US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former chief of America’s top spy agency, said Tuesday that US and Chinese intelligence services cooperate more than the two countries’ armed forces.
Asked at a briefing in Beijing if ties between intelligence agencies could serve as a model for improving strained US-China military relations, the CIA veteran said: “The way I would put it is that I had an association with certain relationships that remain largely unaffected, as I used the term yesterday, by shifting political winds.
“I would like to see the military-to-military relationship in the same category.”
His comments marked a rare public acknowledgment of long-standing, behind-the-scenes communications between leading intelligence officers in both countries, despite strains that have repeatedly disrupted US-China military relations.
China in recent years has suspended defence contacts over US arms sales to Taiwan, but during his visit this week to Beijing Gates appealed for a permanent security dialogue that would not be linked to “shifting political winds.”
During the Cold War, Gates rose through the ranks as an analyst to become a senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency, eventually serving as its director from 1991 to 1993.
