Henry Liu (Chinese: 劉宜良; pinyin: Liú Yíliáng; 7 December 1932 – 15 October 1984), often known by his pen name Chiang Nan (江南; Jiāng Nán), was a Taiwanese-American writer and journalist.
[4] He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and resided in Daly City, California, where he was assassinated by Bamboo Union members who had been reportedly trained by the Kuomintang's military intelligence division.
[3] After leaving the military, he worked for the state-run radio and later as a reporter for the Taiwan Daily News,[5] where he was sent on assignment to Hong Kong, Manila, and the Vietnam War.
After marrying his wife Helen Cui Rong-Zhi, he became a foreign correspondent in 1967, and moved to Washington DC, where he took graduate classes at American University and worked part-time as an interpreter for the State Department.
Liu planned to update the biography to cover more recent history, but was once again warned against writing about the Chiang family by Admiral Wang Hsi-ling in 1977.
[6] The assassination had been planned by Chen Chi-li, leader of the Bamboo Union Triad, and carried out by two Bamboo Union members, Wu Tun and Tung Kuei-sen. Chen was acting on the request of the head of the Kuomintang's Military Intelligence Bureau, Vice Admiral Wang Hsi-ling, who had requested that Liu be "[given] a lesson" after writing articles critical of the Kuomintang government.
[7] Earlier, in the wake of the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, Chen had reorganized the Bamboo Union to assist the Kuomintang-led government in gathering information and suppressing dissidents.
Chen Chi-li and the movie producer arrived in the United States on 14 September 1984, but the producer unexpectedly backed out shortly afterward for personal reasons, leaving Chen Chi-li to recruit two other Bamboo Union members who had also recently arrived in the US to assist him in the assassination, Wu Tun [zh] and Tung Kuei-sen. Wu had left Taiwan earlier in September, after local police had found a gun in his tea shop.
The original plot would have used local northern California Bamboo Union members to carry out the assassination, but the head of the San Francisco branch failed to meet them in late September as planned.
[13] After reading news accounts of the murder, Chen Chi-li realized he had been duped into believing that Liu was a communist agent, and he recorded his confession on 18 October 1984.
At that time, an investigation by the FBI and Daly City police surfaced; they had been quietly questioning Los Angeles-area Bamboo Union members, seeking a copy of Chen's October recording.
[7] The existence of the tape-recorded October confession remained a rumor[16] until the Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the recording in March 1985 from Chang An-lo, a friend of Tung who had hosted him in September 1984.
[18] Chen and Wu had been in custody in Taiwan since November 1984, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was pushing for their return to the United States to face criminal charges.
[19][20] In March 1985, the FBI discovered the October tape recording made by chief hitman Chen Chi-li implicating Republic of China military intelligence in the killing, whereupon they began to pressure the government to bring Liu's killers to trial.
[14] Meanwhile, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution urging Taiwan to remand custody of the murder suspects to the United States for trial.
[25] At a pre-trial hearing in Taipei, Chen Chi-li claimed that Wang Hsi-ling of Kuomintang intelligence ordered the assassination,[26][27] stating that Liu was a double agent who had spied for both Taiwan and China.
Tung Kuei-sen had been rumored to be living in the Philippines,[12] as he was not detained during the November 1984 Taiwan crackdown on Bamboo Union members when Chen and Wu had been arrested.
[43] Tung testified during the trial that Chen Chi-li was relaying the order to kill Liu from Chiang Hsiao-wu, a "big boss," but he was found guilty of first-degree murder after just forty-five minutes of deliberation.