Taiwan's Stolen Election, Part IV
The Truth Behind Bulletgate
Bevin Chu
September 26, 2004
Executive Summary: On March 19, 2004, according to DPP sound trucks and DPP-funded pirate radio stations, "the KMT and PFP conspired with the Chinese Communist Party to assassinate the Taiwanese peoples' Taiwanese president." Pan Blue voters, who constitute a democratic majority on Taiwan, and whose candidate Lien Chan actually won the March 20, 2004 presidential election, reject this charge as a scurrilous lie. What's the truth? For the answer, read on.
A Rare Consensus
Talking heads on Taiwan say that Pan Green and Pan Blue voters disagree vehemently about what happened on March 19, 2004.
Not so.
Among a populace polarized by sharp political differences, an unexpected consensus prevails on one issue - the March 19 shooting. When it comes to the March 19 shooting, everyone on Taiwan of voting age understands exactly what happened. Everyone who went to the polls the following day, regardless of political affiliation, understands that Chen Shui-bian, realizing a Pan Blue democratic majority was about to toss him out on his ear, staged a phony 11th hour Wag the Dog "assassination attempt" to provoke hatred for his opponents, to elicit sympathy for himself, and provide a smokescreen for flagrant election fraud.
The deep disagreement between Chen's supporters and Lien's supporters is not over their understanding of what happened. Both Chen's supporters and Lien's supporters have the exact same understanding of what happened. The deep disagreement between Chen's supporters and Lien's supporters is over whether to admit the truth about what happened.
The Pan Green parties - the DPP and TSU - needed a pretext by which one of their own could continue to occupy the Office of the President of the Republic of China and misuse the power of the office to overthrow the Republic of China. Having gotten what they wanted, they now want any evidence that the shooting was a hoax swept under the rug, dropped down the memory hole, deleted from the historical record.
The Pan Blue parties on the other hand - the KMT, NP, PFP, and most independents - having been cheated out of an electoral victory they won fair and square, are demanding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They want Chen's laughably amateurish, patently phony "assassination attempt" thoroughly investigated by an independent, multipartisan equivalent of Lyndon Johnson's Warren Commission.
Henry Lee: "This Case Was Not a Political Assassination"
"There is a big difference between this shooting and a political assassination... This case was not a political assassination because a more powerful weapon than a homemade pistol would have been used."
-- Dr. Henry Lee, forensic scientist
Chinese-American forensics expert Henry Lee, Chief Emeritus of the Connecticut State Police, Founder and Professor of the Forensic Science Program at the University of New Haven, editor of seven Academic Journals, author of 30 books and over 300 articles, has confirmed what everyone on Taiwan knew all along. The March 19, 2004 shooting of ROC president Chen Shui-bian was not an assassination attempt.
Lee was stating the obvious, but knew it had to be said. After all, Lee's previous remarks about Chen's gunshot wounds being "not self-inflicted" had already been deliberately distorted.
When Lee said "Chen's gunshot wounds were not self-inflicted," he meant that Chen Shui-bian did not hold a pistol in his own hand, point it at his own abdomen and pull the trigger. He did not mean that Chen Shui-bian was innocent of perpetrating a hoax.
As anyone with a shred of common sense knows, a political assassin out to eliminate a political target in today's world is not going to fire reduced-charge, low-velocity rounds from a converted, potmetal handgun replica. At the very least he's going to use a scope-sighted sniper rifle firing highly accurate, highly lethal centerfire rounds. If the assassin really means business, he'll do far more than that.
Consider the following genuine assassination attempts, and contrast them with the Chen regime's high school drama club production on March 19, 2004.
On May 23, 1992, anti-mafia crusader Giovanni Falcone and his wife Francesca Morvillo, were speeding down the highway from Palermo International Airport toward the city of Palermo, when the Sicilian mafia detonated 2,200 lbs. of high explosives buried beneath the pavement. The blast left an enormous crater that resembled a meteor strike. The courageous and idealistic Falcone and his wife, along with three bodyguards, were killed instantly.
On February 10, 1998, Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze's motorcade was ambushed in T'bilisi. A team of 10 to 15 assassins raked his limousine with a hail of fire from automatic weapons and RPGs. Two of Shevardnadze's bodyguards and one of the assassins died. Only the armor on Shevardnadze's state of the art Mercedes 600, a gift from Daimler-Benz and a German government grateful for Shevardnadze's contribution to German reunification, saved his life.
Targets of genuine assassination attempts don't stroll leisurely into hospital emergency rooms with superficial "grazing wounds" to the abdomen, especially if they were riding in unarmored open vehicles and not wearing kevlar vests. Targets of genuine assassination attempts, assuming enough remains of their bodies after an attack, get wheeled into hospital emergency rooms on blood-soaked gurneys and are pronounced Dead On Arrival.
Stephen Vickers: "If This Was an Assassination Attempt... They Would Have Succeeded"
Time Running out for Taiwan Shooting Probe - Expert
February 9, 2004
Reuters News
British expert Stephen Vickers, former head of Hong Kong's criminal intelligence bureau, agreed with U.S. forensic expert Henry Lee, brought in to add credence to a government probe, that it was not an attempted assassination. Vickers, who was commissioned by a group of overseas Chinese to investigate whether the election-eve shooting of Chen was staged, said the government probe has not moved forward because it was over-reliant on ballistics evidence.
"There is a real danger of valuable information and data disappearing in the next few weeks simply because the data is six months old," Vickers, president and CEO of International Risk Ltd, told a news conference.
"If this was an assassination attempt by anybody who knew what they were doing, I think they would have succeeded. The level of protection was hopeless and unprecedented."
He said possible explanations put forward for the attack ranged from a top-level conspiracy to underground gambling rings, which had millions of dollars at stake on the outcome of the election. Vickers said the bookmakers' theory was "feasible but probably not possible."
Vickers, who said he had no political affiliations, called for an independent inquiry, echoing demands by the Nationalists.
See:
Expert's Doubts - Ex-HK Police Investigator finds Spate of Unbelievable Episodes, by Tonny Chan
Chen Shooting Suspicious: HK firm, by Paris Lord
Preliminary Findings of an Independent Investigation into the Tainan Shooting Incident, by Steve Vickers
Political Risk Assessment Report on the Aftermath of the Taiwanese Presidential Election, by Steve Vickers
Even Taiwan Independence Fundamentalists Don't Believe Their Own Lie
The DDP's allegation that the KMT, PFP and CCP tried but failed to assassinate Chen Shui-bian, is a Joseph Goebbels' Big Lie, and Pan Green voters know it.
Pan Green voters on Taiwan, like Ku Klux Klan members in the US, are not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, but even they are not that dim. They know perfectly well the Pan Blues and the Reds had nothing to do with the March 19 charade.
Even they are bright enough to realize that neither the Pan Blues nor the Reds would attempt to assassinate Chen Shui-bian the day before the election, when every poll showed Lien Chan leading by a generous margin, as much as 10%.
Even they are bright enough to realize that if the Pan Blues or Reds really wanted to assassinate Chen Shui-bian, they would do so only after election day, and only if Chen won, not if he lost.
Finally, even they are bright enough to realize that If the Pan Blues or Reds really tried to assassinate Chen Shui-bian, they would not have failed, they would have succeeded. Their candidate would not be squatting in the ROC Presidential Palace pretending to be the duly elected president, he would be a red stain on the pavement in Tainan.
Human Evidence, not Physical Evidence
Chen Shui-bian faked his own shooting.
We know this not because we can produce physical evidence such as a "smoking gun," in this case a literal "smoking gun." That evidence was long ago dropped into the Pacific Ocean or melted down in a blast furnace, making successful prosecution of the perpetrators well nigh impossible.
Even though the physical evidence made available to world famous forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee strongly supports the Pan Blue version of events, this case is not about the physical evidence. This case is about the human evidence, i.e., motivation.
When police detectives attempt to solve criminal cases they don't examine only the physical evidence, they watch the behavior of the prime suspects. Crimes are committed by human beings, not industrial robots. Human beings typically give themselves away by their behavior following the commission of a crime.
We know Chen Shui-bian faked his own shooting because Chen himself, Chen henchmen Chiu Yi-ren and Wu Nai-ren, and Chen's Democratic Progressive Party have conveniently provided citizens of the Republic of China with more than enough human evidence to determine who perpetrated the March 19 shooting and why.
At 3:15pm on March 19, shortly after the shooting ocurred, Secretary General of the Presidential Office Chiu Yi-ren held a press conference. Chiu appeared before TV cameras and told reporters:
"Zi dan zai zong tong shen shang," meaning "The bullet is (in/on) the president's body."
Chiu repeated his statement three times. The third time he said it, he could no longer suppress his triumphant glee. He smirked uncontrollably, almost breaking into audible laughter. Millions of television viewers on Taiwan witnessed Chiu's disgusting performance. They knew Chiu was jerking the public around somehow. Later that day, they learned just exactly how.
The bullet lodged next to Chen's spinal column, leaving his life hanging by a thread, was never "in" his body at all, it was "on" his body. The bullet had been miraculously trapped in the fabric of Chen's jacket, and merely appeared to be "in" Chen's body because hospital x-ray technicians were so incompetent they took the x-rays with Chen's jacket still on.
Or so Chen would have us believe.
Obviously even Bill Clinton, with his lawyerly "That depends on the meaning of the word 'is'," doesn't hold a candle to Chen regime spinmeister Chiu Yi-ren.
Police and Prosecutors - Actively Doing Nothing
The March 19, 2004 shooting took place six months ago. What have law enforcement officials under the thumb of the Chen regime been doing since then? Have they been investigating, arresting, prosecuting, convicting, and punishing those responsible?
They have not. As anyone who has been following "Bulletgate" knows, for six straight months law enforcement officials on Taiwan have been sitting on their collective ass, doing nothing. They haven't been passively doing nothing, they've been actively doing nothing.
They've been actively doing nothing because they know perfectly well Chen doesn't want this case solved. They know Chen doesn't want the culprits responsible for the March 19 shooting incident investigated, prosecuted, convicted, and punished, because Chen already knows who the culprits are.
The culprits are Chen himself, Chiu Yi-ren, Wu Nai-ren, Chi Mei Hospital owner Hsu Wen-long, and a handful of others in Chen's inner circle.
Law enforcement officials on Taiwan know unless they want to risk their careers or even lives the way idealistic New York Police Department detective Frank Serpico did in 1971, they had better "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."
The Big Guilty Sign Around Chen's Neck
"You know, Ray, I'm talking about the gas chamber and you haven't even asked me what this is all about. You got a big guilty sign around your neck."
-- Detective Lieutenant Ed Exley, L.A. Confidential (1997, directed by Curtis Hanson, written by James Ellroy, Brian Helgeland)
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Chen genuinely doesn't know how the miraculously convenient grazing gunshot wound on his belly got there. Let's assume further that the DPP genuinely believes the KMT, the PFP and the CCP tried to murder their party's presidential candidate.
Wouldn't their natural and logical reaction be to vocally demand that the perpetrators be aggressively investigated, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and punished for conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder?
Is that what their reaction has been?
Not on your life.
Chen has fallen silent, desperately trying to keep the topic out of the media spotlight. The DPP meanwhile, has been desperately trying to give their pre-election Big Lie a post-election spin. Having milked their scurrilous "KMT/PFP/CCP did it" accusation for everything it was worth prior to election day, they would now have the Taiwan public believe that "a crazed mainlander thug acting on his own" or "a triad head who stood to lose a bet" was responsible.
Chen and the DPP have been shredding the nation's highest laws for the past four years. They don't even bother to deny it. They're proud of it. They freely admit they intend to complete the process by 2006, and declare a "Republic of Taiwan" by 2008.
Yet when confronted with Pan Blue demands to establish an independent investigative body modeled on America's Warren Commission, and to empower it to bring those behind the shooting to justice, Chen and the DPP suddenly insist that to establish such a commission would "trample over the Republic of China Constitution" and "ride roughshod over the Rule of Law."
For five long months Chen and the DPP insisted that the suspicious circumstances surrounding the shooting of the president could be investigated only by the powerless Tainan District Attorney's Office, whose investigators couldn't even gain entry to Chi Mei Hospital the afternoon of the shooting.
Only when Chen saw that a Pan Blue democratic majority in the national legislature had the votes to overcome Pan Green stalling tactics and authorize a genuinely independent, multi-partisan truth commission, did Chen suddenly switch tactics.
Chen attempted to preempt the Pan Blue democratic majority's genuine truth commission with his own counterfeit "truth" commission, based on an executive order issued by Chen himself, headed up by a commissioner appointed by Chen himself, who would answer to Chen himself.
The fox, in short, would investigate the mystery of who broke into the henhouse and devoured all the chickens. Nixon would investigate Watergate. Reagan would investigate Iran-Contra. Clinton would investigate Whitewater. Bush Junior would investigate Halliburton.
Get out your dictionary and look up the word "chutzpah." If you don't see cross references to Chen Shui-bian, Lee Teng-hui, and Taiwan independence, complain to the editors.
By fighting tooth and nail to avoid investigating the shooting, and to prevent anybody else from investigating the shooting, Chen and his accomplices have made the Pan Blue camp's case for them.
To paraphrase Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential,
"You know, we're talking about exposing those responsible for shooting you, yet you and your supporters are fighting us every step of the way. You've got a big guilty sign around your neck."
See:
Taiwan at the Crossroads - Postscript - Important Developments on Taiwan in 2004
It's So Damned Obvious
It's so damned obvious, even elementary school children should be able to figure it out. If Pan Green leaders and supporters didn't know in their heart of hearts that Chen Shui-bian was guilty, guilty, guilty, why would both Pan Green leaders and supporters resist seeking the truth so vehemently?
The whole scenario is surreal, comical. We know the score. They know the score. We know they know the score. They know we know that they know the score. Yet they persist in maintaining a disingenuous collective pretense of innocence!
I often confide to opposition comrades that although I always had an extremely low opinion of the populist demagogues in the Pan Green parties, even I never imagined they would sink this low. As low as my opinion of them was, I nevertheless overestimated them. This surprised even me.
Leave aside for a moment the Taiwan independence Quislings' contempt for the Constitution of the Republic of China. Let's pretend for a moment they actually believe their sophistry about the ROC being an "externally imposed political authority."
What happened to their respect for morality and ethics? What happened to their respect for truth and honesty? Were these "externally imposed" values forced on them by the Two Chiangs as well?
The Taiwan independence Quislings' utter contempt for even the basic requirements of civilized human conduct once they usurped political power astonished even me.
Ironically, Taiwan independence fundamentalists, by selling out their own humanity for the sake of a political chimera, have discredited the Taiwan independence movement far more thoroughly than I could ever hope to.
See:
The Gollum and Chen Shui-bian
Chen: "So What? What Can You Do About It?"
"Watergate was all about establishing that even the highest officials are bound by the rules of law, even when they find those rules inconvenient."
-- Philip Lacovara, counsel to Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski
One of Chen Shui-bian's favorite expressions is a contemptuous taunt: "Ni neng na wo zhe me yang?" It means "What can you do about it?" as in "So what if I'm in the wrong? I've got you over a barrel. What can you do about it?"
Chen Shui-bian's attitude toward the democratic majority on Taiwan who voted for Lien/Soong but were cheated out of an electoral victory they won fair and square, can be summed up as:
"Everyone knows I staged the March 19 shooting. So what? What can you do about it? Everyone knows the Central Election Committee doctored the final results. So what? What can you do about it? Everyone knows Lien Chan should be sitting in the Presidential Palace, not me. So what? What can you do about it?"
Chen knows that in an economy hollowed out by 16 years of Pan Green misrule, patriotic, law-abiding, middle-class Republic of China citizens can spare only so much time out of their struggle for survival to engage in political protest. Eventually they will have no choice but to throw in the towel.
Chen knows that Taiwan's politically connected, financially flush Quisling nomenklatura, by contrast, can hold out indefinitely, living large off taxes wrung from the hide of these same law-abiding, patriotic, middle-class voters.
If you're wondering why the crowds protesting Taiwan's creeping dictatorship have shrunk to a pitiful few dozens, gathered nightly in front of KMT headquarters, this is the reason why.
Remember this sordid reality the next time you read the glowing references to Taiwan's "freedom and democracy" in the Taipei Times or the Washington Times.
