There had been security breaches in the past, but until then no-one had successfully managed to scale any building within the inner fence. Initially we didn’t know the extent of the breach, but we soon found out that trespassers had been arrested. As expected, security at the Base was tightened overnight. ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.
The Pine Gap Four, as the protesters became known, were tried and found guilty of breaching the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952 and fined. They weren’t sentenced to jail, and they successfully appealed their conviction in 2008, but convictions for trespass and criminal damage remained.[11]
Following their successful appeal, the four appeared outside court, holding banners that read ‘Pine Gap Terror Base’ and ‘Civilians Bombed While U Wait’.[12] Clearly there was still much misinformation about Pine Gap among the general population; Pine Gap neither commits nor participates in terrorist acts, and it has never bombed civilians. I wouldn’t have worked there if it had been the case. Pine Gap cannot ‘push a button’ that could kill innocent people, nor has it ever directed anyone else to do so. On the contrary, Pine Gap has made countless contributions to saving the lives of soldiers in combat situations, and I will always feel proud that I was a part of the mission to do this for eighteen years.
There have been large and small protests throughout the years, but none has achieved the goal of closing Pine Gap. A common argument used by protesters to justify closing the Base has been that it is a nuclear target, with many reasoning that if a nuclear-armed nation became involved in a ‘hot war’ with Australia or the United States, it’s possible that the enemy country would drop a nuclear bomb on Pine Gap to prevent the facility from operating during the conflict. However, the terrible consequences of the use of nuclear weapons have reduced them to a desperate, last-resort option for any government. An overt missile launch of a nuclear weapon against Pine Gap would be achievable only by a limited number of governments, and in any case the origin of the missile would be accurately determined. As a powerful disincentive to deployment, this type of attack against Pine Gap would most certainly be met with similar or more powerful weapons from the United States. In the interests of all parties, any conflict between nations is far more likely to be resolved diplomatically or through the use of conventional weapons before the nuclear option is chosen, as has been done since World War II.
In today’s world, terrorism from stateless organisations represents an ongoing threat to the safety of civilian and military populations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks greatly exposed the susceptibility among the general population to these types of attacks, any of which could have included a radioactive component. Since 9/11, the intelligence community has been widely reported to utilise many assets in the fight against terrorism. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ compelling reasons for allowing Pine Gap to remain. The argument to continue the presence of Pine Gap is also echoed in many of Professor Ball’s writings and in his testimony to the Australian Senate in support of renewing the lease for the continuation of Pine Gap.
█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ and these leaders know that protecting the homeland is Australia’s highest priority. To this end, Pine Gap is a welcome presence that helps the nation’s Defence organisations provide for the safety of Australians. With America bearing the majority of the costs to maintain Pine Gap, the benefits to Australia of receiving relatively inexpensive but invaluable intelligence cannot be over-emphasised. This was clearly stated in 2003 by Professor Paul Dibb, head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. ‘The intelligence and defence aspects of the relationship provide Australia with a clear technical advantage over any potential regional adversary,’ he said. ‘If Australia did not have access to US intelligence and hi-technology weapons systems we would have to spend very much more on defence.’[13] Times have changed since Gough Whitlam was prime minister and it is important that Australians know that the Australian Government, and hence the Australian people, are joint beneficiaries of all of the intelligence obtained by Pine Gap. As Australians, we should not, and ultimately cannot, live in fear. We must be willing to work to protect our way of life and to support those facilities that help us to live a safe and free life in our homeland.
One of the early rumours surrounding the construction of Pine Gap was a headline in 1967 that claimed flying saucers, or UFOs, might be attracted to the new facility that would become known as the Space Base.[14] (The nickname itself likely encouraged the imagination of others to envisage visits by our extraterrestrial neighbours to the remote interior of Australia.) This belief was a likely source of the many UFO sightings near Alice Springs reported over the years. It amazes me that many people believe the isolated Pine Gap facility may serve as a friendly landing and resupply site for weary voyagers eager to catch up with their neighbours after travelling billions or trillions of kilometres. Obviously the Australians would make perfect hosts, offering a cold beer or a Bundy to our friends from nearby solar systems. For some UFO enthusiasts, Pine Gap is a logical choice to serve as the Earth’s welcoming committee for our faraway friends: Alice Springs and Pine Gap just happen to be relatively close to the ‘UFO capital of Australia’, Wycliffe Well,[15] only 380 kilometres away, where UFO sightings are considered to be so common that only an unlucky overnight tourist would miss out on the experience.[16]
Despite the countless stories involving UFOs and Pine Gap offered up by the internet, the aliens must have kept a very low profile during my eighteen-year tenure in Operations, as I, like the unlucky Wycliffe Well tourist, never saw any evidence of aliens at or around Pine Gap.
PART IV:
GETTING OUT
11: THE SINGER AND THE SPY
13
Dibb, P., ‘Australia’s Alliance with America’, Melbourne Asia Policy Papers, Volume 1, Number 1, March 2003, The University of Melbourne, p. 3.