FOCUS: Crucial Taiwan defense facility struggling with security

The main building at Linyuan Base in Linkou, Taipei County, looking from the east.

By Martin Williams

TAIPEI, May 24, 2010 Kyodo

Perimeter security at a key Taiwanese signal intelligence defense facility has been so lax that neighborhood cows have poked around the base's high-tech equipment, but an infrastructure upgrade may not be fully implemented until January 2012 despite the glaring security holes.

Situated in Linkou, a town on a plateau about 10 kilometers west of Taipei, the Linyuan Base collects image data and monitors radio activity deep inside China and by the People's Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN.

The base consists of a large building that serves as processing center, a number of satellite dishes, two Circularly Disposed Antenna Arrays that detect the direction of various types of radio transmission, and barracks for troops.

The CDAAs are made up of two concentric rings of antennas with interlocking wires that produce direction-finding data from intercepted transmissions.

Desmond Ball, a professor at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, said the larger of the two CDAAs ''remains the most important high frequency radio interception and direction-finding station in Taiwan'' and is used to monitor PLA radio communications and to locate and track PLA units.

''(It is) important for maritime surveillance and tracking PLAN ships via their radio transmissions,'' he said, while the smaller CDAA ''would be for very high frequency interception and VHF direction-finding.''

The Marine-guarded facility is operated by the Defense Ministry's Office of Telecommunication Development, the intelligence agency dedicated to monitoring China's telecommunications, particularly signal intelligence, according to Kuo Nai-jih, a journalist and author of three books on cross-strait military issues.

In his 2005 book ''The Invisible War in the Taiwan Strait,'' Kuo says construction of the OTD's facility cost more than NT$4 billion (US$124 million), including the roof's satellite dish, which receives satellite imaging intelligence and has been operational since 2003.

The base's three-year security upgrade project, which runs from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2011, is outlined in two documents submitted by the Defense Ministry to the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, or RDEC, which supervises government expenditure.

The original document and the 2010 update state that the particulars are ''construction of base fence and perimeter road, and extensions to the duty room and reception,'' but justification for the spending focuses on security.

''The Defense Ministry's Linyuan base covers a large area, and has a long but insufficiently high perimeter fence. In several places the fence has toppled over or is leaning, with cows breaching the perimeter on many occasions,'' the documents say.

''The fence is not serving its purpose and poses the greatest threat to base security, while a comprehensive review and reconstruction of the base's currently inadequate policing and surveillance infrastructure is urgently required to ensure troop security.''

Given the facility's importance in detecting enemy movements, it could be one of the first targets of missiles or bombing in the event of full-scale conflict.

But the state of perimeter security raises the possibility of signal intelligence capability being compromised by Chinese agents on the ground in the lead-up to hostilities, a scenario seemingly alluded to in the RDEC documents.

Curiously, the documents also say that from the total budget of NT$107,342,000 (US$3.37 million) for the upgrade, only NT$3,122,000, or 3 percent, was allotted for the whole of 2009.

In 2010, just over NT$70.5 million, or 66 percent of the total budget, is to be spent.

A military contact number on the RDEC documents rang unanswered.

On two occasions in May, Kyodo News and industry newspaper Defense News inspected Linyuan Base's perimeter.

Older Google Maps satellite images indicate the area between the CDAAs and the main building is thickly wooded, but much of the land has been cleared since then, allowing mostly unimpeded views of the base's interior from the perimeter.

The perimeter of the larger antenna array is accessible by car via a village to the immediate south and by narrow, unpaved roads from the southeast. Similarly, the northern perimeter of the smaller array is accessible by a separate series of local roads from the northwest and private land.

There were no guards and no evidence of surveillance equipment along the perimeter, though there was razor wire, apparently recently laid.

However, at the southeast corner, the razor wire ends inexplicably and is replaced by a brief segment of low fencing made of cuttings and timber that might deter cattle but not much more.

The Office of Telecommunication Development is one of Taiwan's most secretive defense agencies, and according to reports in the local China Times newspaper in December 2009, it has replaced the Military Intelligence Bureau as the top agency dealing with threat-related intelligence from China.

The office has become more conspicuous in recent years, but for the wrong reasons.

In 2005, OTD employee Maj. Chuang Po-hsin was sentenced to life in prison for selling electronic and document-based intelligence to China in a case that damaged Office operations and severely embarrassed the military. Chuang escaped the death penalty because he confessed.

Sixteen other arrests also led to jail terms for minor officials, while several officers not under suspicion resigned or transferred as morale suffered in the wake of the incident, prompting a recruitment drive.

In 2007, the OTD's head, Lt. Gen. Chao Lien-ti, was transferred to the navy after a probe found he had behaved inappropriately toward a female officer.

Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Ker Kuang-ming, a former head of the office, was indicted for corruption for activities while heading the Military Intelligence Bureau.

In the last two years, the office was set to be upgraded to a bureau amid keen interest from President Ma Ying-jeou, according to a China Times report in November 2009.

But the change in status did not proceed because of fears among senior military officials that the OTD will gain too much power and become an uncontrollable ''monster,'' the report said.

Extras:

The above as run by The Mainichi Daily News.

The Defense News version of this story is here.

The Taipei Times did a follow-up story two days later.

A few days after that, TVBS in Taiwan did its own TV report and website story. The Wen Wei Po daily in Hong Kong also had one, as did China's Global Times here.