Former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairwoman Therese Shaheen has revealed that she received a warning from US officials and police in Taiwan of potential physical danger to her while she was in Taiwan for the presidential election, possibly from a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) stalwart fearful that she would drop a bombshell about KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) that would swing the election in favor of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷).
The warning came after Taiwanese newspapers and television stations reported rumors that Shaheen would attend an election eve rally for Hsieh and disclose damaging information about the issue of Ma’s US green card, which had been a major campaign topic.
In an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times and its sister publication, the Liberty Times, Shaheen vehemently rebutted the rumors that she would talk about the green card issue, calling the reports “categorically false” and having “no basis in reality.”
“I was misquoted all over the place,” she said.
In the interview, Shaheen said she never planned to raise the green card issue and “didn’t care” about it when she visited Taiwan for a speech at a technology conference and a visit to tourist sites outside Taipei.
She also denied speculation that she was “muzzled” by the US during her trip, but said that AIT told her traveling party that she may be in physical danger after the brouhaha that linked her with the green card issue broke out.
While it was not clear who could have planned to harm her, the threat was presumably a KMT supporter who was afraid that she would prove that Ma’s green card was still valid on the eve of the election, thus boosting Hsieh’s chances of winning the election and dashing the KMT’s hopes of regaining the presidency.
However, Shaheen said, Taipei police told her the threat could also have come from an unnamed “fringe group.”
News reports said Shaheen intended to make a last minute announcement about Ma’s green card so that the KMT would not have time to refute her comments. The rumors were categorized as a “nightmare” by some KMT supporters in news broadcasts.
Shaheen described the flurry of stories in the pan-blue media as a “two day media feeding frenzy.”
Shaheen said that she first heard about the media attention to the issue when she was e-mailed a copy of a story from the China Post on the Thursday before the election.
At the time, she was not in Taipei, where she would return the following day.
On the Friday, two security chiefs from AIT telephoned her assistant to warn her of the threat, saying they had received information from police in the precinct of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, where she had moved that day for a four-day stay. The hotel’s security officers also decided to rebut reports she was staying at the hotel in order to ensure her safety.
Shaheen said she did not encounter any threat.
After the warning, she canceled all scheduled media interviews, including one planned for the day after the election with the Taipei Times.
But she refuted reports that the US State Department told her through AIT to keep quiet. She said that AIT Director Stephen Young had told reporters that Shaheen was in Taiwan as a private citizen and that the US government was not about to try to tell her what or what not to say.
“AIT never contacted me about talking or not talking,” she said. “I was absolutely not muzzled.”
Shaheen had criticism for both the KMT and the DPP for not acting more firmly to tamp the rumors about the green card issue.
She cited comments by Ma, which she conceded she did not hear herself, that she planned to make a statement about his green card. Ma said it would amount to “foreign intervention” in the election and could be the subject of a law suit, Shaheen said.
She also cited KMT officials quoted in a China Post story and other news outlets calling the statements they expected her to make a “nightmare” similar to the assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on the eve of the 2004 elections.
In addition, Shaheen complained about the DPP, which she called “complicit” in the issue.
“Frank Hsieh should have come out and made a strong statement that ‘We have not spoken to Ms Shaheen, there are no plans for her to speak at the rally, we have never talked to her about Mayor Ma’s green card,’” she said.
Hsieh probably did not “shelve” the story because deep green supporters “would have loved this to come true ... because people hoped” Shaheen would be a white knight and save the DPP’s campaign, she said.
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