Pine Gap rises in the desert heart of Australia. It’s not just any base, it’s the America’s most important spy base worldwide. Edward Snowden made his intentions more visible in 2013 when he denounced it, but it had been in operation since 1970. A treaty signed between the two countries brought it to life on December 9, 1966. Under the deceptive guise of monitoring satellites, the United States intercepts millions of communications, provides sensitive information to operate drones for military purposes and carries out espionage for the benefit of its own interests and its allies from there.
The AUKUS Pact
Today its facilities are a key device in the control of a region where Washington it measures forces with China. It just signed the AUKUS alliance last September (with the governments of London and Canberra) that motivated an international conflict with France, victim of an agreement that was canceled to sell submarines to Australians. Now, when not, the business will be done by the military-industrial complex that former President Dwight Eisenhower presented in society in 1961 in his farewell speech. Sixty years passed.
The Pine Gap base is halfway between Adelaide to the south and Darwin to the north, surrounded by the Simpson Desert. An extensive territory of reddish dunes, like a movie. Strange figures in the wind-eroded rock give the area a lunar countenance, which could have inspired Ray Bradbury. The CIA controls the infrastructure at the site that Snowden, his former contractor, linked to the Echelon spy ring. The largest in history. For decades Australia and the United States maintained secrecy about their true goals with an uncomfortable effort. A typical Cold War surveillance platform, it was born with the aim of spying on the nuclear development of the former Soviet Union and its allies.
When former Australian Prime Minister Gough Witlam hinted at a possible closure of the base – he ruled between 1972 and 1975 – he was deposed. The resignation was requested by the Governor General and representative of the Queen of England in Australia, John Kerr, an official closely related to the CIA. That was the only time in just over 50 years that the US risked running out of Pine Gap. The Labor politician was legally protected to close it. The agreement signed in ’66 between the two countries said that after nine years, either of the two could rescind it if they notified a year before. But it did not happen and Witlam cost him his exit.
A movie story
The history of the base was covered by Netflix in a six-part miniseries released in October 2018. Australian production company Screentime gives an idea of how Pine Gap works, but it did not have much success. It was even built in Vietnam for what this country considered a geopolitical script error. Twice a map appears that attributes to China a maritime zone that is in dispute with its neighbor. The Vietnamese took it as an offense. In the dialogues there is a critical passage to the US about the control of the base. It occurs when the local deputy chief says to her superior: “Australians are very used to accepting. In all the history of Pine Gap, the boss has always been an American ”.
Project Rainfall: The Secret History of Pine Gap is a book by Tom Gilling based on declassified documents from the United States and Australia. Its author maintains in the text the idea that UFOs are the object of study for the base. Journalist Alex Salmon wrote of the investigation in September 2019: “Gilling expertly documents the secret history of Pine Gap, the secret surrounding his role in America’s war machine. And how it makes Australia a military target in the event of future US imperialist wars. While it does not explicitly call for the closure of Pine Gap, the book provides more than enough evidence to close it and end Australia’s military alliance with the US. “
What is currently showing is quite different. AUKUS strengthened the strategic partnership between the two nations and the United Kingdom. It is not the only one in the region. There is also the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), a coalition made up of the US, Australia, India and Japan in the Indo-Pacific area, a relatively new geopolitical concept.
The prestigious Australian Intelligence analyst, Desmond Ball, also defined Pine Gap as a “war machine” in 2014, a couple of years before his death. From that base in the early ’70s that barely had two antennas and was born as a joint defense space research facility -according to the treaty signed in 1966-, it moved to a complex with 38 antennas covered by their respective radomes in 2017. Those structures that look like gigantic golf balls and protect them from bad weather. But not only did the facilities grow exponentially. Also its endowment.
The first American families settled in the Alice Springs area, the closest town to the base, when the base was opened. The secondary tasks were assigned to Australians, who would eventually fill half of the jobs. From the Cold War to the aftermath of the Twin Towers attacks, Pine Gap nearly doubled its staff, according to Ball. Mimicking in that desert landscape, some agents from the base posed as gardeners. Alice Springs had a high density of them. The secrecy of the local government contributed to this gossip becoming frequent and even appearing in the media.
The lands where this nucleus of espionage works are considered sacred by the original peoples of the region who were evicted decades ago. Stories about sightings of flying saucers also proliferate in them. Nothing that happens in this portion of the world where the influence of China is notorious is alien to Pine Gap or to the information voracity of the CIA and NSA (US National Security Agency). If the United States had 686 military bases outside its territory in 2015 – a number that some reports now put almost a thousand – the one operating out of central Australia is its Big Brother. The wars that Washington fought based on its selective creed against terrorism encompassed the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. All countries that were destroyed by indiscriminate bombing. Today they are replaced by drones with which surgical strikes are committed that also do not prevent so-called collateral damage against defenseless civilians. For that, the US needs to keep spying, and Pine Gap is its vital muscle.
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