Widow Says Liu Got $17,000 to Ease Criticism

The widow of Henry Liu, a Chinese-American writer and critic of Taiwan’s government who was murdered near San Francisco last October, told a House subcommittee Thursday that her husband received a mysterious $17,000 payment from Taipei after agreeing to tone down criticism of the ruling Chiang family in a 1975 book he was revising.

Helen Liu said that the unsolicited payment last year appeared to be from Taiwan’s military intelligence service, three officials of which have been implicated in Liu’s death.

She said that her husband made several changes in the book at the suggestion of Hsia Hsiao-hua, a former intelligence agent and publishing friend whom he admired. He had rejected similar requests from other friends, she said.

Telephone Call

Helen Liu said that Hsia visited their California home in December, 1983, and later telephoned from abroad to say that military intelligence officials were “happy about the changes” and that they would be sending $20,000 “to show their gratitude.”

The FBI, she said, “somehow found out about this and talked to Henry about it only a week before he was killed” on Oct. 15. Henry Liu, 51, a naturalized American citizen, was gunned down in his garage in Daly City, Calif., allegedly by two reputed members of Taiwanese organized crime.

A spokesman at FBI headquarters declined to comment on Helen Liu’s testimony.

The hearing by the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs was called by Chairman Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) to examine U.S.-Taiwan relations in the aftermath of Taiwan’s admission that three military intelligence officials may have ordered the murder.

Proposed Resolution

Another witness, William Brown, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said the State Department has “no problem” with a proposed congressional resolution calling on Taiwan to extradite those accused of Liu’s murder.

Brown said he had seen no evidence, aside from the Liu case, that Taiwan has engaged in a “consistent pattern” of harassment and intimidation of its U.S.-based critics, a condition that automatically would lead to a cutoff in arms sales to that country.