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eyebrows in Taipei, and eventually Admiral Wang Hsi-ling, a high-
ranking rogue intelligence official in the Kuomintang's state security
apparatus, decided along with several other like-minded Kuomintang
party members that Henry Liu should be killed, both for his defamatory
biography and for his supposedly increasing coziness with the commu-
nist regime in Beijing. They may also have intended, by murdering
Henry Liu, to convey a warning to other people whose actions they
strongly disliked.
Accordingly, Wang Hsi-ling invited Ch'en Ch'i-li (1943-2007) to a
dinner appointment on August 2, 1984. Ch'en Ch'i-li was head of the
Bamboo Union, a criminal gang founded in Taiwan in 1957 and that
in 2008 was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the three most
dangerous gangs in the world. Ch'en happily accepted the assignment
to travel to the United States, locate Henry Liu, and kill him. On
September 14, after a farewell dinner hosted by Admiral Wang, Ch'en
Ch'i-li flew to the United States on his assassin's errand. On
October 15, Ch'en Ch'i-li, accompanied by Wu Tun and Tung
Kui-sen, found Henry Liu at home in his garage in Daly City, California.
One of them shot him to death.
This time, Kuomintang hardliners had gone too far. The murder was
a news sensation in the United States, and the U.S. government was
aroused and angered that such a brazen political murder had occurred
on its soil. (The FBI had strategically placed listening devices and
possessed concrete evidence pertaining to the murder.) Congressman
Steven Solarz conducted Congressional hearings into the case and
demanded the extradition of killers Ch'en Ch'i-li and Wu Tun to stand
trial in the United States. The Kuomintang declined to do this, on the
pretext that the extradition treaty between the United States and the
Republic of China had been rendered null and void by Washington's
recognition of the Beijing regime on the mainland in 1979.
But the Kuomintang government was clearly vexed and distressed
by the incident and tried hard to make amends with Washington over
it. President Chiang Ching-kuo blew his stack at an important meeting
of high-ranking Kuomintang leaders and announced to them that all
contacts between high government officials and gangsters were to
cease at once. He launched a major campaign against organized crime
on the island and allowed FBI investigators to come to Taiwan to inter-
rogate Admiral Wang Hsi-ling and subject him to a polygraph test,
which Wang failed. Sensing that the Reagan administration did not
want to punish Taiwan severely for the murder, President Chiang
Ching-kuo made amends by secretly having his government make
two deposits of one million American dollars each to Oliver North's
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