Shared secrets: How The U.S. and China worked together to spy on the Soviet Union

This is Part IV of The Great Wager. Click here for all five episodes.

It was the second day of President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972, and national security adviser Henry Kissinger was having a serious meeting with a Chinese general, General Ye Jianying.

Kissinger was sharing top-secret information from the CIA about the Soviet military — and no one but Nixon and the people in the room knew what he was divulging.

Ye was like a kid in a candy shop, thrilled at the level of detail Kissinger was sharing, down to the exact kilotons in nuclear warheads.

This was just a taste of bigger things to come between the CIA and China.

New leaders, same enemy

In the years following Nixon’s big trip, both countries underwent substantial changes in leadership.

In 1974, Nixon left the White House in disgrace. Two years later, Mao Zedong died, a huge event on the world stage.

Through all of this upheaval, China and the United