The secret history of Pine Gap, Australia's CIA spy base
The secret history of Pine Gap, Australia's CIA spy base
On December 9, 1966, the Australian government signed a public agreement with the United States to build what both countries misleadingly called a “Joint Defence Space Research Facility” at Pine Gap, just outside Alice Springs. Officially, Pine Gap is a collaboration between the Australian Departmen...
Australians: :frothingfash: 'CHOINAH IS TAKING OVER! THE CHOINESE ARE SPOIN' ON AUSTRALIANS!"
Meanwhile in Australia
Starting in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War, Pine Gap was used by the US to spy on the Soviet missile tests, although it is most likely the Soviets knew about Pine Gap. Most of what goes on at Pine Gap is kept from the Australian government. Even former prime ministers such as John Gorton and Gough Whitlam were not fully aware of its operations.
For most of its history, Australians were only hired as cooks and janitors. All spies working there were from the US. While the Australian government denied that it made Australia a target for a nuclear strike, Gilling exposes how Canberra bureaucrats secretly planned for Armageddon. A 1980 Fraser government top secret report concluded that while unlikely, in the case of a nuclear war Pine Gap did make Australia a nuclear target.
Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, Pine Gap has expanded. It has played a key role in both US wars on Iraq and the Pentagon's “war on terror”, as well as a means to listen in on people's phone conversations and spy on other counties in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Indonesia and China. The role of Pine Gap in the “War on Terror” was exposed by US whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who hacked into National Security Agency (NSA) files and went into exile to avoid the threat of a long jail sentence. In the past, Pine Gap was a subject of intense political debate, with Whitlam making noises about closing the base.
Today, however, Pine Gap has bipartisan support. In February this year, then-defence minister Christopher Pyne told the House of Representatives that “Pine Gap represents the finest examples of collaboration, innovation and integration, and has delivered remarkable intelligence dividends to both our nations”. The ALP responded that it supported everything Pyne said.