Ruffling the feathers of Robert Gates, US defence secretary, is no easy feat. The former CIA director usually maintains a poker face. But on Monday in Jakarta, he got hot under the collar when questioned about the latest Pentagon-related conspiracy theory.

This time the conspiracy did not involve Iraq, Iran or the events of September 11 2001. It concerned bird flu, and the recent claims by Siti Fadilah Supari, Indonesia’s health minister, that the Pentagon was using bird flu samples to create biological weapons. Confronted at a press conference with Juwono Sudarsono, the Indonesian defence minister, Gates rejected the assertion, but only after Sudarsono’s spokesman jumped in to point out that the defence minister did not share the health minister’s views on the new alleged WMD.