TAIWAN'S LINK TO LATIN AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110165-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 165
• Publication Date: January 4, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110165-0
AR?IUt
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
4 January 1986
JACK ANDERSON and JOSEPH SPEAR
Taiwan's Link to Latin America
There is a strong Oriental influence in the
ambitious psychological warfare being waged
against leftists in Latin America. The two
sources of this bizarre transpacific cooperation are
the government of Taiwan and Causa International.
The latter is a political movement run by former
South Korean CIA colonel Bo Hi Pak, longtime
right-hand man to the.Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
The United States may be providing the money
that fuels the Salvadoran government's fight
against leftist guerrillas, but the "real expertise"
comes from Taiwan. This is the word of Salvadoran
military authorities, including two members of the
armed forces' chief of staff. "The Taiwanese are
the real masters" of anticommunist defense, one
officer told Jon Lee Anderson.
The Nationalist Chinese regime on Taiwan was
established by the late Chiang Kai-shek 36 years
ago when he was driven off the Chinese mainland
by Mao Tse-tung's communist armies. As experts
in survival, the Taiwanese government holds
invitation-only courses in political warfare for Latin
American military officers, teaching them how to
combat communism and how to profit from
Chiang's mistakes.
The beneficiaries of Taiwan's instruction have
repaid their teachers by maintaining diplomatic
relations with Taipei long after most countries have
dropped the Nationalists in favor of Peking.
Causa International, generously financed by
Moon's Unification Church, employs similar
techniques, inviting Latin American military men
and influential civilians on all-expenses-paid trips
abroad for seminars on common problems. Causa's
influence is especially pervasive in Uruguay and
Honduras.
Also deeplyinvolved in Latin America is the
far-flung World Anti-Communist League, originally
set up by the South Korean and Taiwanese
governments in the late 1960s. In the summer of
1984, Anderson met a military instructor sent by
the Japanese chapter of the league to train Miskito
Indians fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
By then the league was already the key vehicle
for aid to the Nicaraguan contras, with
behind-the-scenes encouragement from high
Reagan administration officials. Contra leaders
have acknowledged that Taiwan has supplied them
with military hardware.
The World Anti-Communist League's current
president is retired major general John Singlaub,
whose ties with the Taiwanese and South Korean
governments go back many years. SinzJaub was
with the Office of Strategic Services (a World War
II predecessor of the CIA) in China, where he
served as a liaison officer to Chiang Kai-shek.
In the late 1970s. Singlaub commanded U.S.
troops in South Korea, until he was forced to retire
after publicly rebuking President Carter for
suggesting the possible withdrawal of U.S. troops
from the country.
In addition to his success as a fund-raiser for the
contras, Singlaub maintains his ties to the two
Asian anticommunist governments. Latin American
members of the league also said it was through
Singlaub that they received invitations to Causa
International seminars in South Korea.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110165-0