Lawyers representing President Chen Shui-bian’s wife Wu Shu-chen and two former presidential aides promised on Friday they would appeal a decision by the Taipei District Court to deny President Chen’s attempt to retrieve a large volume of documents and receipts collected by prosecutors as evidence in the trio’s corruption trial.

While the Presidential Office initially consented to prosecutors taking the documents for use as evidence, President Chen later changed his mind and issued an executive order classifying the documents as “state secrets.”

Since then, the Presidential Office has demanded that prosecutors return all of the documents, as well as all copies that may have been made of them, by invoking the authority of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act.

Revised by the Legislative Yuan in 2003, this Act established a system for the protection of sensitive information by permitting the government to deem information either “top secret,” “secret” or “confidential.”

Depending on which of the three categories information is classified under, there are different levels of protection and enforcement that can be used to ensure that sensitive information is not leaked or used to harm the national interest. President Chen, who first earned his claim to fame as a defense attorney for political dissidents, is surely aware of how this law may be invoked and used to protect the country’s fundamental national interests.

However, once again President Chen has proven himself adept at ignoring the law’s fundamental purpose and instead using it to protect himself, his family and his corrupt associates. The Taipei court was absolutely correct to reject President Chen’s attempt to take back the papers and receipts, since a simple reading of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act shows how the president is trying to abuse the law.

Article 7 of the Act indeed permits President Chen, along with a variety of other officials, to protect sensitive information by classifying it under one of the three categories. The law was drafted, passed and enacted to establish a modern system for protecting state secrets after authoritarian-era laws and regulations, which permitted unfettered punishment and persecution of persons loosely accused of sympathizing with communist enemies, were repealed to usher in the democratic era.

However, the law’s own terms clearly state that the government must work to keep the amount of classified information restricted to an “absolute minimum.” In addition, even information that has already been classified as a state secret must eventually be reviewed for declassification according to a set schedule.

President Chen’s attempt to classify documents incriminating his wife and subordinates clearly have nothing to do with protecting national security, in spite of his repeated claims that the documents somehow betray diplomatic secrets. According to Article 5 of the Act, strict standards are set providing that information may not be classified for the purpose of concealing violations of the law or administrative error, restraining competition, preventing embarrassment to a person, company, organization or government agency, or to “prevent or delay the public release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security.”

Of these conditions, President Chen is clearly seeking to classify the documents and receipts in order to conceal violations of the law by his subordinates, prevent embarrassment to his administration and members of his family, and prevent or delay the release of information that fails to merit protection in the interest of national security.

Not surprisingly, lawyers for the defendants have vowed to appeal the Taipei District Court’s decision. However, we hope that higher courts will agree with the Taipei District Court’s finding that the Presidential Office is not justified in attempting to protect the information.

Besides the simple and obvious motive for the president to try and recall the embarrassing documents, there is the even more practical fact that much of the content of these documents has already been made public through the course of the corruption trial.

Over the past several months, newspapers, radio and TV stations have revealed what the receipts were used for, as well as which persons obtained the receipts and what items were purchased with secret funds earmarked for national security purposes. We cannot understand why President Chen is so eager to regain possession of these documents, since virtually everyone in Taiwan already knows about the “secret” information the president’s office is supposedly trying to protect. While our judiciary has come under attack from officials at the highest level in recent months, including from President Chen himself, we are glad and grateful that we have an independent judiciary that is able to check and balance the powers of the executive branch.