OK. I can't resist.
We have been watching this thing develop for a few weeks now, and our favorite airplane finally hit the mainstream Western media in a big way (NY Times, Reuters, etc.) We are watching, at close range, just how "innovative" news reporting can be. The NY Times article is actually the best sample I can get, because it is a relatively "in depth" article that contains a total of about 5 lines on the airplane. The rest is spin, generated by that comment by mr anonymous, a "high defense official" or "pentagon official".
This pentagon official actually did not quote anybody saying "I don't know". It was all his reading of the expression on people's faces. True, the exchange between Gates and Hu on the matter PROVES that Hu knew, but who cares about facts anyway.
So who is this "high official"? He is the guy brought on the trip in order to speak to the media. He's the guy in charge of SPIN ("war of perceptions", "public diplomacy", or whatever you want to call it). The storyline was developed in Washington, or on the plane on the way there. I suspect Gates asked his question about the timing more or less spontaneously, and chose to speak about it to the media spontaneously as well, because it does not fit in with the official SPIN.
If you read these articles, and I think kwaigonen understood it perfectly well, it is supposed to be "scary, yikes". The storyline they are developing is that China is basically turning into a "military dictatorship". The news articles all start from this comment by the anonymous defense official, and they all make reference to the same spin dished out on the occasion of the ASAT test in 2007. The difference in 2007 is that on that occasion, someone thought up this "interpretation" well after the fact, whereas, in this case they jumped on it from the very start. And of course, the NY Times goes on paragraph after paragraph about this.
I am actually quite surprised that people here take this stuff seriously. It should be OBVIOUS to us all that not only the "civilian leadership", but a very large section of the civilian POPULATION is aware of this plane. Sure, many people don't follow these things as we do, but this particular piece of news is a bit like the spacewalk in 2008. The "strip tease" we have been witnessing shows that decisions about this have been entirely POLITICAL and not merely military. In fact, this distinction between civilian and military leadership is itself an invention which does not accord with known facts.