Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, Conspiracy Realist. Our classic this
Speaker 1: week is for our friends down South, way down South,
Speaker 1: not quite Antarctica, a little bit further north, Australia.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is Pine Gap, guys. I think, if I'm
Speaker 2: not mistaken, this was turned into an entire spy series
Speaker 2: on television called Pine Gap. I think it was after
Speaker 2: it was made to a TV show after we covered it.
Speaker 2: But it's such a secretive thing. What does it remind
Speaker 2: you of? What's the Is there an American equivalent?
Speaker 1: Uh hororpera of fifty one? It's like in that sort
Speaker 1: of echelon. Yeah, conspiratorial locations, but Pine Gap is unique
Speaker 1: and Pine Gap at the time in twenty eighteen, it
Speaker 1: employed over eight hundred different people and officially no one
Speaker 1: knew what it did.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's infiltrate the gap.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers, government conspiracies. History is riddled
Speaker 4: with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
Speaker 4: this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission Control dec At. Most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 1: you are here that makes this stuff. They don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. This episode in particular, has been a
Speaker 1: long time in coming, because, as you might already know,
Speaker 1: we spend a lot of time on this show researching
Speaker 1: military bases or mysterious compounds across the planet. And while
Speaker 1: we often travel outside of the bounds of these United States,
Speaker 1: we tend to focus most often on facilities here because hey,
Speaker 1: it's our home turf, and honestly, that means that we're
Speaker 1: gonna hear about places in the US or associate with
Speaker 1: US way more often than say, a secret base in Pakistan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in public documents that we get access to generally
Speaker 2: are about stuff that happens on our turf.
Speaker 1: We need way more of foreign intelligence agency connections. So
Speaker 1: on the off chance that you're listening and you feel
Speaker 1: like you catch a wild hair, please go ahead email us,
Speaker 1: look us up, give us.
Speaker 3: Those military connections.
Speaker 2: Yes, like some of our fellow listeners did after we
Speaker 2: did an episode on Australia recently and someone wrote to
Speaker 2: us about this very topic.
Speaker 3: I mean, someone else sent us a koala bear.
Speaker 1: No, you should only say on purpose.
Speaker 3: Like got they got mad because we call them?
Speaker 1: Did we explain that on air.
Speaker 3: I don't think we did.
Speaker 1: Okay, So everyone in the US is very much aware
Speaker 1: that koala are marsupials. The most common marsupials for us
Speaker 1: here in the States are possums, And for the record,
Speaker 1: I feel that our country got very much short changed
Speaker 1: that in that regard those nasty tailed things.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing too, on that one, I think I
Speaker 3: was the most egregious offender of you having the bear
Speaker 3: suffix on that. And that's just a thing I do.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I call Matt Mattie bear, sometimes I call Ben
Speaker 3: Benny bear, and I call my kid her name bear.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's just a thing I do. It's
Speaker 3: a sign of affection and that I think something is cute, beautiful.
Speaker 1: What's true is that it is koala. Bear is just
Speaker 1: the term that people in the US use. It's not
Speaker 1: It's clearly not accurate. But we do want to set
Speaker 1: the record straight. We are surprisingly up to date on
Speaker 1: what is and is not a marsupial and have been
Speaker 1: for years now. Speaking of for years now, your fellow
Speaker 1: listeners have been asking us to dig into a strange
Speaker 1: story of another compound on the other side of the world.
Speaker 1: A secretive access restricted facility, called by some and mainly
Speaker 1: by critics, the most important US intelligence operation on foreign soil.
Speaker 1: Welcome friends and neighbors to Pine Gap.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Yes, and our story begins in this small little town
Speaker 2: called Alice Springs, which only has about twenty four thousand people,
Speaker 2: but it's the second largest population in Australia's Northern Territory,
Speaker 2: where obviously by those numbers there aren't many people.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sydney, this is not. Alice Springs is located in
Speaker 1: something called the Red Center. It's pretty far inland. It's
Speaker 1: surrounded by different deserts, scrubby grasslands, and nowadays its major
Speaker 1: official industry is tourism. Wo Like any town, Alice Springs
Speaker 1: is not perfect. It has a pretty significant itinerant population,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of racial tension, but its soldiers on. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: our story kicks in the high gear. If you travel
Speaker 1: about ten fifteen minutes south of Alice Springs, you will
Speaker 1: see some signs saying no more photographs, turn around immediately
Speaker 1: restricted area. And if you ignore those and somehow get
Speaker 1: past the security, you'll find a compound code named all
Speaker 1: capital letters Rainfall.
Speaker 3: I have heard also that you will be promptly arrested
Speaker 3: and find about three thousand dollars. Wow, it's true for
Speaker 3: your trouble.
Speaker 2: It's like the same thing that happens if you try
Speaker 2: and get into Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Groom Lake area. It's interesting. One of my
Speaker 1: friends who works at our local watering hole, was out
Speaker 1: exploring this area and he and his ridiculous brother had
Speaker 1: the amazing idea of trying to drive as close as
Speaker 1: they could. Did you hear this story off air day?
Speaker 1: I tell you he got to He got close enough
Speaker 1: to see some signs, and then in the distance, on
Speaker 1: an abutting cliff, he saw the glint of a sniper
Speaker 1: rifle and then two trucks came out and started chasing
Speaker 1: them down and almost ran them off the road, just
Speaker 1: as an intimidation tactic. Hikes and it worked, and it worked.
Speaker 1: He's probably not going to go back now. This place,
Speaker 1: cod named Rainfall, is remote. It's in the heart of
Speaker 1: the outback. It's surrounded on all sides by barren land
Speaker 1: in a cartoonishly high amount of surveillance. As you said, Noel,
Speaker 1: this is a place where you will be aggressively.
Speaker 3: Deterred and monitored, which is appropriate and will come into play.
Speaker 3: I also just want to point out early on this
Speaker 3: is also probably one of the most cliche Australian features
Speaker 3: that you'll ever hear anybody talk about is kangaroos, and
Speaker 3: apparently this particular location is just lousy with them. But
Speaker 3: most other more urban parts of Australia you're not just
Speaker 3: gonna see kangaroos hopping out of the woodwork, but here
Speaker 3: you are very likely to because of the climb in
Speaker 3: the desert and the wide open spaces and all that.
Speaker 3: And I just want to give a shout out to
Speaker 3: this podcast that I learned a lot from called Weird
Speaker 3: Crap in Australia from the Modern Mountdown Network. So shout
Speaker 3: out to those guys because they did a good job
Speaker 3: talking about this episode and have with kind of like
Speaker 3: an insider's perspective, which will also come into play later.
Speaker 3: We had crap in AUSTRALAI yet did good Ben. Thanks
Speaker 3: and check out their Patreon because I think they want
Speaker 3: some money to buy some mikes and nice mics are important.
Speaker 1: There you go, So back to Rainfall. This base is
Speaker 1: reached by traveling down a dead end road marked with
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, signs warning away visitors without security clearance.
Speaker 1: The only way to really see this compound is by
Speaker 1: air or by climbing the nearby ridges of the MacDonald
Speaker 1: Ranges that surround the site. What do you see when
Speaker 1: you happen to fly over this thing and peek out
Speaker 1: the window at just the right time.
Speaker 2: There are these big white domes that you've seen before,
Speaker 2: probably at least in pictures or in spy movies. They're
Speaker 2: called geodesic domes, and they just look almost like a
Speaker 2: golf ball, a really big golf ball, like Epcot. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Ooh, like Epcot, like Epcot with a less detailed texture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Well you'll see those. That's the biggest thing
Speaker 2: you're gonna notice.
Speaker 1: And those golf balls. We'll get into this a bit later.
Speaker 1: They are covers for radar dishes, which you know, is
Speaker 1: a little bit anti climactic, you know, because there's so
Speaker 1: many fun things that could be in a giant golf ball.
Speaker 2: That's what they say is in there.
Speaker 3: That's thought lots of smaller golf balls.
Speaker 1: Officially, this site is known by the tremendously sexy name
Speaker 1: the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap. As of now, it
Speaker 1: employs well over eight hundred Australian and American employees. They
Speaker 1: used to be primarily American back in the day, but
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of a hubbub about that.
Speaker 1: According to leaked US intelligence documents, when asked what happens
Speaker 1: at the site, people should say its purpose is to.
Speaker 2: Quote support national security of both the US and Australia.
Speaker 2: The facility contributes to verifying arms control and disarmament agreements
Speaker 2: and monitoring military developments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, As you can imagine, folks, the sheer size
Speaker 1: of this enterprise makes it a crucial part of the
Speaker 1: local economy. But it brings us to a bigger question,
Speaker 1: how did this thing get here? The story starts on
Speaker 1: or around December ninth, nineteen sixty six. Well started before then, obviously,
Speaker 1: but on December ninth of that year, Australia and Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam signed a treaty agreeing to establish a quote Joint
Speaker 1: Defense Space Research Facility.
Speaker 3: Oh it sounds so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty vague term, but on the offset
Speaker 1: it does sound neat right. I mean, who's against space research?
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree we need to learn
Speaker 1: more about space. The facility started off with two antenna
Speaker 1: so it looked to be a pretty small operation. And
Speaker 1: the remote nature of this site, while it makes it
Speaker 1: very inconvenient to travel to, it didn't strike anyone as
Speaker 1: particularly strange, because it's pretty common to build space research
Speaker 1: facilities off the beaten path. You know, if you have
Speaker 1: an observatory, you want to avoid light pollution. If you
Speaker 1: have a radio telescope, you can sometimes shut legally shut
Speaker 1: down all radio sources if you're in West Virginia right
Speaker 1: for thousands of miles. So of course you don't want
Speaker 1: this thing to be in downtown Sydney or Melbourne or something,
Speaker 1: which is how you pronounce it. But by nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: over four hundred American families had moved to the area,
Speaker 1: and operations, whatever they were at the time, space research,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: Began space military research.
Speaker 3: Space.
Speaker 1: We call it space search for short space search. And
Speaker 1: this base is pretty quiet, at least in the international
Speaker 1: sphere and the public eye. It doesn't get a ton
Speaker 1: of scrutiny. It grows in size and scope quietly, quietly, quietly,
Speaker 1: staying pun intended, generally under the radar until nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: What happened in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Well, there was this thing called the Ausi Senate Committee
Speaker 2: on Treaties, and there were some gentlemen who were asked about,
Speaker 2: you know, what is this facility? What does it do?
Speaker 2: Those gentlemen were part of the Australian government. They said
Speaker 2: no when asked to give details on you know, whatever
Speaker 2: this treaty was or whatever it is that they're doing.
Speaker 2: There's an Ossi Senate Committee on Treaties and the government
Speaker 2: said no, basically, we will not tell you.
Speaker 1: Right, which happens sometimes with our Senate and their committees
Speaker 1: when they ask questions about intelligence agents.
Speaker 2: We can have a closed session maybe and we can
Speaker 2: discuss with one person or another.
Speaker 1: But right, we can preapprove the questions. Yes, right. So
Speaker 1: the committee calls on a very interesting character in this story,
Speaker 1: a professor named des Ball, which I think is a
Speaker 1: great name.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably the best name we're going to run
Speaker 1: into in this show.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a real ladies man.
Speaker 1: So des Ball, doctor des Ball, and Professor des Ball
Speaker 1: is an intelligence expert who's had a real, a real
Speaker 1: brinkle in his undies about Pine Gap four years and
Speaker 1: years and years. He's been a huge opponent of it.
Speaker 1: They called on him to explain exactly what Pine Gap did.
Speaker 1: According to professor Ball, the compound had by this point
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine expanded and now it housed about eighteen
Speaker 1: different antenna instead of two, and the staff had increased
Speaker 1: from four hundred in the early sixties to six hundred
Speaker 1: in the nineties. And furthermore, he says to these folks,
Speaker 1: you know what's eventually going to happen if no one
Speaker 1: stops this. It's going to employ over one thousand people.
Speaker 1: And I hate to clue you in Senate Committee, but
Speaker 1: space research does not even begin to cover what these
Speaker 1: people actually do at Pine Gap.
Speaker 2: And we're going to jump into that right after a
Speaker 2: word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: So, according to des Ball, doctor des Baal ladies Man,
Speaker 3: pine Gap was monitoring things in space more than space itself.
Speaker 3: M So maybe like other satellites. Yes, in fact, exactly that,
Speaker 3: other satellites, monitoring spy satellites.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And he outlined four potential categories of types of signals
Speaker 3: that were to be collected at Pine Gap. And these
Speaker 3: are quite broad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, telemetry from advanced weapons development. We're talking ballistic missiles,
Speaker 2: we're talking all kinds of other things used for arms
Speaker 2: control verification, which is kind of a thing that we've
Speaker 2: kind of know. That's what they're doing. That's what they
Speaker 2: say in the mission statement up above. They're looking at
Speaker 2: signals from anti missile anti aircraft radars, transmissions that intended
Speaker 2: for other communication satellites, which could be a whole host
Speaker 2: of things nowadays or even in those days, and also
Speaker 2: described the operational area as containing three different sections.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, he also mentioned microwave emissions.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, microwave emissions. Forgot about those long long distance
Speaker 2: telephone calls. Are you making some of those? Well, pine
Speaker 2: gaps probably listening.
Speaker 3: Well, here's a thing too. We always talk about the
Speaker 3: lag with like technology that the military is aware of
Speaker 3: versus like when it kind of trickles into the public
Speaker 3: sphere or whatever. So he got to wonder if like
Speaker 3: they were laying the groundwork for monitoring technology that wasn't
Speaker 3: even in use yet by consumers.
Speaker 2: All forms of technology, purpet perpet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, as you're saying, METS satellite station keeping section,
Speaker 1: that was one of the operational areas, Signals processing station
Speaker 1: and the signals analysis section. None of the Australians who
Speaker 1: worked there could go, could visit that area, that entire
Speaker 1: area until nineteen eighty. These satellites are key because, together
Speaker 1: with the n essays Men with Hill Base in England,
Speaker 1: Pine Gap has become a command post for two missions
Speaker 1: that were not officially in the cards at all, Two
Speaker 1: missions that the Australian citizenry was never allowed to vote
Speaker 1: on nor really allowed to know about for a long time.
Speaker 1: The first was one named M seven to six hundred.
Speaker 1: It involved at least two spy satellites, and in a
Speaker 1: secret two thousand and five document that leaked, they were
Speaker 1: meant to provide continuous coverage of the majority of the
Speaker 1: Eurasian land Mass and Africa, so that's Asia, Europe, all
Speaker 1: the stands, Russia and then the African continent. This initiative
Speaker 1: was later upgraded as part of a second mission named
Speaker 1: M eight three hundred, which had a four satellite constellation
Speaker 1: and then covered all the hits Soviet Union, China, South Asia,
Speaker 1: East Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe and territories in the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean. But what exactly are these things doing. They're
Speaker 1: a little bit too high for a lot of people
Speaker 1: to see them, you know, unless you know exactly where
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be looking and you've got a telescope
Speaker 1: and stuff. But we had said in previous episodes, the
Speaker 1: real devil in the details for anybody who wants a
Speaker 1: secret spy satellite is that there's not a way to
Speaker 1: disguise it. That's how people found. What were they the CIA?
Speaker 1: Was it the key satellite program?
Speaker 2: I can't remember, but yes, Corona Corona, that was it.
Speaker 1: So they're more than, as I said, twenty thousand miles
Speaker 1: above the Earth's surface. But what are they doing. They
Speaker 1: are equipped with these huge suites of surveillance technology that
Speaker 1: made to your point, noal have almost certainly was outpacing
Speaker 1: whatever was available commercially or known publicly at the time.
Speaker 1: And they are meant to monitor wireless communications on the ground,
Speaker 1: such as the things sent and received by radios, satellite uplinks,
Speaker 1: and cell phones, possibly just like the cell phone that
Speaker 1: you are using to listen to this podcast right now.
Speaker 2: But thankfully you're just you're not streaming this right you're
Speaker 2: just listening to us download on your phone. They don't,
Speaker 2: they don't hear anything.
Speaker 3: It's fine.
Speaker 1: Well, it depends if they consider it a strategic and
Speaker 1: tactical military, scientific, political, or economic communication signal. They are
Speaker 1: definitely going to gather it. They're also not going to
Speaker 1: tell you. It's meant to keep tabs on missiles or
Speaker 1: weapons tests and targeted countries. But also like a vacuum
Speaker 1: cleaner approach to sweep up intelligence from any foreign data system,
Speaker 1: they can find emphasis on military systems and provide that
Speaker 1: surveillance to support US forces, which brings us to their
Speaker 1: secret rooms.
Speaker 3: I knew there was going to be a secret room.
Speaker 3: There's always a secret room.
Speaker 2: There really is there. And there is in fact a
Speaker 2: secret room in Pine Gap that no Australian employees can enter.
Speaker 2: What no Australian employees can enter, and it is specifically
Speaker 2: made for the United States military. It's the US cryptographic Room.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, according to this story, there's a
Speaker 1: secret room that the US allegedly can't enter, which is
Speaker 1: the Australian cryptographic room.
Speaker 2: See got to be fair.
Speaker 3: That does seem fair. But to what end? No, I
Speaker 3: don't even know. We'll get there.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you can never be too sure when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with spycraft like this.
Speaker 1: One Australian did make it in. Just one guy made
Speaker 1: it in once. So according to Professor Desbaal, there were
Speaker 1: at least two areas of the facility back in the
Speaker 1: day where Australian and nationals were not permitted entry. One
Speaker 1: was the US National Communications in cipher room and I
Speaker 1: guess how would be the cryptographic room that you mentioned
Speaker 1: that and the other is the quote key room where
Speaker 1: they do the final analysis of all incoming intelligence.
Speaker 2: As we mentioned before, it's the analysis sector.
Speaker 1: Right right right exactly. So there was a when he
Speaker 1: gave this testimony. It's interesting because there was a handwritten
Speaker 1: addendum that was sort of a response to it. And
Speaker 1: with that mention of the first room the communication and
Speaker 1: cipher room, somebody wrote correct, But Bill Hayden, when he
Speaker 1: was the shadow PM did enter once. We should pause
Speaker 1: for a second for our US listeners and walk through
Speaker 1: what a shadow PM is. As cool as it sounds.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's just shadow night. Really, it's when the moon
Speaker 2: cast shadows. That's what it's.
Speaker 3: That's what it's own.
Speaker 1: It was originally shadow BM, but they changed it.
Speaker 2: Is it Prime Minister?
Speaker 1: It is? It is so opposition parties in this kind
Speaker 1: of governmental structure create people who create positions that mirror
Speaker 1: what the dominant party is doing. So if there's a
Speaker 1: PM for dominant party, then the opposition party has their
Speaker 1: own PM called the shadow PM, and their job is
Speaker 1: to react to different policy and legislation, usually diss it
Speaker 1: and say, well, here's what I would have done, and
Speaker 1: that's why you should elect us.
Speaker 3: I'm going to make a rare sports analogy. Go sort
Speaker 3: of like guarding someone in basketball.
Speaker 1: That's a very good sports analogy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're mirroring.
Speaker 3: I like it. You got a bob when they bob,
Speaker 3: and weave when they weave, and hopefully it'll balance out,
Speaker 3: and you're sort of basically playing defense. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and that makes me think, you know,
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to extend that analogy a bit.
Speaker 1: I wonder if people would watch it in a sports game.
Speaker 1: If after the game, the you know, like the shadow
Speaker 1: goalie or something said this is what I would have done.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess that's what sports pundits already do. Right.
Speaker 1: It spent a lot of time saying, well, the one
Speaker 1: team got more points, and our strategy next time will
Speaker 1: be to get more points, and everyone's like.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, I get it.
Speaker 3: I personally love it when football commentators just keep referring
Speaker 3: to hold running the football. They just say, you're doing
Speaker 3: so They're doing such a good job of running with
Speaker 3: the football. It's just such a basic description of a thing.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, it's it. You know, they're two.
Speaker 2: There are two parts of the game here, boys. You
Speaker 2: gotta run with a football. You gotta throw the football.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you got to kick the football, but mostly is
Speaker 2: running with a football.
Speaker 3: These guys seem to think people are doing a good job.
Speaker 2: Of doing a great job running at a football.
Speaker 1: So what's strange? Is all right? So Bill Hayden's shadow PM,
Speaker 1: we know what that is now. He We did enter
Speaker 1: the area once officially, that first room, so one Australian
Speaker 1: has been in there that we know of. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Next to the description of the second room,
Speaker 1: there's handwriting that says all caps, no such area.
Speaker 2: And that was the final analysis room, the key room.
Speaker 1: So what's the truth for now? It's a mystery. But
Speaker 1: we do know what goes on internally in Pine Gap
Speaker 1: thanks to a guy's pretty much a recurring guest on
Speaker 1: our show now, or at least a recurring contributor. Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the American intelligence contractor who turned whistleblower several
Speaker 2: years ago. It's crazy how long it's been since Edward
Speaker 2: Snowden came out as a whistleblower. But he's saying that
Speaker 2: Pine Gap is described as playing a significant role in
Speaker 2: supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.
Speaker 3: But like, why wouldn't they be. I mean, given the
Speaker 3: size of the installation and the technology that they have.
Speaker 3: If they're doing that and we know they're doing that,
Speaker 3: surely this is part of it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess what he's saying is in addition to
Speaker 2: monitoring the satellites and looking at some of those communications,
Speaker 2: this facility is actually making real time contributions to places
Speaker 2: where battles are being fought.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, like the drone programs, M and other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So to crystallize that, the primary point the Snowden
Speaker 1: revelations are making is that while this was advertised as
Speaker 1: something to help monitor global peace through verifying arms control,
Speaker 1: did these countries really destroy these missiles? Are they really
Speaker 1: going to deploy a nuke? It turned out that they
Speaker 1: were going full snoopy and.
Speaker 2: Like here's where you should bomb?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Right. So, according to another guy, professor Richard Tanter,
Speaker 1: who's a Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute and
Speaker 1: Honorary Melbourne University Professor pine Gap also contributes data for
Speaker 1: CIA drone operations in countries in which the US is
Speaker 1: not at war, ah so Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth.
Speaker 1: It's also critically important in and I love the way
Speaker 1: he said this quote whatever the United States is going
Speaker 1: to do on the Korean Peninsula, it sounds like he
Speaker 1: doesn't know, We don't know, No one really.
Speaker 2: Knows whatever ends up happening.
Speaker 1: We should also point out that Professor Tanter himself is
Speaker 1: pretty biased against the base. He's president of the Australian
Speaker 1: Board of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and he
Speaker 1: wants the Aussie government to make a very clear headed
Speaker 1: assessment of whether it is in Australia's best interest to
Speaker 1: contribute data for drone assassinations and the targeting of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: And here's why this drone assassination, targeting of nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: stuff is important. First, to backtrack a little, it's clear
Speaker 1: that pine Gap is part of five Eyes in Project Echelon.
Speaker 1: We have previous episode on that the important TLDR or
Speaker 1: I guess TLDL for this purpose of this medium is
Speaker 1: that the important part here is that countries may have
Speaker 1: laws that do not allow them to invade your privacy
Speaker 1: if you are a citizen of that country, but they
Speaker 1: can make bilateral and multilateral agreements such that you know,
Speaker 1: like the Okay, let's say, the US or the NSA
Speaker 1: cannot legally monitor your text messages or figure out what
Speaker 1: kind of weird erotic fan figure into, but the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom can, and then they can share it with the US,
Speaker 1: so the US is getting the same stuff. There's just
Speaker 1: a little bit of legal chucking and driving there. That's
Speaker 1: the problem critics have with this place. The problem that
Speaker 1: doctor Tanter has with the leaked documents that were obtained
Speaker 1: by an outfit like the Intercept is that there's not
Speaker 1: only a huge transformation in pine gaps function in recent history,
Speaker 1: but these documents is paperwork He got provide authoritative confirmation
Speaker 1: that pine Gap is involved in the geolocation of cell
Speaker 1: phones used by people from the Pacific to the edge
Speaker 1: of Africa. And this shows us that pine Gap knows
Speaker 1: the geolocations. That means it derives the phone numbers, and
Speaker 1: it often derives the content of any communications, providing the
Speaker 1: ability for the American military to identify in place, in
Speaker 1: real time the location of targets of interest. So let's
Speaker 1: say somebody for some reason wants to send a drone
Speaker 1: out to assassinate.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 1: Sure, how to assassinate Matt. My phone's right here and
Speaker 1: his phone's right there. This this means that they can
Speaker 1: find map, not you and particular map, but they can
Speaker 1: find your phone. And that makes coordinating drones a controversial
Speaker 1: topic because they're pulling stuff from a SIM card, right,
Speaker 1: and maybe just for the purposes of targeting. They're not
Speaker 1: pulling the content of the conversation, text, calls, cute emoji
Speaker 1: that you send to and from that device. According to
Speaker 1: one drone operator, we're not going after people. We're going
Speaker 1: after the phones, and we're hoping that the person on
Speaker 1: the other end of that missile is the actual bad guy.
Speaker 1: So if you are in a war torn area, be
Speaker 1: careful what phones you pick up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just don't.
Speaker 1: And that's how that's how non combatants and innocent civilians
Speaker 1: have been murdered.
Speaker 3: Well, and also those drones there are kind of blood instruments.
Speaker 3: We don't really think we think of them, I think
Speaker 3: falsely as being some sort of like targeted super assassination machine.
Speaker 3: But it's like a radius, right, isn't.
Speaker 2: This a health fire missile or you know other classes
Speaker 2: of missiles that explode with a radius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're called tactical, but probably the best way
Speaker 1: to say it is comparatively tactic, you go, right.
Speaker 3: As opposed to like wiping out an entire city, right,
Speaker 3: maybe just wipe out a city block.
Speaker 1: Right, right, or a wedding, yeah yeah, instead of a
Speaker 1: building an entire skyscraper.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you look at some of this stuff on live
Speaker 2: leak that you can find with the targeted strikes with drones,
Speaker 2: I mean it's a depending on again, it just depends
Speaker 2: on the munitions. But one missile wouldn't take out a
Speaker 2: block at all. It would It would take out a
Speaker 2: room for sure, or like part of a building, part
Speaker 2: of a building.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, But that's that's the thing that becomes so
Speaker 1: divisive so quickly. So supporters of extra judicial killings involving
Speaker 1: UAVs will say that it is really the best, most
Speaker 1: safe way to preserve the lives of military members and
Speaker 1: to minimize the possibility of civilian casualties. Opponents will say no,
Speaker 1: because it's like the old autonomous vehicle argument, we're still
Speaker 1: we're still screwing up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and it doesn't have this Devil's Advocate doesn't
Speaker 3: have the potential to make you more trigger happy. If
Speaker 3: there's no human cost on our end, it makes you
Speaker 3: maybe more likely to roll the dice and give it
Speaker 3: a go. You're not having to send out your best
Speaker 3: men and women for the job.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's that's a good argument as well,
Speaker 1: because one of the balances for Western societies that you
Speaker 1: often hear touted is that the public is supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to react to this. It's often said that
Speaker 1: wars are more politically expensive for representative democracies and straight
Speaker 1: democracies because the people have a voice in government in
Speaker 1: this situation. Unfortunately, Australians largely do not. Because this may
Speaker 1: be now a joint United States and Australian base, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the drone work is coming from the
Speaker 1: US side, and we should establish highlight underline, italicized bold
Speaker 1: the following this issue with drone targeting and widespread vacuum
Speaker 1: cleaner approach surveillance. These are the criticisms of pine Gap
Speaker 1: that you will hear most often in legitimate journalism, right,
Speaker 1: these are the ones you will hear about in security journals,
Speaker 1: in viable publications and stuff. And there's good reason, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's real. And after we take a quick break,
Speaker 1: we'll examine some of the stranger stories about Pine Gap. Okay,
Speaker 1: so for some reason here in our notes we have
Speaker 1: this section titled Crazies Come out to Play. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to be in any way denigrading with that, it's
Speaker 1: just these are some pretty insane things. They're outlandish claims,
Speaker 1: now outlandish claims. They're so far outlandish that they're literally extraterrestrial. Oh,
Speaker 1: out of land. But it's no surprise that Pine Gap
Speaker 1: has become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories and excreasingly.
Speaker 1: I like the word you use, Matt, outlandish claims. We've
Speaker 1: got a few of the really out there ones. I
Speaker 1: don't know where do you guys want to go first?
Speaker 1: Do you want to do the UFO stuff first?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I know where you want to start? You know where
Speaker 2: we want to start?
Speaker 3: Boy? Do I ever? It's the secret Portal? Yes, I
Speaker 3: want to talk about portals. Have you guys ever seen
Speaker 3: a portal that's a Donny Darko reference? Apparently, this.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is one of the strangest conspiratorial claims about
Speaker 1: Pine Gap. The argument is that the CIA has has
Speaker 1: been conducting time travel experiments and super soldier programs in
Speaker 1: Pine Gap sort of because they're using portals to send
Speaker 1: people to Mars, wherein a lot of these things are
Speaker 1: conducted and we have to yeah, we have to treat
Speaker 1: this with a wheelbarrow assault. There's a fringe researcher named
Speaker 1: Richard Sowder who claimed to have spoken with a whistleblower
Speaker 1: named rich Hansen, and according to Sowder, Hanson is not
Speaker 1: only a part or was not only once a part
Speaker 1: of these ultra secret programs, but he left for Mars
Speaker 1: military service from a time portal in Australia.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is interesting because it is true that
Speaker 1: various people who did work for work at Pine Gap
Speaker 1: at one point or another did say that the bosses
Speaker 1: were CIA, So we know that part is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, portals, time portals.
Speaker 3: Let me have the plot of the movie Time Coop
Speaker 3: starring Jean Claude van Dam.
Speaker 2: Except this time on Mars, and this time it's personal
Speaker 2: on Mars. But I mean, okay, we don't want to
Speaker 2: I don't want to poke fun at it too much?
Speaker 2: What if rich Hansen is a real person and Soder
Speaker 2: was also genuine when he was telling the story. I
Speaker 2: mean there is, and there is an alternate universe where
Speaker 2: this occurs some other dimension.
Speaker 1: If you believe in the multi dimensional stuff and think
Speaker 1: for this setup, Matt, Because it is true that Soder,
Speaker 1: by the way, also claims in his book Underground, Bases
Speaker 1: and Tunnels that the base, pine Gap or rainfall operates
Speaker 1: in alternate dimensions. So exist a multiple planes of reality
Speaker 1: at once.
Speaker 2: But see if if multiverse theories are correct, then isn't
Speaker 2: everything existing in multiplicity at all?
Speaker 3: Not the whole point? No, I think what he means
Speaker 3: there is that it operates section you can reach through
Speaker 3: and you can, you know, pick up your screwdriver from
Speaker 3: this other dimension, bring it back over to this dimension,
Speaker 3: or step through to what end? I guess are you
Speaker 3: affecting the timeline in ways that military militaristically tactical ways.
Speaker 1: Well, so, yeah, good question, Matt. I think you're you're
Speaker 1: going even larger. You going to the meta level, which
Speaker 1: is that if all if if universes are infinite, and
Speaker 1: all possible things exist in some some sort of reality timeline,
Speaker 1: branch sphere, what have you. Then there would be one
Speaker 1: or many where this thing is actually true, and we
Speaker 1: just happen to be living in one where that's not
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 2: Oh did I say.
Speaker 1: In your mouth at that last? But well, here's the
Speaker 1: problem with that, which is a very familiar problem to
Speaker 1: anybody who reads about this sort of stuff. If it
Speaker 1: is an ultra secret program and we live in a
Speaker 1: reality where a very public Washington Post journalist just very
Speaker 1: publicly got dismembered for not even saying horrible things about
Speaker 1: the Saudi crown prince and the US government, then how
Speaker 1: are these people still alive?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How in the holy kangaroo are these people still alive?
Speaker 1: Blowing up the truth, exposing the hidden secrets of reality
Speaker 1: tripping time traveling. CIA financed Nietzsche ubermansh Out on Mars,
Speaker 1: so you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So again, that's underground bases in tunnels, a book
Speaker 2: that you can find somewhere at some time in some
Speaker 2: dimension in this dimension.
Speaker 1: Maybe all right, act now before the Mandela effect kicks in, right,
Speaker 1: So okay, so you got through that. That's probably one
Speaker 1: of the strangest and craziest, but one that has I
Speaker 1: think many more people taking it seriously. Is the association
Speaker 1: of pine Gap with the activity of unidentified flying objects,
Speaker 1: and it dates way back to just a few years
Speaker 1: after things really got rolling there in nineteen seventy This
Speaker 1: is true.
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy three, there was a cartographer who reported
Speaker 3: seeing a vertical shaft of blue light, very very blindingly
Speaker 3: bright vertical shaft of blue light in front of him
Speaker 3: just after the stroke of midnight. And it was clearly
Speaker 3: the source of this was the base. So he decided
Speaker 3: to take a look, take a closer look, and he
Speaker 3: moved his vehicle to the base a little bit closer,
Speaker 3: and he saw a large, gleaming disk hovering about a
Speaker 3: thousand feet from the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he kept watching it. I guess security must
Speaker 1: have been less tight at that time, Yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: there for a while. He watches it for about half
Speaker 1: an hour, and during this time he sees another beam
Speaker 1: of blue light emanating from the UFO toward the ground
Speaker 1: where it's hitting several of those ray domes, those golf
Speaker 1: ball things, right, and it's the light is hitting those directly.
Speaker 1: And then the light cease and another light beam appears,
Speaker 1: and this time from the ray domes to the craft
Speaker 1: and this goes back and forth, this exchange of light
Speaker 1: bright burst again for about half an hour, and then
Speaker 1: the disc begins to spin more and more quickly. Flash boom,
Speaker 1: it shoots into the sky and disappears.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 2: Now, I have a couple of questions about that one
Speaker 2: that we cannot answer right now. Okay, because I imagine
Speaker 2: it being more of a laser beam of light. If
Speaker 2: there's some kind of I'm just imagining that. It's completely true,
Speaker 2: there's some form of energy or communications transfer occurring in
Speaker 2: some way. That's why you would have a beam of
Speaker 2: light from one of those things. That's the only thing
Speaker 2: I can imagine, because if not.
Speaker 1: Is it refueling.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, but here's the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing, Like, Okay, how could you discern that the light
Speaker 2: was coming from the ground up to the craft?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It would be if it's just a splash of light essentially,
Speaker 2: you know, like like a spotlight or something, you would
Speaker 2: be able to tell, Oh, it's more centered on the
Speaker 2: on the ground, and then it's a little wider up
Speaker 2: top near wherever the craft is a thousand feet up.
Speaker 2: It would occur that kind of light shaping would occur.
Speaker 2: If it was just a light, if it was a
Speaker 2: laser beam, how could you tell which way it was
Speaker 2: trapped because it's incidant.
Speaker 3: Speed of light, So a good question.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing just makes me go, okay, maybe weather.
Speaker 1: Balloon, right, Maybe it was something that he saw they
Speaker 1: just didn't understand. Quite possibly. Well, in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: then let's look at this one. There was a pilot
Speaker 1: and several passengers on a private plane near Pine Gaps airspace,
Speaker 1: which is obviously restricted airspace, and they all said, hey,
Speaker 1: here's a cool idea. Let's try to sneak a peek
Speaker 1: at all the weird stuff they have to be doing
Speaker 1: down there Pine Gap.
Speaker 2: All right, mate, let's do it.
Speaker 1: And so out of nowhere, this big, wide object appears
Speaker 1: to take off from the base below them at a
Speaker 1: breakneck speed. And as soon as the witnesses were able
Speaker 1: to focus on this thing that was taking off and
Speaker 1: it vanished into the sky. The pilot made a report
Speaker 1: of this sighting as soon as they landed, and the
Speaker 1: plane was fine, obviously, thankfully, both the pilot and all
Speaker 1: of the passengers were asked to wait for investigators who
Speaker 1: were going to come and get some more details from them.
Speaker 1: But when the investigators show up again, according to the story,
Speaker 1: they told the witnesses that they were for They men
Speaker 1: in black them they so, I forget everything you've seen
Speaker 1: about this. Don't talk about anything. You saw nothing.
Speaker 2: Do you think they flashed them?
Speaker 1: That would be cool, That would be cool. But then
Speaker 1: how would this story have gotten out?
Speaker 2: Oh, you're right on one person wasn't looking directly.
Speaker 1: I always wondered if that would work in men and planet.
Speaker 1: But then we have more reports of UFOs and Pine Gap.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty four there were five anonymous witnesses who
Speaker 2: said they saw something else. It was another sighting there
Speaker 2: at Pine Gap. They they wanted to be anonymous due
Speaker 2: to their apparent positions within the Australia government. You know,
Speaker 2: it's one of those things, those situations where you can't
Speaker 2: prove that these people are part of the Australian government,
Speaker 2: but they said they were, and that's why they want
Speaker 2: to be anonymous. So there's let's say the leader of
Speaker 2: this group had been receiving all kinds of reports about
Speaker 2: UFO sightings just above Pine Gap or near Pine Gap
Speaker 2: in the weeks leading up to this thing that would
Speaker 2: become their encounter this night to this moment. One message
Speaker 2: that was received by this leader of the group was
Speaker 2: a little more mysterious than the rest, and it advised
Speaker 2: that something big was going to happen at Pine Gap
Speaker 2: in the upcoming days. So guess what they did. They're
Speaker 2: five of them, and they split themselves into two groups
Speaker 2: using two different vehicles, and they approached the base from
Speaker 2: two different positions.
Speaker 3: I'm smart.
Speaker 2: That's very smart. Good idea. All right, now, let's keep
Speaker 2: going down there. Once they get there, they essentially start
Speaker 2: staking out the grounds, which is again we're talking about
Speaker 2: a massive campus campus is the right word for it,
Speaker 2: massive compound, and that's only five people to cover that
Speaker 2: with only two vehicles. But anyway, they're just gonna check
Speaker 2: it out for as long as they can. They stay
Speaker 2: there for days. The first three days there's absolutely no
Speaker 2: activity that they notice, at least anything of note. But
Speaker 2: on the fourth night everything changed when several large military
Speaker 2: vehicles started ferrying all these large groups of workers in
Speaker 2: coveralls to the large rate domes, the big golf ball
Speaker 2: looking things. So they're like, huh, I wonder what those
Speaker 2: guys are doing.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 2: Then things changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as this was all taking place, as this brew
Speaker 1: haha haha, I imagine a pillar of light shot upward
Speaker 1: from the ground to the sky. They don't specify whether
Speaker 1: it's shot out from one of these raate domes or dishes.
Speaker 1: A strange cloud was forming high above the base around
Speaker 1: this pillar of light, and when it vanished, they saw
Speaker 1: five strange craft making their way to the base, according
Speaker 1: to the report, for diamond shaped UFOs and one of
Speaker 1: a quote cigar shape, which the people at Moufon when
Speaker 1: we visited move On a while back, talked about it
Speaker 1: seems to be a relatively common shape, at least in
Speaker 1: their experience. Once these craft were over the base, the
Speaker 1: pillar of light appeared again, this time from the craft
Speaker 1: above to the grounds below. So we see that repeat, right,
Speaker 1: almost like communication. And this went on for several minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like the visual analog of a dial up modem.
Speaker 1: Sound do you guys remember that, Paul, Can we get
Speaker 1: a sound cue of a dial up modem? Please? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like that, but with lights, it's like an electronic dolphin.
Speaker 1: And this exchange went on for a while, and the
Speaker 1: strange cloud was still coalescing, and then like that they vanished.
Speaker 1: And these are just a few of the UFO reports
Speaker 1: originating in Pine Gap. They're not even the most famous.
Speaker 1: Several of the most well known reports include reliable witnesses
Speaker 1: like police officers, multiple groups of people from differing vantage
Speaker 1: points seeing the same thing. And then this consistent report
Speaker 1: of hidden doors. Did you guys see anything about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Again, these secret areas become a very common thing when
Speaker 2: you're talking about Pine Pine Gap, These secret doors become
Speaker 2: a real thing. It's very common occurrence when people are
Speaker 2: talking about seeing things at Pine Gap, either doors to
Speaker 2: secret places or see like you're saying, secret doors that
Speaker 2: just exist within a wall somewhere or within part of
Speaker 2: a base that you would never imagine that there's a
Speaker 2: door there.
Speaker 1: And we know, I mean it makes sense to have
Speaker 1: those sorts of entrances and exits built into secret places, right.
Speaker 2: Especially when there's a large underground area.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look no further than
Speaker 1: Norad or that hotel that turned out to secretly be
Speaker 1: a bunker for senators here in the States, which everyone
Speaker 1: thought we were crazy when we mentioned it at first.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, but there's a counterpoint to these UFO reports,
Speaker 1: and it's the one. Okay. So one of the big
Speaker 1: theories about unidentified flying objects, which, of course, as we
Speaker 1: said before, not necessarily extraterrestrial. One of the big arguments
Speaker 1: is that these things are man made technology or human
Speaker 1: made technology that the public just doesn't know about yet,
Speaker 1: and that these things are a tremendous tactical advantage to
Speaker 1: whichever country possesses them or whichever private company multinational possesses them.
Speaker 1: That leads us to ask, well, how close are the
Speaker 1: US and Australia really.
Speaker 3: That's been my question for the start. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 3: it feels like they're giving up a whole lot of
Speaker 3: their own sovereignty, you know, to have this facility that
Speaker 3: largely benefits us, right and not them, And if anything
Speaker 3: put to their country in the line of fire.
Speaker 1: Potentially, yeah, absolutely, If there really is to go back
Speaker 1: to this question, if there really is some sort of
Speaker 1: top secret mind blowing flight or anti gravity technology, something
Speaker 1: that would change the world were to ever come out,
Speaker 1: why would the US place it in a foreign country,
Speaker 1: regardless of how friendly their relations may be at some
Speaker 1: given time.
Speaker 2: What if the Australian government were the ones who were
Speaker 2: first contacted and the United States placed the facility there
Speaker 2: and began, you know, hey, we've got the biggest military,
Speaker 2: We're the ones who need to be handling this kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And then it became a joint operation, but
Speaker 2: the Australians were always the first.
Speaker 1: I like that has like a ring of patriotism too
Speaker 1: for Australians there. But this is okay. If we're speculating,
Speaker 1: this is something that seemed that gets me really quickly
Speaker 1: into the realm of science fiction. If we wanted to
Speaker 1: go profoundly deep into the rabbit hole, we could speculate
Speaker 1: that maybe there was some sort of geographical constraint that
Speaker 1: meant the base due to its extra dimensional properties, or
Speaker 1: something had to be built in that specific spot for
Speaker 1: some specific reason. There is a porto of Lamars, but
Speaker 1: it only occurs there because of some I don't know,
Speaker 1: gobbledegook pseudo science electromagnetic quark superpositions, because of the dream time,
Speaker 1: because of the dream which we originally recognized as the
Speaker 1: dream time. Oh my god, we're writing the movie now,
Speaker 1: Stargate Aussigate. I'm a oh, Alice Gate, Alice Gate.
Speaker 2: I want to go down that rabbit hole further. But
Speaker 2: I think we need to wrap this up, gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's end on the present day. As of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, which is the closest we could get to
Speaker 1: the present day for public reporting, Pine Gap is still expanding.
Speaker 1: It's got a total of about thirty eight radio dishes,
Speaker 1: many covered in those golf balls we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: Those things help them.
Speaker 2: It's weather work better.
Speaker 3: It's just weatherproofing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the official explanation. Yeah, interesting, just to
Speaker 1: keep the rust off. The North Korean situation is one
Speaker 1: of the most crucial because of the base's proximity to
Speaker 1: the Korean peninsula and therefore the proximity of Australia. The
Speaker 1: city of Darwin and Northern Territory is about thirty six
Speaker 1: hundred miles from Pyeongyang with a and that puts a
Speaker 1: within range of an ICBM or intercontinental ballistic missile.
Speaker 2: OOH, which begs the question, are their ICBMs out there
Speaker 2: in Pine Gap somewhere? Are there silos?
Speaker 3: Hmmm?
Speaker 1: I wonder you think they will put all their eggs
Speaker 1: one basket like that.
Speaker 2: And why would you do that when you've just got
Speaker 2: supercarriers and carriers everywhere.
Speaker 1: Plenty of other military bases right, yeah, and subs and
Speaker 1: whatever else. And the problem here is if we were
Speaker 1: at a war game a bit, if the US did
Speaker 1: become involved in a hot war with the dprkade Democratic
Speaker 1: People's Republic of Korea, then Australia could quickly would almost
Speaker 1: certainly be quickly dragged into this conflict. And despite being
Speaker 1: isolated pretty far inland, Pine Gap would be instrumental in
Speaker 1: the informational aspects of the US side of the war.
Speaker 1: But also it would have a huge target on its
Speaker 1: back because if you blow that thing up, you're poking
Speaker 1: an eye, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, That's my question, Like, how does it behoove
Speaker 3: the Australian government, who aren't even allowed into the US
Speaker 3: cryptography room, you know, it seems like they're kept at
Speaker 3: arm's length about a lot of the stuff. What do
Speaker 3: we have on them or what do they have on us?
Speaker 1: Or what where?
Speaker 3: That's that's my fascination with this whole story.
Speaker 1: What makes it symbiosis rather than parasites exactly?
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, given what I know about
Speaker 3: our country and our tendency that maybe strong arm less
Speaker 3: powerful countries, I would tend to think it might be
Speaker 3: more the parasitic type of relationship.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the deal, where I would I think it
Speaker 2: would be difficult for you to name twenty places in
Speaker 2: the planet other countries that don't have a US military
Speaker 2: base in the exactly. Yeah, well, I mean, but I
Speaker 2: mean twenty, Like, yes, we can name a few that
Speaker 2: we know for sure, but but in most places there
Speaker 2: is a US military presence, and it's just how it is.
Speaker 2: In this case, maybe it's even a little less intrusive
Speaker 2: because it's intelligence collection.
Speaker 3: And it's way out of the way, and it's also
Speaker 3: there's a visible, you know, police state occupation of any kind.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just it's a research facility. It's a
Speaker 3: you know, essentially on paper.
Speaker 1: And also it's well it's not a reason it is
Speaker 1: on paper maybe, but I don't know if it can
Speaker 1: even be called that anymore because the cover story got
Speaker 1: blown out of the water so hard. I am going
Speaker 1: to take take you up on that, mat. I'm going
Speaker 1: to come back. I'm going to come back more back
Speaker 1: in the studio and see if I can find twenty
Speaker 1: twenty countries that don't have US basis. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can.
Speaker 2: I want to say there are several in Africa that don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they have. But they have got outposts of
Speaker 1: outsourced military forces, which I think we should count. So this,
Speaker 1: this is fascinating because it does. It's a huge question.
Speaker 1: To your point, Nol. Probably one of the best arguments
Speaker 1: for it is going to be the idea of mutual
Speaker 1: security preventing perhaps the rise of a new hedgemon in
Speaker 1: the region, namely China. So maybe Australia is of the
Speaker 1: mind that you already have a good relationship with the US.
Speaker 1: Let's keep that going. I don't know, you know, it
Speaker 1: goes to speculation. No, it is true that it is
Speaker 1: true that there are supporters of Pine Gap in Australia
Speaker 1: and their primary, the primary thing they say is don't
Speaker 1: believe all the conspiratorial stuff, all the all the alarmist hoopla.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is that this is good
Speaker 1: for us and it helps keep our country safer. So
Speaker 1: we do wanna depict that part, just to be fair. Also,
Speaker 1: on a pop culture note, if you want to see
Speaker 1: stories that take place in Pine Gap fictional stories, check
Speaker 1: out the new series I think it's on Netflix. It's
Speaker 1: about Pine Gap and it's called as we like to say,
Speaker 1: on the show in a burst of creativity Pine Gap.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm watching the trailer right now. It looks it
Speaker 2: looks like a lot of fun, does it is?
Speaker 1: I wonder what the tone is. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: like twenty four or Quantico or something.
Speaker 2: It feels very much like one of those police procedur
Speaker 2: rules kind of thing with a little more style.
Speaker 3: Maybe, Oh, thank god, does.
Speaker 2: Every Oh it's got an American flag in an Australian flag,
Speaker 2: it says Pine Gap. It's got a whole team.
Speaker 1: I like it. Do do they look like they're legitimate
Speaker 1: intelligence workers or do they all look like waiters from
Speaker 1: Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: They look like from us.
Speaker 3: Of course they're waiters from Los That's amazing. So so
Speaker 3: so this this is literally like a like a Law
Speaker 3: and Order n CIS type situation, but headquartered in Pine Gap.
Speaker 3: And it's like an Adventure of the Week kind of story.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, is it more like X Files?
Speaker 2: I don't know nothing about. I just watched the trailer
Speaker 2: without sound and it it looked like that.
Speaker 3: Well it exists.
Speaker 1: Watch the Can you watch the show without sound without
Speaker 1: captions and maybe come back and tell us what your
Speaker 1: take is.
Speaker 3: Yes, please.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's that's where we are now. These
Speaker 1: do not answer all of the questions about pine Gap,
Speaker 1: but we do want to We do want to thank
Speaker 1: all of our listeners out in Australia, in that part
Speaker 1: of the world who said, hey, our fellow listeners would
Speaker 1: like to hear more about this, because I don't think
Speaker 1: it gets a lot of ink here in the United States.
Speaker 1: And what better way to end the episode than leaving
Speaker 1: the last word to Professor Tanter.
Speaker 3: It goes as follows. Quote. Pine Gap literally hardwires us
Speaker 3: into the activities of the American military, and in some
Speaker 3: cases that means we will cop the consequences. Like it
Speaker 3: or not. Pine Gap will be contributing hugely in real
Speaker 3: time to those operations as well as in preparation for them.
Speaker 3: So whether or not the Australian government thinks that an
Speaker 3: attack on North Korea is either justified or a wise
Speaker 3: and sensible move, we will be part of that will
Speaker 3: be culpable in the terms of the consequences. Geez, there
Speaker 3: you have it.
Speaker 1: You have it.
Speaker 3: I know the score.
Speaker 1: Something to think on. So thank you everyone for giving
Speaker 1: us a listen. We would like to hear your opinion.
Speaker 1: Maybe not just of Pine Gap, but your opinion of
Speaker 1: US military basis on foreign soil anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, do you live in a different country where
Speaker 2: there's a US military base, what are your experiences with that?
Speaker 1: And is it a joint operation in the way that
Speaker 1: this one is or is it solely US run sort
Speaker 1: of like Guintanamo. Let us know. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. On Facebook especially, we are
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. That's our community page. If
Speaker 1: you haven't checked it out yet, hop on, we have
Speaker 1: some We have some pretty good memes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, good memes, and even better people are contributing
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: And oh, by the way, if you if you've ever
Speaker 2: had any kind of unidentified flying object or submerged submerged
Speaker 2: object or any other experience like that, please let us know.
Speaker 2: We'd love love to hear your story and hopefully incorporate
Speaker 2: it into an episode at some point. So yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
Speaker 2: any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
Speaker 2: into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 2: One of the best is to give us a call.
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK If you
Speaker 2: don't want to do that, you can send us a
Speaker 2: good old fashioned email.
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