliferant"-a state that could make nuclear weapons quickly if the need should arise.

Taiwan's talk of nuclear weapons rises and falls with moments of heightened tension. In July 1995, right after China test-fired missiles into nearby waters, President Lee Teng-hui told the national assembly: "We should re-study the question [of nuclear weapons] from a long-term point of view."1 He added: "Everyone knows we had had the plan before." But a few days later, Lee turned down the heat, saying that Taiwan "has the ability to develop nuclear weapons, but will definitely not" develop them.2

A nuclear-armed Taiwan facing a nuclear-armed China would be a frightening prospect. Yet Taiwan today has no nuclear weapons and seems to have no plans to develop them-but only because the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) pushed Taiwan hard, particularly in the mid-1970s. Fortunately, Taiwan did not dig in its heels.

At that time, U.S. intelligence agencies considered Taiwan a likely proliferant. But tough international scrutiny, spearheaded by the United States, led to the most controversial parts of Taiwan's secret nuclear program being cut back. When Taiwan did not abandon its nuclear ambitions altogether, another effort was stopped in the late 1980s. Parts of the story, related here, have never before been revealed.

To build or not to build

It is not hard to understand why some factions in the government always wanted nuclear weapons. Taiwan was probably attracted at first by the prestige that possessing nuclear explosives or weapons confers. In addition, Taiwan had an archenemy across the Strait-and, as a Pentagon analysis in the early 1980s concluded: "Despite public and private assurances that it does not intend to build nuclear weapons, many officials at high levels on Taiwan continue to believe that a nuclear capability will provide [Taiwan] with an independent deterrent in the event security arrangements with the United States are unsatisfactory."3

But the arguments against nuclear weapons were also compelling. Possession would seriously strain Taiwan's relations with the United States, end U.S. assistance to Taiwan's nuclear power program, and put the U.S. supply of conventional weapons and spare parts at risk. In addition, the mainland could respond with military action against the island.

Taiwan has never officially described the purpose, let alone the scope, of its former nuclear weapons program. Until the late 1980s, the media was tightly controlled. Military budgets were secret, as were most security deliberations. But the internal debate was undoubtedly fierce.

What is now clear, however, is that after the first Chinese nuclear test in 1964, Taiwan launched a nuclear weapons program.

Some U.S. officials date Taiwan's first interest in nuclear explosives to the 1950s or even earlier. In their view, Taiwan's early involvement in the iaea and its interest in the "Atoms for Peace" program was intended to obtain equipment and vital nuclear training for both civilian and military purposes.

Although the United States had pledged to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion and even stationed U.S. nuclear-or nuclear-capable- weapons on Taiwanese territory (withdrawn in 1974), Taiwan's sense of security was badly shaken by China's first nuclear test in October 1964.4

Cables sent to Washington from the U.S. embassy in Taipei reflect the near panic. In meetings with senior U.S. embassy officials, top leaders in Taiwan, including President Chiang Kai-shek, pressed for military action against China's nuclear installations, urged the formation of an Asian anti-communist defense organization, and possibly the creation of a common defense force. One cable reported Chiang's fear that Taiwan might be wiped out in a single attack, with U.S. retaliation coming too late to prevent destruction.

The government of Taiwan was also worried about the political fallout of the test, which was expected to boost China's stature at Taiwan's expense. Another cable reports that Foreign Minister Fonmin Shen was seriously concerned about the reaction and morale of Taiwan's armed forces.

Getting going

Professor Ta-You Wu, former president of the Academia Sinica in Taipei-and then-director of the Science Development Advisory Committee of Taiwan's National Security Council (nsc)-said recently that in 1967 in response to China's test and worsening tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the defense ministry floated a $140-million proposal for developing nuclear weapons.5

As Chiang Kai-shek's newly appointed science adviser, Wu was asked to critique the defense ministry's proposal. According to his original report (made public in 1988), the plan was created by the military's Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology.6 The "Hsin Chu Program" included the purchase of a heavy-water reactor, a heavy-water production plant, and a plutonium separation plant. According to Wu, Chungshan also wanted to develop ballistic missiles.

Siemens, a German company, had given Taiwan an estimate of $120 million to design and build the three plants. According to one European nuclear official, if Siemens had built the plants, Germany would undoubtedly have required that they be placed under iaea safeguards. However, Siemens might have planned to hire contractors from countries that did not feel such an obligation.

Wu opposed the plan. He wrote to Chiang that he had no objection to obtaining nuclear science or technology, or to training personnel for both civilian and military purposes. But he felt Chungshan's plan was deeply flawed: It underestimated the true costs; risked causing a confrontation with the United States, which was bound to learn about the plan; and overestimated the chance of success. Unlike today, Taiwan's cash reserves were then relatively small, making the proposal expensive and perhaps prohibitive if the cost of developing ballistic missiles was added to the total. (Wu had also personally concluded that nuclear weapons ran counter to Taiwan's national security interests, although he did not express that view in his report.)

Wu says the head of the nsc told him that the president had accepted his recommendations, and the deal with Siemens was dropped. As far as Wu knew, Chiang never supported the development of nuclear weapons.

Wu also advised that the nuclear program be placed under a civilian atomic energy council, as was the practice in most countries. This recommendation was accepted, and Taiwan's Atomic Energy Council (aec) took control of nuclear energy development. However, Gen. Jun-Po Tang, the director of Chungshan's Preparatory Committee-the driving force behind the nuclear weapons proposal- was reappointed as a "standing committee member" of the aec, guaranteeing a strong military presence.

Tang later headed the Institute for Nuclear Energy Research (iner), which became the focus of the weapons controversy in the mid-1970s. One U.S. official said that the general believed that Israel should be Taiwan's nuclear model.

Wu, however, recommended a more realistic approach, including the purchase of a safeguarded nuclear reactor, which would allow the legal purchase of heavy water from the United States. In 1967, Chungshan, which wanted that heavy-water power reactor, opposed the Taiwan Electricity Company's plan to buy light-water reactors.

Eventually a compromise was struck: the electric company bought light-water reactors, and in 1969 iner purchased a small heavy-water research reactor from Canada.

In an interview with the authors, Wu says he now believes it was Chiang Ching-kuo, the president's son, then at the defense ministry, who secretly decided to pursue the separation of plutonium without his father's knowledge. Chiang Ching-kuo became president in 1978, following his father's death.

In 1988 Wu said that he regretted that he had had no impact on the developments that followed. After 1967 he no longer had any connection to Taiwan's nuclear program.

The nuclear institute

Yen Chen-hsing, the aec director, admitted in 1988 that iner, 43 kilometers southwest of Taipei, was initially engaged in nuclear weapons work.7

U.S. officials believed that the Chungshan Institute, at the same site as iner, hosted a nuclear weapons program. A possible confirmation came in 1990 when a Taiwanese audit ministry official, fending off requests from another government minister who wanted to examine Chungshan's books, explained that its budget was secret because it was "involved in making atomic bombs."8

Originally, Chungshan and iner were heavily guarded by a shared security force. Many members of iner's senior staff were military officers, and many of them, like General Tang, were known to favor nuclear weapons. One iaea official who visited iner in the mid-1970s said that merely driving to the site raised his suspicions because there was no fence between the supposedly separate sites and there was constant traffic between them. U.S. officials believe that iner was created solely to facilitate the procurement of key elements of a program to produce plutonium metal-the critically important fissile material that would make bomb-building possible.

Work on the Canadian-supplied Taiwan Research Reactor began in September 1969, and the plant began operating in April 1973. It was a 40-megawatt-thermal, natural-uranium heavy-water moderated research reactor-the same Canadian model that India used to produce plutonium for its first nuclear explosion in 1974. Canada also supplied Taiwan with U.S.-origin heavy water and 25 metric tons of natural uranium fuel rods.

If the reactor had operated at full power for 80 percent or more of the time, it could have produced more than 10 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium a year. But it did not operate that well at first, reportedly producing only about 15 kilograms by the end of 1975 and about 30 kilograms by 1978.

In 1969 work began on other iner facilities-a plant to produce natural uranium fuel, a reprocessing facility, and a plutonium chemistry laboratory. Taiwan built these facilities itself, with equipment acquired from France, Germany, the United States, and other countries.

The fuel-fabrication plant began operating in 1972 or 1973, using a supply of natural uranium from South Africa. It was expected to produce about 20Ð30 metric tons of fuel a year- roughly twice as much as the research reactor required. From 1972 to 1974, Taiwan bought about 100 metric tons of South African uranium.

In about 1970, work began on a reprocessing facility at the "Hot Laboratory," located next to the research reactor. It was scheduled to be completed at the end of 1976. Victor Chang, the aec's secretary general, said it could produce only about 15 grams of plutonium a year-far short of that needed for a nuclear weapon.9

According to one report, this facility consisted of a single hot cell-a shielded concrete room equipped with remote mechanical manipulators, a fuel dissolver, and a very small mixer-settler for separating fission products. Its declared purpose was to process spent fuel from a zero-power reactor that used U.S.-supplied highly enriched uranium fuel-but in 1975 the United States denied Taiwan's request for permission to process some of this fuel.10 Iner also built another, smaller, reprocessing laboratory in another building with the aid of a Norwegian who had previously been involved in Norway's reprocessing program. This laboratory could have been used to research various aspects of reprocessing irradiated material.

Considerable confusion exists about Taiwan's reprocessing plans. Some reports suggest that the reprocessing facility in the Hot Laboratory was to have been enlarged and would have separated plutonium from spent fuel from the research reactor.

Taiwan also tried to buy a larger reprocessing capacity. And when the United States said no in 1969, it turned to France. Steven Weisman and Herbert Krosney, the authors of The Islamic Bomb, obtained a February 5, 1973 letter from Bertrand Goldschmidt of the French Atomic Energy Commission to Gilles Curien, the chief of scientific affairs at the Quai d'Orsay, in which Goldschmidt wrote that a French firm, Saint Gobain Techniques Nouvelles, wanted to sell Taiwan a plant that could reprocess 100 metric tons of spent fuel a year. The deal never happened, but according to The Islamic Bomb, Goldschmidt wrote that Saint Gobain had "already supplied the Taiwanese with some sort of smaller reprocessing facility."11

Why plutonium metal?

By the mid-1970s, the so-called "Plutonium Fuel Chemistry Laboratory" had four gloveboxes and interconnecting pipework for handling and transferring plutonium liquids. One glovebox, equipped with special neutron-shielding material, had a vacuum reduction furnace for producing plutonium metal. Plutonium in metallic form is rarely if ever used in civilian programs.

This laboratory was operating in 1975 or 1976-using a supply of 1,075 grams of separated plutonium that Taiwan had received from the United States in 1974. As of mid-1976, it had processed 500 grams, ostensibly to extract americium. Another 175 grams were lodged in the pipework and glovebox equipment.

According to one official, Saint Gobain supplied the equipment in the plutonium chemistry laboratory and other buildings. To avoid trouble with the French government, one or more Saint Gobain employees took a long-term leave of absence to assist the institute and install the equipment.

Given all this activity, it is not surprising that the cia concluded in 1974 that "Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so."12

Safeguards reckoning

Meanwhile, the international situation was changing in ways that would greatly complicate the international community's ability to monitor Taiwan's activities.

Taiwan had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. But, as George Quester, a professor of government at the University of Maryland, wrote in 1974, at that time-in 1968-"one heard Chinese nationalist diplomats commenting that they had no objections to the treaty since 'it allows us to have the bomb.'"13

That statement seems strange now, but in the 1960s it reflected the fact that the West considered Taipei the legitimate government of China. The mainland might have the weapons, but for the purposes of the npt, which deals with the obligations of states, Taipei was the government of all China, and thus the Chinese nuclear weapon state.

But any hope of being considered a nuclear weapon state had disappeared by 1970, when the iaea and Taiwan started negotiating an npt-type safeguards agreement that would treat Taiwan explicitly as a non-nuclear weapon state. This effort was cut short in 1971, when the United Nations-and the iaea-recognized the Peoples' Republic as the sole representative of China.

After Taiwan was expelled from the iaea, Taiwan, the United States, and the iaea agreed informally that an existing trilateral nuclear agreement would provide the basis for continuing safeguards on Taiwan's nuclear materials and facilities. However, the safeguards procedures in this agreement, which was never sent to the iaea's Board of Governors, were those of an older, far weaker model (infcir/66).

Because Canada, which broke relations with Taiwan when it recognized China in 1971, would no longer be responsible for safeguarding the research reactor at iner, the trilateral agreement also signaled that the United States and the iaea would assume responsibility.

The iaea's first inspections at iner in the early 1970s were conducted with too few inspection rights, a lack of designated inspectors, and inadequate equipment. Even so, by 1975Ð76 the iaea had concluded that iner was engaged in nuclear activities that needed closer scrutiny.

According to the Washington Post, in early 1976 10 fuel rods containing a total of about 500 grams of plutonium could not be located, sparking concern that Taiwan might have secretly reprocessed them.14 The Post said that, based on iner's records, the fuel elements had been moved, probably to the fuel-fabrication plant. The iaea's surveillance cameras, which should have recorded movements, were faulty. The iaea could not determine whether the rods had indeed gone to the fuel fabrication plant or had been diverted elsewhere.

The inspectors also discovered that the Plutonium Fuel Chemistry Laboratory could produce plutonium metal, and that it was operating with U.S.-supplied plutonium. The inspectors had to insist that regular inspections occur at this facility.

Given the seriousness of the situation, iaea Inspector General Rudolf Rometsch personally visited iner in May 1976. At first, iner officials resisted his request to tour the Plutonium Fuel Chemistry Laboratory, but in the end they relented. That night, at a dinner with senior Taiwanese nuclear officials, Rometsch said that he could support all nuclear activities linked to civilian purposes. But based on what he had seen that day, he questioned some of iner's activities, which, he said, could have a devastating impact. He asked them to rethink whether those activities were in their interests, and he ended by saying that whatever happened, Taiwan should not bring safeguards into disrepute.

After months of preparation, in July 1976 the iaea returned to iner for a major inspection to determine if unsafeguarded fuel had been placed in the reactor, to upgrade the surveillance system, and to establish a nuclear material baseline at both the reactor and the fuel fabrication plant.

Instead of just testing rods for radioactivity, as they had done earlier, inspectors took extensive measurements of about half the spent fuel on the site to see if their measurements were consistent with Taiwan's declaration of where the fuel rods had been located in the core. When the inspectors reportedly found discrepancies in Taiwan's declaration, iner officials said the declaration had been mistaken. Still, the iaea found it difficult to reconcile the inconsistency.

One reprocessing facility, probably the one at the Hot Laboratory, was also inspected. Because it was open for construction activities, the inspectors were able to enter the cell, which did not appear to have handled any irradiated material. They also confirmed that the cell's small size would have precluded the separation of kilogram quantities of plutonium.

Although iner's safeguards were greatly improved after this inspection, the iaea still could not determine if Taiwan had diverted any fuel rods, and the United States was increasingly worried about Taiwan's intentions and whether the iaea would respond aggressively enough to detect any secret reprocessing. An official from the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said: "I don't like Taiwan reprocessing secretly or openly, large or small."15

Soon after the July 1976 visit, a story in the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had indications of secret Taiwanese reprocessing.16 U.S. officials later denied having evidence that reprocessing had occurred.17

Under continuing U.S. pressure, on September 14 then-Premier Chiang Ching-kuo made a promise to the U.S. ambassador-followed three days later by a diplomatic note to the same effect- that Taiwan would not acquire its own reprocessing facilities or engage in any activities related to reprocessing.18 U.S. officials said soon after that any violation of Chiang's commitment would "fundamentally jeopardize" nuclear cooperation-and the United States was by then the principal supplier of low-enriched uranium to Taiwan's growing number of nuclear power plants.

More deceptions?

In late 1976 or early 1977, the iaea discovered two more troubling facts. First, inspectors found a "canal gate," or port, at the bottom of the spent fuel pond near the Hot Laboratory. The gate, which had been covered by scrap and other debris, exited to a vertical shaft. Iner officials said that the gate had been part of the original Canadian design for the transfer of spent fuel to the Hot Laboratory. But the gate did not appear in the facility's design information, as it should have.

In addition, inspectors found five fuel assemblies, three in the core and two in storage, that looked exactly like other research reactor fuel but contained only 70 percent as much uranium. iner officials said the fuel rods contained 10-centimeter pieces of uranium rods separated by solid pieces of aluminum. One U.S. official said that they would have appeared to be normal fuel rods, and before July 1976 would have been tested only to see if they were radioactive.

Such fuel rods could have been sawed into small pieces in the spent fuel pond without releasing radioactive materials, and they would have been much easier to transport. Because full-size spent fuel elements could not fit into the smaller reprocessing laboratory, some officials speculated that these look-alike elements were designed to overcome that problem.

These latest revelations caused a furor, and ambiguous statements from the Taiwanese government only fueled the fire. Chiang Ching-kuo had said that although "we have the ability and the facilities to manufacture nuclear weapons . . . we will never manufacture them."19

The United States now insisted that Taiwan shut down the reactor, and in 1977 every fuel element in the core was radioactively scanned by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory.20

This process verified Taiwan's declaration of the irradiation history of the fuel rods that were in the core, making it likely that any future diversions would be detected. But it did not, and could not, settle questions about past diversions.

Taiwan also dismantled its reprocessing facilities, although the hot cells in the Hot Laboratory were converted to the study of spent fuel without separating plutonium or uranium.

The United States also insisted that Taiwan return its U.S.-supplied plutonium. According to the Energy Department, Taiwan returned 863 grams of plutonium in 1978. Another 200 grams were believed lost in processing.

Tightening the screws

After the controversy subsided, the United States took steps to lower the threat posed by the research reactor. First, to reduce the amount of weapon-grade plutonium the reactor could produce, Taiwan agreed to convert the reactor to a new core that used both low-enriched uranium oxide and natural uranium fuel assemblies.21

A second initiative-taking all of the reactor's spent fuel-was more ambitious. After several years of negotiating over shipping routes, physical security, and safety questions, the United States and Taiwan finalized transfer arrangements in 1985. The United States also had to clarify legal issues because the fuel was not of U.S. origin.

By 1997, about 78 kilograms of plutonium in spent fuel had been shipped to the United States. However, the last shipment of fuel rods was blocked in federal court on environmental grounds. It is not clear whether this last batch, which contains about 6 kilograms of plutonium, will ever be shipped to the United States.22

The defector

For reasons that are still unknown, in 1987 iner began building a multiple hot cell facility in violation of its 1976 commitments. In early 1988, after a visit to the facility, U.S. officials pressured Taiwan to dismantle it. Evidently no plutonium had been separated.

The decision to build this reprocessing facility was taken by Chiang Ching-kuo, who many believe continued to harbor nuclear weapons ambitions. He died on January 13, 1988, before the facility was closed. Construction continued under his successor, Lee Teng-hui, although one official said that Lee probably did not know about it.

Washington may have learned about the secret facility from a top-level informant, Col. Chang Hsien-yi, iner's deputy director. Chang, along with his family, disappeared while on vacation in January 1988, reportedly with the help of the CIA.23

As for the Taiwan Research Reactor, in March 1988 Taiwan told the iaea that it would be shut down for conversion to a light-water reactor.24 As of late 1997, it had not reopened, although periodic reports (and iner's Web site) indicate that conversion work is continuing, but remains at an early stage.25

The Washington Post reported that Taiwan decided to close the reactor after consultations with U.S. government officials.26 One report said Taiwan had little choice in the matter after the U.S. government said it had decided to suspend shipments of heavy water.27 Subsequently, the heavy water in the reactor was removed and returned to the United States, thus insuring that the reactor could not be restarted.

After his defection, the Taiwan media was filled with speculation about what nuclear weapons secrets Chang might have delivered to the United States. However, Taiwan officials were adamant in saying that they had no nuclear weapons program or any secret nuclear weapons documents that Chang could have spirited away.

One intriguing but unconfirmed report in the Economist said that Chang told the Americans that Taiwan planned eventually to fit a nuclear warhead on its Skyhorse ballistic missile, which has a range of 1,000 kilometers.28 Development work on the Skyhorse missile had been thought to have ended several years earlier, following U.S. objections.29

Wu was right

Once again, U.S. determination to prevent Taiwan from obtaining nuclear weapons had paid off. By the late 1980s, according to a U.S. official, the goal was preventing Taiwan from "getting even close."

Despite this satisfactory situation, little hard information exists to make a reliable determination of how quickly Taiwan could build nuclear weapons. Although Taiwan never separated very much, if any, plutonium, U.S. technical specialists concede that Taiwan learned many important lessons about separating plutonium and turning it into metal. U.S. experts also worry that Taiwan learned a great deal about making a nuclear explosive. Thus, Taiwan could proliferate faster than many other countries. However, it would still need to obtain separated plutonium or highly enriched uranium, an effort which past experience suggests is unlikely to go undetected.

But even if Taiwan should succeed in building a nuclear weapon in secret, it would in the end gain little while risking a great deal. Its leaders would be wise to remember Ta-You Wu's review of the 1967 top secret military document outlining an ambitious program to put together the wherewithal to build nuclear weapons. His recommendation to President Chiang Kai-shek, cited earlier, to cancel the program was a bold statement in a country ruled by a harsh dictator, whose views on nuclear weapons were unknown to Wu.

The leaders at the Chungshan Institute were clearly unhappy with Wu, whom they later described as a national traitor, and the episode did not end Taiwan's pursuit of nuclear weapons. But Wu was instrumental in halting the most direct attempt Taiwan would ever launch to get nuclear weapons. His brave dissent may also have been key in preventing support for nuclear weapons from spreading beyond Taiwan's military.

Wu was right 30 years ago when he argued that a nuclear weapons program would undermine Taiwan's security, not enhance it. His analysis has stood the test of time.

David Albright, a Bulletin contributing editor and a physicist, is president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C. Corey Gay is a policy analyst at ISIS.

---sbs---

http://www.chinainformed.com/Archive/x9801/980115.html

China Informed, Jan 15, 1998

Jiandie: Taiwan operative breaks silence, writes letter to paper A Taiwan nuclear scientist who helped the US Central Intelligence Agency gather crucial information about Taipei's alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapon production capability has broken his silence in a letter written to Taiwan's United Daily News.

The United Evening News, owned by the same publishing group that prints the United Daily News, said yesterday it had received the letter from Chang Hsien-yi. Chang, who allegedly fled the country in 1988 with help from CIA agents stationed here, was said to still be in hiding at an uncertain location in the United States.

Recent reports in the New York Times cited CIA sources as saying Chang had given Washington information on the alleged nuclear weapons program that enabled the US government to pressure Taipei into abandoning the program. But in his letter to the United Daily News, set to be published in this morning's edition, Chang said his actions had resulted in a "win-win" situation for both Taiwan and the United States. He said the negative effects of developing nuclear weapons production capability were amply demonstrated by the fate of outlaw states such as Iraq.

The letter, timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of former President Chiang Ching-kuo's death, was said to have been penned "under Yellowstone Mountain," apparently referring to the popular US tourist destination, Yellowstone Park. Chang, who was a colonel in the ROC Army when he defected, said Taipei had only intended to acquire the capability to produce nuclear weapons, rather than actually make the weapons themselves.

He said Taipei's success in developing the ability to produce nuclear weapons had already achieved the mission set out for the team of military scientists organized under the leadership of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Ching-kuo, for whom he still had great admiration. He said he still couldn't offer any information about how he was smuggled out of Taiwan 10 years ago, as the matter was still sensitive. But sources told the newspaper that intelligence authorities in Taiwan gave their "quiet consent" to Chang's departure with CIA help.

Chang had initially lived in northern Virginia state, not far from the US capital Washington D.C., before a reporter for the newspaper discovered his whereabouts, prompting another move.

---sbs---

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 19

New Archival Evidence on Taiwanese "Nuclear Intentions", 1966-1976 Edited by William Burr October 13, 1999

In recent years, India and Pakistan have made the front pages by testing nuclear weapons and defying the nuclear nonproliferation regime established by the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies during the 1960s. Nonetheless, the United States and international authorities have successfully discouraged other countries from joining the nuclear club. One such achievement (so far) has been to induce the Republic of China (ROC) to suspend activities that would brought Taiwan closer to an independent capability to produce nuclear weapons. During the late 1960s and mid-1970s, and late 1980s, the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) actively discouraged Taiwan from acquiring critical technology for producing fissile materials. Recently declassified documents, unearthed by the National Security Archive, provide new and significant details about the earlier efforts to forestall a nuclear-armed Taiwan.

Since the 1980s, such scholars as Joseph Yager and Leonard Spector have explored the ROC's nuclear efforts and the possibility that Taiwan sought a nuclear or "near-nuclear option."1 Most recently, David Albright and Corey Gay explored the issues in their landmark 1998 article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.2 Albright and Gay showed how, in reaction to the People's Republic of China's nuclear tests during the mid-1960s, Nationalist Chinese leaders opted for a national nuclear capability because they believed that U.S. nuclear forces could not be relied on to deter military moves from the mainland. Drawing upon interviews and recently published Taiwanese material, Albright and Gay show the key role of the ROC military in developing plans and establishing institutions to guide the development of a nuclear capability. They also identified key individuals, such as Chiang Kai-shek's science adviser Professor Ta-You Wu, who helped blunt the military's nuclear efforts. Yet, Professor Wu could not block the effort altogether and Albright and Gay show how the military-controlled Institute for Nuclear Energy Research (INER) secretly developed a small reprocessing facility (the "hot lab") and acquired a research reactor whose purposes raised questions among U.S. and other foreign government and international officials. An important part of Albright's and Gay's account was the recurring U.S. efforts to discourage the Taiwanese from developing a larger-scale reprocessing facility that could be used to produce plutonium, a major step toward a nuclear capability.

Albright and Gay take their story well into the 1980s and declassified government documentation is scarce or nonexistent on many of the important developments that they describe. Thanks to the State Department's systematic declassification review programs, however, it is now possible to document important phases of the U.S. government efforts to regulate the ROC's nuclear efforts. This extraordinary new archival material confirms some of Albright's and Gay's findings, but it goes beyond them by adding highly significant, hitherto obscure, information to the record. Among the revelations:

* early contacts between ROC and Israeli nuclear experts involving a possible covert attempt by the Taiwanese to acquire nuclear weapons information

* ROC President Chiang Kai-shek may have been the key proponent of a nuclear capability for Taiwan

* influentials beside Professor Wu opposed a Taiwanese nuclear capability; for example, Vice Minister of Defense Lt. General T'ang Chun-po, may have expressed doubts about Chiang's plans.

* the United States intervened as early as 1966 to ensure that any nuclear reactors acquired by Taiwan included IAEA safeguards to prevent diversion of materials into nuclear weapons

* during 1972-1973, the United States discouraged the ROC from purchasing from West Germany a reprocessing facility that could have created the impression that Taiwan intended to acquire a nuclear capability

* during 1973 officials from Taiwan's nuclear energy complex privately informed U.S. diplomats about the plans for the "hot lab" located on the grounds of the Nuclear Science Institute

* State Department intelligence had no hard evidence that the ROC intended to develop a nuclear capability, but the situation was ambiguous enough to make key officials want to send a special study mission to Taiwan to identify the "coterie which advocates development of nuclear weapons capabilities."

* in September 1976 the U.S. tried to extract a pledge from the ROC to forswear an independent nuclear weapons capability

As significant as the archival material is, it raises as many questions as it answers. The inner history of the Taiwan nuclear program remains to be told. Hsu Cho-yun's claim (see Taipei airgram, 20 June 1966, below) that Chiang Kai-shek was the program's initiator may well have been correct, but more information on the role of Chiang and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, is essential. The story of the negotiations between the ROC and Siemens, partially recounted in the documents, also needs more documentation. In addition, the various U.S. government efforts to monitor the Taiwanese nuclear program need recounting. No doubt the Central Intelligence Agency has significant documentation on nuclear developments in Taiwan, although it is unlikely that it will release the most telling information in the foreseeable future.

However much more needs to be learned, these documents provide a telling picture of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy at work. In particular, they offer an interesting contrast to the U.S.'s planning earlier in the 1960s to impede, even "take out," the PRC's emerging nuclear capability. Although President Kennedy had been interested in using force against Chinese nuclear facilities, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, concluded that military force was too risky. Johnson and his advisers would also find that that economic embargoes were unavailing when an adversary was determined to mobilize the resources needed to create a nuclear deterrent. By contrast, Taiwan was generally responsive to U.S. pressures, although Washington would have to exert them repeatedly. What made Taiwan responsive, of course, was not only that it was a U.S. ally, it was a relatively dependent one. Not surprisingly, Washington had substantially greater capability to discourage the nuclear ambitions of a dependent ally than it had to check those of a strong adversary.

A significant advantage that Washington had in its dealing with Taipei on nuclear issues was that the ROC was relatively transparent both to U.S. and international authorities. Both foreign government officials, e.g., West German diplomats, and elements of the ROC elite were willing to pass on significant intelligence about Taiwan's nuclear plans Important clandestine sources increased the degree of transparency. One such source was the alleged Central Intelligence Agency agent, Col. Chang Hsien-yi, a key INER official, who became famous after he fled Taiwan in 1987. Whether Chang provided intelligence information relevant to the controversies of the early 1970s remains to be seen.3

As Albright and Gay suggest, U.S. pressure had a significant impact in checking Taiwanese efforts to expand reprocessing facilities, but Beijing may have thought otherwise. As one document (see document 29) suggests, Chinese diplomats privately criticized Washington for allegedly abetting Taiwan's nuclear ambitions. But the documents show that U.S. officials worked hard to dissuade Taiwan from acquiring or developing the technology that could bring it closer to an independent nuclear capability. Indeed, it was the Nixon and Ford administration's determination to forge a rapprochement with Beijing that motivated its efforts to regulate Taiwanese nuclear development.

With recent tensions in PRC-Taiwan relations, the possibility that Taiwan could make another attempt to break out of the nonproliferation regime remains a concern on the mainland. As recently as August 1998, a broadcast from Central People's Radio warned that it would be "absolutely harmful" for Taiwan to develop its own nuclear forces.4 Undoubtedly, U.S. government officials share Beijing's concerns. If Taiwanese authorities depart from earlier agreements with the United States, Washington and the IAEA would undoubtedly renew the pressures used in the past to discourage Taiwan from developing a nuclear weapons capability. Whether such pressures would be as effective as they were in earlier years can not be easily anticipated. In any event, with the heavy costs imposed by the tragic earthquake, the Taiwanese leadership undoubtedly sees far more urgent requirements than nuclear weapons.

Documents

* U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, Airgram 793, 19 March 1966, "Nationalist Chinese Atomic Experts Visit Israel" -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/20-01.htm

Location of original: National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Subject- Numeric Files, 1964-66 (hereinafter cited as Subject-Numeric 1964-66), AE 7 Chinat

* U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, Airgram 810, 24 March 1966, "More on Nationalist Chinese Atomic Experts Visit to Israel" -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/21-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, AE 7 Chinat

These items may be among the earliest indicators, so far declassified, of Taiwan's more or less covert effort to acquire nuclear weapons know-how from the Israelis. What exactly the Taiwanese wanted from the Israelis or vice versa was obscure to the reporting U.S. embassy officer, but as the airgram from 26 June 1966 (below) indicates, it became known that the Taiwanese had unsuccessfully sought to obtain nuclear materials from Israel, although whether it was during the visit reported in this message or some other contact remains to be seen.

* U.S. Embassy Bonn, "German Nuclear Reactor for Taiwan," Cable 3000, 25 March 1966 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/28-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, AE 6 Chinat

With this cable, U.S. ambassador to West Germany George McGhee reported that the Taiwanese were negotiating with the Germans to buy nuclear reactors. This effort may have been part of the $140 million nuclear weapons programs--including a plan to purchase reactors from the Siemens Company-- reported by David Albright and Corey Gay in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. While some in the West German government wanted the sale to proceed, Foreign Ministry Officials checked with the U.S. Embassy to make sure that Washington had no objections on nuclear proliferation or other grounds.

* U.S. Mission to the European Communities, 7 April 1966, "Possible German Reactor Export to Taiwan," cable ECBUS 898 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/31-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, FSE 13 Chinat

With this message, the U.S. mission to European community recommended that the Department take a careful position on German reactor sales. As long as the Germans ensured that the reactor technology conformed with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, any U.S. interference would be interpreted by European commercial rivals in the atomic energy field as unfair competition.

* U.S. Embassy Taipei, Airgram 813, 8 April 1966, "GRC Request to IAEA Team for Advice on Location of Reactor for Possible Use by Military Research Institute" -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/19-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, FSE 13 Chinat

A suspicious request from an Taiwanese corporate official to an IAEA team on a study mission in Taiwan raised eyebrows at the U.S. embassy. The IAEA team was studying sites for two civilian atomic power reactors but an official from Taiwan Power, David S. L. Chu, asked the team to look into a site for an additional reactor, to be used as a pilot plant. When it became evident that the Taiwanese military was behind the request and that Chu would provide no further details, John McCullen, a U.S. member of the team took his concerns to the embassy.

* U.S. Embassy Bonn, Cable 3292, 15 April 1966, "German Nuclear Reactor for Taiwan" -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/28-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, AE 6 Chinat

The Bonn embassy reports on Taiwan's continuing efforts to buy atomic power reactors from the Siemens corporation. Although the West German Science Ministry wanted the sale to go through because of its commercial significance, it would not approve reactor exports unless the Taiwanese guaranteed that the reactors would not be use for military powers. Thus, the Taiwanese would have to sign a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and the U.S. government would also have to approve.

* State Department to Embassies in Bonn and Taipei, Cable 2896, 23 April 1966 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/26-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, AE 6 Chinat

Responding to the Bonn Embassy message, the State Department confirmed that any reactor sale would have to include an "unequivocal commitment" by the Republic of China that it would apply IAEA safeguards to the operation of German-produced atomic reactors. The Department also questioned any efforts to keep the transaction secret and urged that the Germans and the Taiwanese dispel suspicions by publicizing the sale and any safeguard arrangements.

* U.S. Embassy Taipei, Airgram 1037, 20 June 1966, "Indications GRC Continues to Pursue Atomic Weaponry" -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/18-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1964-66, DEF 12-1 Chinat

Thanks to a local source, the U.S. Embassy in Taipei picked up intelligence on Taiwanese interest in an independent nuclear capability. A history professor Hsu Cho-yun with good contacts in the Taiwanese national security bureaucracy reported to the embassy that President Chiang Kai-shek was the prime mover in the nuclear weapons effort. Moreover, the key organization in the weapons program was the military-controlled Chungshan Science Research Institute. Apparently, the project met opposition from a key official, Vice Minister of Defense Lt. General T'ang Chun-po, who considered a nuclear weapons project "impractical," but Chiang insisted that it continue. 5 Further complicating the situation was that the ROC was finding it difficult to get nuclear materials and scientific expertise as well as to develop a missile capability.

* U.S. Embassy Taipei, Airgram 566, 21 February 1967, "GRC Plans for Purchase of 50 Megawatt Heavy Water Nuclear Power Plant", with copy of agreement between Union Industrial Research Institute and Siemens copy attached. -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/19-01.htm

Location of original: Record Group 59, Subject-Numeric Files, 1967-69, FSE 13 Chinat

A year after the ROC began negotiating with the ROC for the purchase of a nuclear reactor, Victor Cheng, an official with the Atomic Energy Council and director of the Institute of Nuclear Science, told a U.S. embassy official that a deal was near closure. Although Cheng noted that the arrangement would include IAEA safeguards and denied any relationship between the reactor purchase and "nuclear weapons research," the Embassy was "not convinced" by the denial. It recommended that the State Department block the sale.

* U.S. Embassy Bonn, Telegram 10709, 15 March 1967, "GRC Plans to Purchase of (sic) 50 Megawatt Heavy Water Nuclear Power Plant" -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/23-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric Files, 1967-69, FSE 13 Chinat

Several weeks after the Embassy in Taiwan weighed in against the reactor sale, Ambassador McGhee queried the Department about its position on the sale. Noting the Taipei embassy's position, McGhee reminded the Department that it had to take into account U.S. assurances that Washington stood for peaceful uses of atomic energy under "proper safeguards."

* State Department to Embassies Taipei and Bonn, Cable 16187, 20 March 1967 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/24-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1967-69, FSE 13 Chinat

Responding fairly quickly to the query from the Bonn embassy, the Department believed that the Taiwan embassy's point about "possible weapons research" was not germane. As long as the West Germans insisted that the contract include IAEA safeguards, the United States could not block the Siemens deal in good faith. Implicitly the State Department was taking the position that it did not matter whether the ROC intended to acquire a nuclear capability because the international community could deny Taipei the resources needed to develop one, at least as long as exporters of nuclear reactors complied with IAEA requirements. The deal fell through, however, apparently because one of Chiang Kai-shek's advisers, Professor Ta-You Wu, convinced the Generalissimo that the military's nuclear weapons plan was too costly and was bound to lead to a confrontation with the United States.6

* State Department Memorandum of Conversation, "German Inquiry Regarding Safeguards on Export of Parts to ROC Reprocessing Plant," 22 November 1972 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/16-01.htm

Location of original: RG 59, Department of State Records, Subject-Numeric Files, 1970-1973 (hereinafter Subject-Numeric 1970-73), AE 11-2 Chinat

Between 1967 and 1972, nuclear weapons proponents inside ROC ruling councils sustained efforts to buy nuclear technology that could support a weapons effort. In 1969, they unsuccessfully tried to purchase a reprocessing facility from the United States but the Nixon administration vetoed the sale.7 That same year, however, the Canadians sold to INER a safeguarded 40-megawatt research reactor that began operating in April 1973. Moreover, the United States sold reactors for civilian power purposes. Furthermore, using equipment acquired from the United States, France, Germany, and other suppliers, the Taiwanese developed a small reprocessing facility, a plutonium chemistry laboratory, and a plant to produce uranium fuel, which could produce twice as much fuel as the research reactor needed.8

Before the research reactor became operational, the West German embassy's scientific counselor, Dr. E. Abel, informed the State Department that the ROC was engaged in discussions with a German firm about the purchase of parts for a reprocessing facility as well as its design and construction. Abel believed that the deal would be consistent with the "spirit" of West German commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Exporters Committee (or Zannger Committee, named after its Swiss chairman, Claude Zannger). Abel may not have known that the ROC had already tried to buy a reprocessing plant from France but without success, possibly because the price was to high or the Foreign Ministry, under pressure from Beijing, had blocked the deal (or both).9

Significantly, Taipei's effort to expand reprocessing capabilities unfolded as Sino-American relations were normalizing, a process that included important U.S. commitments to reduce its military presence on Taiwan. Those developments undoubtedly encouraged ROC officials to see a nuclear weapons option as all the more urgent.10

* Memorandum from Leo J. Moser, Office of Republic of China Affairs, to Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Marshall Green, "Nuclear Materials Reprocessing Plant for ROC," 14 December 1972 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/17-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

Abel's disclosure about the reprocessing deal produced a sharply negative reaction in Washington and decisions to exert pressure on Bonn and Taipei to call off the deal. The basic concern was that the facility could be used to produce nuclear weapons or at least would give the impression that the ROC intended to do so. In light of the Nixon administration's efforts to put Sino-American relations on a nonconfrontational basis, a Taiwanese nuclear weapons capability would have caused serious strains in U.S.-China relations and increased the risks of a PRC confrontation with Taiwan. When speaking with ROC representatives, however, U.S. officials took a lower-key approach. For example, on 8 December, AEC officials told Victor Cheng that the U.S. advised against the sale because it was uneconomic and difficult for the IAEA to safeguard. Ever since China had joined the United Nations in 1971, the Agency was under pressure to terminate existing low-level contacts with the ROC. A reprocessing plant would require constant, high-profile IAEA inspection, possibly forcing the Agency to severe all contacts with Taiwan.

* State Department to Embassies in Bonn, Brussels, and Taipei, "Proposed Reprocessing Plant for Republic of China," Cable 2051, 4 January 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/01-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

With this message, the State Department began formally to weigh in against the proposed ROC-West German reprocessing deal by instructing the ambassadors in Belgium, West German, and the Republic of China to make "formal representations" against the deal. But to avoid a wholly negative position, the Department wanted the ROC to understand that Washington would support plans to reprocess spent fuel in the United States or other countries so that the Taiwanese did not waste resources.

* Embassy Taipei to State Department, "Proposed Reprocessing Plant for Republic of China," Cable 0338, 16 January 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/02-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

As recorded in this document, on 15 January 1973 U.S. ambassador Walter McConaughy told ROC Foreign Minister Shen that Washington opposed the reprocessing deal. The ambassador was "reasonably encouraged" that his protest would force Taipei to "think hard" about reprocessing.

* State Department to Embassies in Bonn, Brussels, and Taipei, "Proposed Reprocessing Plant for Republic of China," Cable 12137, 20 January 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/03-01

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

The Department was not assured by Shen's response because of a report that the ROC had already signed a contract with the West German firm UHDE. Moreover, while Victor Cheng had told the AEC that the reprocessing plant would be "small-scale", other information suggested that it would be able to reprocess fifty tons of fuel annually. The State Department asked McConaughy to revisit the issue with Shen; he could even raise the U.S.'s major objection: that if the reprocessing facility lacked adequate safeguards "some government might believe ROC to have object of acquiring nuclear weapons capability." Moreover, the Department asked U.S. Ambassador to West Germany Martin Hillenbrand to raise objections with Bonn.

* Embassy Taipei to State Department, "Proposed ROC Reprocessing Plant," Cable 685, 31 January 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/05-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

On 25 January, Ambassador Hillenbrand gave a detailed presentation on the reprocessing plant to Paul Frank, a senior West German diplomat. Noting the major commercial interests involved, Frank said that stopping the deal was not easy. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office opposed it for the same reasons that Washington did and would get the "matter under control."11 A few days later Ambassador McConaughy met with Foreign Minister Shen, who said that his government had not made a decision. Denying that his government wanted a nuclear weapons capability, Shen said that the ROC only wanted a "dependable and adequate" fuel supply for civilian power plants. The ambassador countered by noting that the plans for a "marginal small local reprocessing plant" could jeopardize Taiwan nuclear power industry and Taiwan's economy more generally.

* Embassy Taipei to State Department, "ROC Decides Against Purchase of Nuclear Reprocessing Plant," Cable 828, 8 February 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/06-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

On 7 February, Ambassador Hillenbrand reported that the embassy had learned that because of West German Foreign Office pressure, UHDE had backed out of the reprocessing deal.12 The next day, bowing to the inevitable, Foreign Minister Shen told a relieved Ambassador McConaughy that the ROC had decided not to purchase a reprocessing plan. Whether Taipei had finally acquiesced because of the West German decision remains to be seen.

* State Department Memorandum of Conversation, "Nuclear Programs in Republic of China," 9 February 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/07-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 6 Chinat

Although the ROC decision on the reprocessing facility was a success for the State Department, the problem of a Taiwanese nuclear capability did not vanish. Only a day after Shen's news for McConaughy, British diplomats approached the State Department to get an evaluation of unspecified intelligence reports about weapons-related activities in Taiwan.

* State Department Memorandum of Conversation, "ROC Nuclear Intentions," 14 February 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/08-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 6 Chinat

The ROC had its friends and one of them, Bruce Billings, an official with the Aerospace Corporation, called the Department to give the Taiwanese nuclear program a clean bill of health. Billings had recently returned from service at the embassy in Taipei, where he had been special assistant to the ambassador for science and technology, 1968-1973. He conceded, however, that Taiwanese thinking needed to be brought "into line" with U.S. perspectives on nuclear fuel cycles so that there activities would not raise suspicion here.

* Embassy Taipei to State Department, "Chung Shan Nuclear Research Institute," Cable 1197, 24 February 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/09-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat

This document provides some rare detail on the role of the military in controlling the Chung Shan Nuclear Research Institute. It shows that whatever General T'ang Chun-po thought about nuclear weapons, he remained a key player in the Taiwan nuclear program. The embassy's report further shows that the Canadian research reactor, that would be the cause of great controversy in the mid-1970s, was "considered a military secret" and was under the direct control of Admiral Hsia Hsin, deputy director of the Chung Shan institute. Ostensibly a research reactor, "the lack of a research program [for it] has caused considerable comment among Chinese and foreigners." The embassy also learned that the "hot lab", then under construction, was a pilot reprocessing facility that could produce a few grams of plutonium annually.

* State Department to Embassies in Taipei and Tokyo, "ROC Nuclear Research," Cable 51747, 21 March 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/29-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 1 Chinat

This cable reports on a conversation on the nuclear reprocessing problem between Secretary General of the ROC Atomic Energy Council Victor Cheng (who made an appearance in document 9) and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Richard Sneider. The latter emphasized his concern about reprocessing and expressed gratitude that Taipei had called off the deal with the Germans in light of U.S. protests. Sneider also proposed a U.S. study mission to Taiwan to pursue U.S.-ROC nuclear cooperation. Cheng was receptive to that proposal but did not concede that anything had been amiss; he emphasized that Taipei did not keep "any nuclear secrets from its friends." In keeping with this spirit of openness, he gave AEC officials a progress report on efforts to build a laboratory-scale fuel reprocessing facility--the "hot lab"--at the Nuclear Science Institute. According to Cheng, the facility would produce very small amounts of plutonium, about 300 grams a year.

* State Department Memorandum of Conversation, "ROC Nuclear Intentions," 5 April 1973, with Intelligence and Research (INR) report on "Nuclear Weapons Intentions of the Republic of China" attached -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/10-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 1 Chinat

On April 5 1973, State Department official provided the British with a copy of a Departmental intelligence report assessing ROC nuclear weapons objectives. In light of available evidence, INR concluded that "at present", the ROC has "no plans for proceeding to systematically undertake the development of nuclear weapons," although it did not rule out that a decision to develop nuclear weapons "might be taken at some future date."

* Memorandum to Mr. [Richard] Sneider from Mary E. McDonnell, U.S. Department of State, Office of Republic of China Affairs, "Reported ROC Nuclear Weapons Development Program," 7 April 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/11-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 6 Chinat

As this memorandum suggests, the INR report did not entirely settle the issue. Although wild rumors, e.g., of a Japanese nuclear weapons factory, were discredited, State Department scientists conceded the "difficulty of negative proofs: the absence of hard evidence does not prove the absence of a weapons intention." They also acknowledged that if the Canadian research reactor ran at full capacity, it could yield enough plutonium in one year to build a test weapon, but only if the ROC had reprocessing facilities. This made it important for the U.S. to monitor IAEA inspections to make sure that the ROC was not bending the rules. To get a better idea of ROC intentions, INR supported Richard Sneider's proposal for a U.S. team to visit Taiwan to meet with key officials and visit facilities there.

* State Department to Embassy in Taipei, "ROC Nuclear Intentions," Cable 71458, 17 April 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/30-01.htm

* Embassy, Taipei to State Department, "ROC Nuclear Intentions," Cable 2354, 20 April 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/25-01.htm

Location of originals: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 1 Chinat

That some at State still had suspicions is indicated by the statement in cable 71458 about the purpose of the visit to Taiwan by a U.S. "study group": besides trying to further U.S.-ROC nuclear cooperation, the group would work to acquire "information about identity and progress of ROC coterie which advocates development of nuclear weapons capabilities." As indicated by its response, the U.S. embassy in Taipei was willing to help but information that would help the study group would be "forwarded through separate channels," presumably from the CIA station. Documentation on the study group visit, if it took place, is not available.

* State Department Memorandum of Conversation, "ROC Nuclear Energy Plans," 29 August 1973 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/12-01.htm

Location of original: Subject-Numeric 1970-73, AE 1 Chinat

Some months later, Victor Cheng and David Chu (mentioned in the Taipei airgram, 8 April 1966, above) visited Washington for talks on the ROC's nuclear energy plans. A meeting with a senior AEC official, Abraham Friedman, disclosed significant discord on the reprocessing issue. After Chu described plans to establish reprocessing facilities, Friedman laid down the law: "we strongly discourage you from proceeding with your plans." Moreover, owing to the IAEA's problematic relationship with Taiwan, if it had to safeguard a reprocessing facility the monitoring would be so intensive that the Agency would no longer play a low-profile role in Taiwan's nuclear industry. But that could possibly force the Agency to end all contacts with the ROC, thus leaving the a reprocessing facility without safeguards. That, Friedman warned "could prejudice the entire ROC nuclear power program." If Cheng or his colleagues responded to Friedman's admonitions, it is not recorded in this document. But the Taiwanese did not altogether abandon their plans; in 1987, they began to develop a reprocessing facility which was dismantled the following year under U.S. pressure.13

* State Department to Embassy in Taipei, "Demarche on ROC Nuclear Intentions," Cable 224790, 11 September 1976 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/14-01.htm

Location of original: RG 59, Policy Planning Staff (Director's Files), 1969-7, box 377, China Sensitive Chron 7/1-9/30/76

By the fall of 1974, U.S. intelligence analysts decided that the picture of ROC nuclear intentions was rather less ambiguous. In an intelligence report, CIA analysts argued that "Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so."14

Moreover, as the United States had withdrawn, during the summer of 1974, its stockpile of nuclear weapons from Taiwan as part of a commitment to Beijing to reduce the U.S. military presence on the island, ROC leaders may have had greater interest in a nuclear capability. In any event, U.S. officials and others continued to monitor nuclear developments on Taiwan very closely. By 1976, IAEA inspection visits led to suspicions that the INER may have secretly diverted fuel rods for reprocessing. Although what had actually happened at Taiwan's nuclear facilities remains unclear, this document shows that Washington had enough concern to make a demarche, through U.S. Ambassador Leonard Unger, that the ROC formally renounce nuclear weapons development. The language of the demarche is still classified; apparently, however, it did not refer specifically to possible secret reprocessing activities because the State Department was still considering whether to make representations on them. In any event, in mid-September 1976, ROC diplomats made the promise that Washington sought, although the precise language remains classified. The ROC also publicly announced that it would not develop nuclear weapons because it did not want to use them for killing other Chinese. As the United States was the principal supplier of low-enriched uranium that fueled Taiwanese power reactors, it had some leverage in exacting such promises.15

* Memorandum from Burton Levin, Office of Republic of China Affairs, to Oscar Armstrong, Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs, "PRCLO Comment on Taiwan Nuclear Development," 12 October 1976 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/13-01.htm

Location of original: RG 59, Policy Planning Staff (Director's Files), 1969-7, box 377, WL China Sensitive Chron 10/1-12/31/76

This document reveals some of Beijing's concerns about Taiwanese developments. The comments may have been only perfunctory but Armstrong's marginal note to Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs Arthur Hummel shows that he found them "perturbing."

* State Department Memorandum of Conversation, "ROC Nuclear Energy Plans," 18 November 1976 -- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB20/15-01.htm

Location of original: Record Group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, Top Secret Foreign Service Post Files, Embassy Taipei, 1959-1977, box 1, Def 12 NWT-1976 ROC

Within a few months after the ROC's public declaration, Washington had information suggesting that the ROC was not living up to it. This document shows Unger raising questions about reprocessing with Ambassador Shen, who insisted that all was well and that having made assurances about nuclear weapons, the ROC "would be stupid to seek now to try to set up reprocessing facilities." But questions about diversions continued. During 1977, the United States compelled the Taiwanese to shut down the INER research reactor and to dismantle the hot lab. That, however, did not mean the end of Taiwan's efforts to acquire reprocessing facilities and develop a weapons capability; this remain a source of Washington-Taipei controversy well into the 1980s.16

Note: The editor thanks David Albright and Corey Henderson of the Institute for Science and International Security for helpful comments on this material.

Notes

1. See Joseph Yager, ed., Nonproliferaition and U.S. Foreign Policy (Brookings Institution, 1980), 66-81; Leonard S. Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today (Random House, 1984), 342-44; and Nancy B. Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945-1992 (Twayne Publishers, 1994), 146-47.

2. Albright and Gay, "Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (January-February 1985): 54-60.

3. For Col. Chang, see Albright and Gay, 60 and Tim Weiner, "How a Spy Left Taiwan in the Cold," New York Times, 19 December 1997.

4. FBIS-CHI-98-239, 287 August 1998, as cited in Ming Zhang, "What Threat?", The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September-October 1998, 56.

5. Whether Hsu accurately characterized general T'ang's attitude remains as to be seen as the evidence about his thinking his ambiguous. Conversation with Corey Henderson, Institute for Science and Nuclear Security, 7 September 1999.

6. For the deal falling through, see Albright and Gay, "Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted," 56.

7. Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today, 342.

8. Albright and Gay, 57.

9. Embassy Taipei cable 6300, 20 December 1972 and Embassy Tokyo cable 1035, 30 January 1973, Subject-Numeric 70-73, FSE 13 Chinat. See also Albright and Gay, 57.

10. Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 146.

11. See Bonn Embassy cable 1251, 25 January 1973, Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat.

12. See Bonn Embassy cable 1923, 27 February 1973, Subject-Numeric 1970-73, FSE 13 Chinat.

13. Albright and Gay, 59.

14. Albright and Gay, 57.

15. Albright and Gay, 58.

16. Albright and Gay, 59-60; Weiner, "How a Spy Left Taiwan in the Cold," NYT, 20 December 1997.

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