Taiwan's Top Spy Caught in Bangkok on TikTok
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR - ROSS FEINGOLD
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22 September 2022
Taiwan's Top Secret Spook Caught in Bangkok on TikTok
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR - ROSS FEINGOLD
WENDELL MINNICK (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
Note to Reader from Wendell Minnick:
TAIPEI - China In Arms is honored to have Ross Feingold as a guest contributor for this episode. Feingold is a lawyer, business consultant, and a fluent Mandarin speaker with 20 years experience in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and currently in Taiwan.
A little background on Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB). During the pre-Democracy era the NSB was dubbed “Taiwan’s KGB”, but with increased political pressure and eventual success of democracy in Taiwan, the NSB was defanged.
Primarily, the NSB is a combination of the British intelligence model: MI-5 (domestic security and counter-intelligence) and MI-6 (external intelligence). Whereas, the CIA is singularly an external intelligence collection and operations entity with no domestic spying mandates. With the FBI and Homeland Security handling domestic terorrism and counter-intelligence.
In July, the NSB director, Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), and advisors, traveled to Bangkok. Their photographs at passport control, hotel receipts, and flight information, were all made public on TikTok. The revelation first appeared in: China Times (Taipei-based).
A former U.S. State Department officer, with strong ties to Taiwan, put it in perspective. “The liaison relationships have always involved the number one person. Sending someone else would have been perceived as bowing cravenly before PRC pressure, or accommodating presumed Thai preferences. These things are largely ceremonial, and as such they require the presence of the number one person.”
Further, “I’m not persuaded that this was a Chinese gambit. It smells more to me like what somebody on the Thai side would do – to ingratiate themselves with the Chinese.” Then once out there on social media, “it was easy plucking for opponents of Chen Ming-tong/the DPP/Tsai Ing-wen to try to use it for domestic Taiwan political reasons.”
Further, Beijing has no “special reason to advertise the obvious: they are fully aware of what Taiwan’s officials, intelligence people included, are up to. That’s not news.”