Target Finding for the Empire: The Pine Gap Joint Defense Facility, America’s Spy Hub in the Heart of Australia
Global Research, August 21, 2017
“The tasking we get at Pine Gap is look for this particular
signal coming out of this particular location. If you find it, report
it, and if you find anything else of interest, report that as well.” David Rosenberg, former NSA Team leader, weapon’s analysis at Pine Gap, Aug 20, 2017
At times, there is a lag between the anticipation and the
revelation, the assumption that an image might be as gruesome, or
perhaps enlightening, as was first assumed. Nothing in the latest Edward Snowden
show suggests anything revelatory. They knew it, as did we: that the US
military satellite base spat on a bit of Australian dust in a part of
the earth that would not make Mars seem out of place, is highly engaged.
Radio National’s Background Briefing made something of a
splash on Sunday, with some assistance from the Edward Snowden National
Security Agency trove.[1] The documents do much in terms of filling in
assumptions on the geolocating role of the facility, much of which had
already had some measure of plausibility through the work of Richard Tanter and the late Des Ball.
As Tanter puts it,
“Those documents provide authoritative confirmation that Pine Gap is involved, for example, in the geolocation of cell phones used by people throughout the world, from the Pacific to the edge of Africa.”[2]
“NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia,” by way of example, discloses the NSA term for the Pine Gap facility, ironically termed RAINFALL. “Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap (RAINFALL) [is] a site which plays a significant role in supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.”
Another document supplies some detail as to the role of the facility,
confirming that it does beyond the mundane task of merely collecting
signals. It also does the dirty work analysing them.
“RAINFALL detects, collects, records, processes, analyses and reports on PROFORMA [data on surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter aircraft] signals collected from tasked target entities.”
Pine Gap has always generated a gaping accountability gap of its own,
and these Snowden treats affirm the point. Rather than being an entity
accountable to the queries and concerns of the local indigenous
population; rather than supplying the local members of parliament from
the Senate and the lower house briefings about its activities, Pine Gap
is hived off from usual channels, a reminder about how truly
inconsequential democracy is in the Canberra-Washington alliance.
Pine Gap has always had its platoons of unflinching apologists, and a
common theme, apart from the worn notion that the US security umbrella
prevails with fortitude, is that the base is genuinely good. In a
Central Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence Daily (Feb 13,
1987), the agency notes with approval the forthcoming Australian Defence
white paper indicating strong “support or US-Australian joint defence
facilities.”[3]
The publication would dispel any wobbliness on Australian military
commitments, a point alluded to by the then minister for defence, Kim Beazley. A further point was to note the “defensive” nature of the facilities, opposition to those “left-wing groups to the contrary.”
So what if Australians in the Northern Territory are ignorant that
the communications facility pinpoints targets for drone strikes? We can
be assured that these are legitimate, vetted and, when struck,
obliterated with fastidious care.
Much of this dressed up bunk is based on the notion, sacrosanct as it
is, that drone strikes work. They certain do on a few levels – in
galvanising more recruits and liquidating more civilians. Like any
military weapon, the hygienic notion of the engineered kill, the
surgical operation on the battlefield, is fantasy. If the target so
happens to be embedded in an urban setting, one filled with
non-combatants, the moral calculus becomes less easy to measure.[4]
The other through-the-glass-darkly feature of the Pine Gap facility
lies not only in its geolocation means, but its value as a target.
Having such conspicuous yet inscrutable tenants places Australia in
harm’s way, a loud invitation to assault.
The CIA was already cognisant of this point in 1987, identifying
awareness on the part of Australian defence officials that “the joint
facilities would be attacked in a US-Soviet nuclear exchange but argues
that removal of the US presence would increase the likelihood of
superpower conflict.”[5] The end of the Cold War does little to dispel
the significance of Pine Gap as a target of considerable interest.
Where to, then? A firm insistence, for one, that Australia detach
itself from the tit of empire, the bosom of Washington’s military
industrial complex. This requires something virtually outlawed in
Canberra: courage. It has fallen upon such delightfully committed if
motley outfits as the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network
(IPAN), an organisation of calm determination committed to seeing
Australia as something more than the grand real estate for empire.
With each disclosure, with each revelation about Australia’s all too
willing complicity in facilitating strikes against foreign targets, many
in countries Australians would barely know, the will to change may be
piqued. They most certainly will once Australian officials face their
first war crimes charges over the use of drones, aiding and abetting
their US counterparts in the whole damn awful enterprise.[6]
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Notes
No comments:
Post a Comment