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• Sunday, May 11, 2008 06:57 AM

  DanJoaquinOz - - Their names are "Di Rita" and "Shaheen" - - (but both names tend to get spelled wrong, so you have to search for variants, too)

  CQ, June 1, 2007:

  http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002523531.html

  Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide
  By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

  [...] Another key character in the minidrama was Therese Shaheen, the outspoken chief of the U.S. office of the American Institute in Taiwan, which took on the functions of the American embassy after the formal 1979 diplomatic switch.

  Shaheen, who happens to be DiRita’s wife, openly championed Chen and the independence movement, at one point even publicly reinterpreting Bush’s reiteration of the “one China” policy, saying that the administration “had never said it ‘opposed’ Taiwan independence,” according to a 2004 account in the authoritative Far Eastern Economic Review.

  “Therese Shaheen . . . said don’t sweat it, the president didn’t really mean what he said,” Wilkerson said.

  Coming from the wife of Rumsfeld’s spokesman, Shaheen’s remarks sent off angry alarms in Beijing.

  Powell asked for her resignation.

  Douglas Paal was then head of the American Institute in Taiwan, effectively making him the U.S. ambassador there. He backed up Wilkerson’s account.

  “In the early years of the Bush administration,” Paal said by e-mail last week, “there was a problem with mixed signals to Taiwan from Washington. This was most notably captured in the statements and actions of Ms. Therese Shaheen, the former AIT chair, which ultimately led to her departure.”

  Now retired, Paal said he, too, “received many first- and second-hand reports of messages conveyed to Taiwan by DoD civilians and perhaps a uniformed officer or two during that time that were out of sync with President Bush’s position.”

  DiRita defended his wife, saying

  “she understood U.S. policy and executed it to the very best of her abilities and wasn’t trying to play games with” Taiwanese independence forces.

  “That was always kind of a mythology of what happened over there,” he said.

  “They are dangerous men who will lie about almost anyone or anything,” Wilkerson angrily responded by e-mail, singling out Feith, DiRita, Cheney and Rumsfeld for scorn.

  He called back-stage encouragement of the Taiwanese “even more serious” than the alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence, because it could provoke China to attack the island, triggering a U.S. response and the world’s first nuclear shooting war. [...]

  - - CQ, June 1, 2007

  China Post, March 22, 2008:

  http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/presidential%20election/2008/03/22/148277/Former-AIT.htm

  Former AIT head Shaheen warned against involvement in 'green card' issue

  The China Post news staff

  TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Theresa Shaheen, former chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan, is being given a timely warning against getting involved in the "green card" issue over Kuomintang presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou.

  "We wish Ms. Shaheen to know that it's unlawful for an foreign national to get involved in an election in Taiwan," a top aide to Ma said yesterday. According to the Election Law, no foreign nationals may electioneer for a candidate in Taiwan. [...]

  - - China Post, March 22, 2008

  Here's her (and her husband's) current political donation activity:

  http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=loc&addr=9509+PURCELL+DRIVE&zip=20854

  —sysprog Read sysprog's other letters
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