'Cornering the Dragon' & other Taiwan shenanigans

Well hmmm...this is very weird. Don't know what it means yet, exactly, but it looks like one of John Bolton's underlings is pleading guilty to some weird Taiwan dealings. Donald Keyser used to work at the State Dept. with Bolton. Keyser was caught failing to disclose his 'relationship' with a Taiwanese intelligence official. A lady official (not that that matters...ok, maybe his wife cares). Keyser was arrested in 2004 when the FBI caught him passing classified documents to this Taiwanese 'contact.'

Bolton has long meddled in the affairs of Taiwan and is a staunch pro-independence kinda guy. And by "staunch," I mean $100 Million slush-fund-staunch. In 2002, The Nation Magazine's David Cornreported that Bolton "submitted pro-Taiwan testimony to Congress in the 1990s without revealing he was a paid consultant to Taiwan. His work for Taiwan, it turns out, was financed by this slush fund." BTW, "acting as a foreign agent without registering as one" is highly illegal.

One more thing: Bolton, Cheney and Douglas Feith have what you might call an X-treme hate-on for China and see tremendous potential for a warmed-over cold-war. Hell, Rumsfeld and Bush were onboard with this pre-9/11 (remember the spyplane nonsense?). But all of that "ring around the dragon" talk seemed to abate with the war on terrah.

So, why write about this? Bolton's illegal lobbying slipped below the radar of 2 Senate confirmation hearings (once as undersecretary for arms control and once as UN ambassador). I just wanted you to know what this "Keyser" stuff was really about, in case you saw the headline. Keyser's not exactly a household name but Bolton's surely is. Or at least his moustache is unforgettable. Meeting adjourned :)