Senior officials from about 12 of the world’s major intelligence agencies held a secret meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore on 2–4 June, said media reports.
Organised by the Singapore government, these meetings have been discreetly held at a separate venue alongside the security summit for several years, they said. The meetings were not previously reported.
Director of National Intelligence, US, Avril Haines represented her country’s intelligence community. China was among the other countries present. Samant Goel, the head of India’s overseas intelligence gathering agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, also attended the meeting.
All five sources who discussed the meetings declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. However, a spokesperson for the Singapore Ministry of Defence said that while attending the Shangri-La Dialogue that the Singapore Ministry of Defence may facilitate some of these bilateral or multilateral meetings.
The United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operate what is called the Five Eyes Alliance to gather and share a broad range of intelligence. The intelligence officials of these nations, thus, meet frequently. Larger meetings of the intelligence community are rarer, and almost never made public.
