April 2, 2024 • 56 mins
Located just a few miles away from Alice Springs, Australia, Pine Gap is known as one of the country's hotbeds of surveillance and secrecy -- but what exactly goes on there? What is it these over 800 Australian and U.S. employees do every day? Join the guys as they delve into the fact and fiction surrounding Australia's Pine Gap.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show, Conspiracy Realist. Our classic this
week is for our friends down South, way down South,
not quite Antarctica, a little bit further north, Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh, this is Pine Gap, guys. I think, if I'm
not mistaken, this was turned into an entire spy series
on television called Pine Gap. I think it was after
it was made to a TV show after we covered it.
But it's such a secretive thing. What does it remind
you of? What's the Is there an American equivalent?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Uh hororpera of fifty one? It's like in that sort
of echelon. Yeah, conspiratorial locations, but Pine Gap is unique
and Pine Gap at the time in twenty eighteen, it
employed over eight hundred different people and officially no one
(00:53):
knew what it did.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
All right, Well, let's infiltrate the gap.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
From UFOs to psychic powers, government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Mission Control dec At. Most importantly, you are you,
you are here that makes this stuff. They don't want
you to know. This episode in particular, has been a
long time in coming, because, as you might already know,
we spend a lot of time on this show researching
military bases or mysterious compounds across the planet. And while
(01:48):
we often travel outside of the bounds of these United States,
we tend to focus most often on facilities here because hey,
it's our home turf, and honestly, that means that we're
gonna hear about places in the US or associate with
US way more often than say, a secret base in Pakistan.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, in public documents that we get access to generally
are about stuff that happens on our turf.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
We need way more of foreign intelligence agency connections. So
on the off chance that you're listening and you feel
like you catch a wild hair, please go ahead email us,
look us up, give us.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Those military connections.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yes, like some of our fellow listeners did after we
did an episode on Australia recently and someone wrote to
us about this very topic.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I mean, someone else sent us a koala bear.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
No, you should only say on purpose.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Like got they got mad because we call them?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Did we explain that on air.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I don't think we did.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, So everyone in the US is very much aware
that koala are marsupials. The most common marsupials for us
here in the States are possums, And for the record,
I feel that our country got very much short changed
that in that regard those nasty tailed things.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Here's the thing too, on that one, I think I
was the most egregious offender of you having the bear
suffix on that. And that's just a thing I do.
Sometimes I call Matt Mattie bear, sometimes I call Ben
Benny bear, and I call my kid her name bear.
So you know, it's just a thing I do. It's
a sign of affection and that I think something is cute, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
What's true is that it is koala. Bear is just
the term that people in the US use. It's not
It's clearly not accurate. But we do want to set
the record straight. We are surprisingly up to date on
what is and is not a marsupial and have been
for years now. Speaking of for years now, your fellow
listeners have been asking us to dig into a strange
(03:47):
story of another compound on the other side of the world.
A secretive access restricted facility, called by some and mainly
by critics, the most important US intelligence operation on foreign soil.
Welcome friends and neighbors to Pine Gap.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yes, and our story begins in this small little town
called Alice Springs, which only has about twenty four thousand people,
but it's the second largest population in Australia's Northern Territory,
where obviously by those numbers there aren't many people.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yes, Sydney, this is not. Alice Springs is located in
something called the Red Center. It's pretty far inland. It's
surrounded by different deserts, scrubby grasslands, and nowadays its major
official industry is tourism. Wo Like any town, Alice Springs
is not perfect. It has a pretty significant itinerant population,
(04:45):
and there's a lot of racial tension, but its soldiers on. Nonetheless,
our story kicks in the high gear. If you travel
about ten fifteen minutes south of Alice Springs, you will
see some signs saying no more photographs, turn around immediately
restricted area. And if you ignore those and somehow get
past the security, you'll find a compound code named all
(05:08):
capital letters Rainfall.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I have heard also that you will be promptly arrested
and find about three thousand dollars. Wow, it's true for
your trouble.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
It's like the same thing that happens if you try
and get into Area fifty one.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, the Groom Lake area. It's interesting. One of my
friends who works at our local watering hole, was out
exploring this area and he and his ridiculous brother had
the amazing idea of trying to drive as close as
they could. Did you hear this story off air day?
I tell you he got to He got close enough
(05:48):
to see some signs, and then in the distance, on
an abutting cliff, he saw the glint of a sniper
rifle and then two trucks came out and started chasing
them down and almost ran them off the road, just
as an intimidation tactic. Hikes and it worked, and it worked.
(06:09):
He's probably not going to go back now. This place,
cod named Rainfall, is remote. It's in the heart of
the outback. It's surrounded on all sides by barren land
in a cartoonishly high amount of surveillance. As you said, Noel,
this is a place where you will be aggressively.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Deterred and monitored, which is appropriate and will come into play.
I also just want to point out early on this
is also probably one of the most cliche Australian features
that you'll ever hear anybody talk about is kangaroos, and
apparently this particular location is just lousy with them. But
most other more urban parts of Australia you're not just
(06:49):
gonna see kangaroos hopping out of the woodwork, but here
you are very likely to because of the climb in
the desert and the wide open spaces and all that.
And I just want to give a shout out to
this podcast that I learned a lot from called Weird
Crap in Australia from the Modern Mountdown Network. So shout
out to those guys because they did a good job
talking about this episode and have with kind of like
an insider's perspective, which will also come into play later.
(07:10):
We had crap in AUSTRALAI yet did good Ben. Thanks
and check out their Patreon because I think they want
some money to buy some mikes and nice mics are important.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
There you go, So back to Rainfall. This base is
reached by traveling down a dead end road marked with
as we said earlier, signs warning away visitors without security clearance.
The only way to really see this compound is by
air or by climbing the nearby ridges of the MacDonald
(07:39):
Ranges that surround the site. What do you see when
you happen to fly over this thing and peek out
the window at just the right time.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
There are these big white domes that you've seen before,
probably at least in pictures or in spy movies. They're
called geodesic domes, and they just look almost like a
golf ball, a really big golf ball, like Epcot. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Ooh, like Epcot, like Epcot with a less detailed texture.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, definitely. Well you'll see those. That's the biggest thing
you're gonna notice.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
And those golf balls. We'll get into this a bit later.
They are covers for radar dishes, which you know, is
a little bit anti climactic, you know, because there's so
many fun things that could be in a giant golf ball.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's what they say is in there.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
That's thought lots of smaller golf balls.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Officially, this site is known by the tremendously sexy name
the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap. As of now, it
employs well over eight hundred Australian and American employees. They
used to be primarily American back in the day, but
there was a little bit of a hubbub about that.
According to leaked US intelligence documents, when asked what happens
(08:57):
at the site, people should say its purpose is to.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Quote support national security of both the US and Australia.
The facility contributes to verifying arms control and disarmament agreements
and monitoring military developments.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, okay, As you can imagine, folks, the sheer size
of this enterprise makes it a crucial part of the
local economy. But it brings us to a bigger question,
how did this thing get here? The story starts on
or around December ninth, nineteen sixty six. Well started before then, obviously,
(09:36):
but on December ninth of that year, Australia and Uncle
Sam signed a treaty agreeing to establish a quote Joint
Defense Space Research Facility.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Oh it sounds so cool.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, it's a pretty vague term, but on the offset
it does sound neat right. I mean, who's against space research?
I think we can all agree we need to learn
more about space. The facility started off with two antenna
so it looked to be a pretty small operation. And
the remote nature of this site, while it makes it
very inconvenient to travel to, it didn't strike anyone as
(10:11):
particularly strange, because it's pretty common to build space research
facilities off the beaten path. You know, if you have
an observatory, you want to avoid light pollution. If you
have a radio telescope, you can sometimes shut legally shut
down all radio sources if you're in West Virginia right
for thousands of miles. So of course you don't want
(10:33):
this thing to be in downtown Sydney or Melbourne or something,
which is how you pronounce it. But by nineteen seventy,
over four hundred American families had moved to the area,
and operations, whatever they were at the time, space research,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Began space military research.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Space.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
We call it space search for short space search. And
this base is pretty quiet, at least in the international
sphere and the public eye. It doesn't get a ton
of scrutiny. It grows in size and scope quietly, quietly, quietly,
staying pun intended, generally under the radar until nineteen ninety nine.
(11:20):
What happened in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, there was this thing called the Ausi Senate Committee
on Treaties, and there were some gentlemen who were asked about,
you know, what is this facility? What does it do?
Those gentlemen were part of the Australian government. They said
no when asked to give details on you know, whatever
this treaty was or whatever it is that they're doing.
(11:44):
There's an Ossi Senate Committee on Treaties and the government
said no, basically, we will not tell you.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Right, which happens sometimes with our Senate and their committees
when they ask questions about intelligence agents.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
We can have a closed session maybe and we can
discuss with one person or another.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
But right, we can preapprove the questions. Yes, right. So
the committee calls on a very interesting character in this story,
a professor named des Ball, which I think is a
great name.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, it's probably the best name we're going to run
into in this show.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
It sounds like a real ladies man.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So des Ball, doctor des Ball, and Professor des Ball
is an intelligence expert who's had a real, a real
brinkle in his undies about Pine Gap four years and
years and years. He's been a huge opponent of it.
They called on him to explain exactly what Pine Gap did.
(12:42):
According to professor Ball, the compound had by this point
nineteen ninety nine expanded and now it housed about eighteen
different antenna instead of two, and the staff had increased
from four hundred in the early sixties to six hundred
in the nineties. And furthermore, he says to these folks,
you know what's eventually going to happen if no one
(13:03):
stops this. It's going to employ over one thousand people.
And I hate to clue you in Senate Committee, but
space research does not even begin to cover what these
people actually do at Pine Gap.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And we're going to jump into that right after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
So, according to des Ball, doctor des Baal ladies Man,
pine Gap was monitoring things in space more than space itself.
M So maybe like other satellites. Yes, in fact, exactly that,
other satellites, monitoring spy satellites.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
And he outlined four potential categories of types of signals
that were to be collected at Pine Gap. And these
are quite broad.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, telemetry from advanced weapons development. We're talking ballistic missiles,
we're talking all kinds of other things used for arms
control verification, which is kind of a thing that we've
kind of know. That's what they're doing. That's what they
say in the mission statement up above. They're looking at
signals from anti missile anti aircraft radars, transmissions that intended
(14:23):
for other communication satellites, which could be a whole host
of things nowadays or even in those days, and also
described the operational area as containing three different sections.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Oh oh, he also mentioned microwave emissions.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Oh yeah, microwave emissions. Forgot about those long long distance
telephone calls. Are you making some of those? Well, pine
gaps probably listening.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Well, here's a thing too. We always talk about the
lag with like technology that the military is aware of
versus like when it kind of trickles into the public
sphere or whatever. So he got to wonder if like
they were laying the groundwork for monitoring technology that wasn't
even in use yet by consumers.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
All forms of technology, purpet perpet.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, So, as you're saying, METS satellite station keeping section,
that was one of the operational areas, Signals processing station
and the signals analysis section. None of the Australians who
worked there could go, could visit that area, that entire
area until nineteen eighty. These satellites are key because, together
with the n essays Men with Hill Base in England,
(15:31):
Pine Gap has become a command post for two missions
that were not officially in the cards at all, Two
missions that the Australian citizenry was never allowed to vote
on nor really allowed to know about for a long time.
The first was one named M seven to six hundred.
(15:52):
It involved at least two spy satellites, and in a
secret two thousand and five document that leaked, they were
meant to provide continuous coverage of the majority of the
Eurasian land Mass and Africa, so that's Asia, Europe, all
the stands, Russia and then the African continent. This initiative
(16:13):
was later upgraded as part of a second mission named
M eight three hundred, which had a four satellite constellation
and then covered all the hits Soviet Union, China, South Asia,
East Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe and territories in the
Atlantic Ocean. But what exactly are these things doing. They're
(16:36):
a little bit too high for a lot of people
to see them, you know, unless you know exactly where
you're supposed to be looking and you've got a telescope
and stuff. But we had said in previous episodes, the
real devil in the details for anybody who wants a
secret spy satellite is that there's not a way to
disguise it. That's how people found. What were they the CIA?
(16:57):
Was it the key satellite program?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I can't remember, but yes, Corona Corona, that was it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So they're more than, as I said, twenty thousand miles
above the Earth's surface. But what are they doing. They
are equipped with these huge suites of surveillance technology that
made to your point, noal have almost certainly was outpacing
whatever was available commercially or known publicly at the time.
And they are meant to monitor wireless communications on the ground,
(17:27):
such as the things sent and received by radios, satellite uplinks,
and cell phones, possibly just like the cell phone that
you are using to listen to this podcast right now.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But thankfully you're just you're not streaming this right you're
just listening to us download on your phone. They don't,
they don't hear anything.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It's fine.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, it depends if they consider it a strategic and
tactical military, scientific, political, or economic communication signal. They are
definitely going to gather it. They're also not going to
tell you. It's meant to keep tabs on missiles or
weapons tests and targeted countries. But also like a vacuum
cleaner approach to sweep up intelligence from any foreign data system,
(18:10):
they can find emphasis on military systems and provide that
surveillance to support US forces, which brings us to their
secret rooms.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I knew there was going to be a secret room.
There's always a secret room.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
There really is there. And there is in fact a
secret room in Pine Gap that no Australian employees can enter.
What no Australian employees can enter, and it is specifically
made for the United States military. It's the US cryptographic Room.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And to be fair, according to this story, there's a
secret room that the US allegedly can't enter, which is
the Australian cryptographic room.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
See got to be fair.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
That does seem fair. But to what end? No, I
don't even know. We'll get there.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I'm sure you can never be too sure when you're
dealing with spycraft like this.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
One Australian did make it in. Just one guy made
it in once. So according to Professor Desbaal, there were
at least two areas of the facility back in the
day where Australian and nationals were not permitted entry. One
was the US National Communications in cipher room and I
guess how would be the cryptographic room that you mentioned
that and the other is the quote key room where
(19:23):
they do the final analysis of all incoming intelligence.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
As we mentioned before, it's the analysis sector.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Right right right exactly. So there was a when he
gave this testimony. It's interesting because there was a handwritten
addendum that was sort of a response to it. And
with that mention of the first room the communication and
cipher room, somebody wrote correct, But Bill Hayden, when he
(19:51):
was the shadow PM did enter once. We should pause
for a second for our US listeners and walk through
what a shadow PM is. As cool as it sounds.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yes, it's just shadow night. Really, it's when the moon
cast shadows. That's what it's.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
That's what it's own.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
It was originally shadow BM, but they changed it.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Is it Prime Minister?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
It is? It is so opposition parties in this kind
of governmental structure create people who create positions that mirror
what the dominant party is doing. So if there's a
PM for dominant party, then the opposition party has their
own PM called the shadow PM, and their job is
to react to different policy and legislation, usually diss it
(20:34):
and say, well, here's what I would have done, and
that's why you should elect us.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I'm going to make a rare sports analogy. Go sort
of like guarding someone in basketball.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
That's a very good sports analogy.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, they're mirroring.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I like it. You got a bob when they bob,
and weave when they weave, and hopefully it'll balance out,
and you're sort of basically playing defense. Right.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I don't know, and that makes me think, you know,
it would be interesting to extend that analogy a bit.
I wonder if people would watch it in a sports game.
If after the game, the you know, like the shadow
goalie or something said this is what I would have done.
I don't know. I guess that's what sports pundits already do. Right.
(21:15):
It spent a lot of time saying, well, the one
team got more points, and our strategy next time will
be to get more points, and everyone's like.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Oh, okay, I get it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I personally love it when football commentators just keep referring
to hold running the football. They just say, you're doing
so They're doing such a good job of running with
the football. It's just such a basic description of a thing.
It's like, well, it's it. You know, they're two.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
There are two parts of the game here, boys. You
gotta run with a football. You gotta throw the football.
Sometimes you got to kick the football, but mostly is
running with a football.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
These guys seem to think people are doing a good job.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Of doing a great job running at a football.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
So what's strange? Is all right? So Bill Hayden's shadow PM,
we know what that is now. He We did enter
the area once officially, that first room, so one Australian
has been in there that we know of. But here's
the thing. Next to the description of the second room,
there's handwriting that says all caps, no such area.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
And that was the final analysis room, the key room.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So what's the truth for now? It's a mystery. But
we do know what goes on internally in Pine Gap
thanks to a guy's pretty much a recurring guest on
our show now, or at least a recurring contributor. Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Oh yes, the American intelligence contractor who turned whistleblower several
years ago. It's crazy how long it's been since Edward
Snowden came out as a whistleblower. But he's saying that
Pine Gap is described as playing a significant role in
supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
But like, why wouldn't they be. I mean, given the
size of the installation and the technology that they have.
If they're doing that and we know they're doing that,
surely this is part of it.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, I guess what he's saying is in addition to
monitoring the satellites and looking at some of those communications,
this facility is actually making real time contributions to places
where battles are being fought.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh oh, like the drone programs, M and other stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah. So to crystallize that, the primary point the Snowden
revelations are making is that while this was advertised as
something to help monitor global peace through verifying arms control,
did these countries really destroy these missiles? Are they really
going to deploy a nuke? It turned out that they
(23:41):
were going full snoopy and.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Like here's where you should bomb?
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Mm hmm. Right. So, according to another guy, professor Richard Tanter,
who's a Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute and
Honorary Melbourne University Professor pine Gap also contributes data for
CIA drone operations in countries in which the US is
not at war, ah so Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth.
(24:07):
It's also critically important in and I love the way
he said this quote whatever the United States is going
to do on the Korean Peninsula, it sounds like he
doesn't know, We don't know, No one really.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Knows whatever ends up happening.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
We should also point out that Professor Tanter himself is
pretty biased against the base. He's president of the Australian
Board of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and he
wants the Aussie government to make a very clear headed
assessment of whether it is in Australia's best interest to
contribute data for drone assassinations and the targeting of nuclear weapons.
(24:43):
And here's why this drone assassination, targeting of nuclear weapons
stuff is important. First, to backtrack a little, it's clear
that pine Gap is part of five Eyes in Project Echelon.
We have previous episode on that the important TLDR or
I guess TLDL for this purpose of this medium is
(25:05):
that the important part here is that countries may have
laws that do not allow them to invade your privacy
if you are a citizen of that country, but they
can make bilateral and multilateral agreements such that you know,
like the Okay, let's say, the US or the NSA
(25:26):
cannot legally monitor your text messages or figure out what
kind of weird erotic fan figure into, but the United
Kingdom can, and then they can share it with the US,
so the US is getting the same stuff. There's just
a little bit of legal chucking and driving there. That's
(25:48):
the problem critics have with this place. The problem that
doctor Tanter has with the leaked documents that were obtained
by an outfit like the Intercept is that there's not
only a huge transformation in pine gaps function in recent history,
but these documents is paperwork He got provide authoritative confirmation
(26:13):
that pine Gap is involved in the geolocation of cell
phones used by people from the Pacific to the edge
of Africa. And this shows us that pine Gap knows
the geolocations. That means it derives the phone numbers, and
it often derives the content of any communications, providing the
ability for the American military to identify in place, in
(26:35):
real time the location of targets of interest. So let's
say somebody for some reason wants to send a drone
out to assassinate.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Me.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Sure, how to assassinate Matt. My phone's right here and
his phone's right there. This this means that they can
find map, not you and particular map, but they can
find your phone. And that makes coordinating drones a controversial
topic because they're pulling stuff from a SIM card, right,
(27:08):
and maybe just for the purposes of targeting. They're not
pulling the content of the conversation, text, calls, cute emoji
that you send to and from that device. According to
one drone operator, we're not going after people. We're going
after the phones, and we're hoping that the person on
the other end of that missile is the actual bad guy.
(27:30):
So if you are in a war torn area, be
careful what phones you pick up.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, just don't.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
And that's how that's how non combatants and innocent civilians
have been murdered.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Well, and also those drones there are kind of blood instruments.
We don't really think we think of them, I think
falsely as being some sort of like targeted super assassination machine.
But it's like a radius, right, isn't.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
This a health fire missile or you know other classes
of missiles that explode with a radius.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, yeah, they're called tactical, but probably the best way
to say it is comparatively tactic, you go, right.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
As opposed to like wiping out an entire city, right,
maybe just wipe out a city block.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Right, right, or a wedding, yeah yeah, instead of a
building an entire skyscraper.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
If you look at some of this stuff on live
leak that you can find with the targeted strikes with drones,
I mean it's a depending on again, it just depends
on the munitions. But one missile wouldn't take out a
block at all. It would It would take out a
room for sure, or like part of a building, part
of a building.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah yeah, But that's that's the thing that becomes so
divisive so quickly. So supporters of extra judicial killings involving
UAVs will say that it is really the best, most
safe way to preserve the lives of military members and
to minimize the possibility of civilian casualties. Opponents will say no,
(29:01):
because it's like the old autonomous vehicle argument, we're still
we're still screwing up.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, And and it doesn't have this Devil's Advocate doesn't
have the potential to make you more trigger happy. If
there's no human cost on our end, it makes you
maybe more likely to roll the dice and give it
a go. You're not having to send out your best
men and women for the job.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's I mean, that's that's a good argument as well,
because one of the balances for Western societies that you
often hear touted is that the public is supposed to
be able to react to this. It's often said that
wars are more politically expensive for representative democracies and straight
(29:44):
democracies because the people have a voice in government in
this situation. Unfortunately, Australians largely do not. Because this may
be now a joint United States and Australian base, but
a lot of the drone work is coming from the
(30:05):
US side, and we should establish highlight underline, italicized bold
the following this issue with drone targeting and widespread vacuum
cleaner approach surveillance. These are the criticisms of pine Gap
that you will hear most often in legitimate journalism, right,
(30:27):
these are the ones you will hear about in security journals,
in viable publications and stuff. And there's good reason, yeah,
because it's real. And after we take a quick break,
we'll examine some of the stranger stories about Pine Gap. Okay,
(30:56):
so for some reason here in our notes we have
this section titled Crazies Come out to Play. I don't
mean to be in any way denigrading with that, it's
just these are some pretty insane things. They're outlandish claims,
now outlandish claims. They're so far outlandish that they're literally extraterrestrial. Oh,
(31:18):
out of land. But it's no surprise that Pine Gap
has become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories and excreasingly.
I like the word you use, Matt, outlandish claims. We've
got a few of the really out there ones. I
don't know where do you guys want to go first?
Do you want to do the UFO stuff first?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I know where you want to start? You know where
we want to start?
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Boy? Do I ever? It's the secret Portal? Yes, I
want to talk about portals. Have you guys ever seen
a portal that's a Donny Darko reference? Apparently, this.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Maybe this is one of the strangest conspiratorial claims about
Pine Gap. The argument is that the CIA has has
been conducting time travel experiments and super soldier programs in
Pine Gap sort of because they're using portals to send
(32:13):
people to Mars, wherein a lot of these things are
conducted and we have to yeah, we have to treat
this with a wheelbarrow assault. There's a fringe researcher named
Richard Sowder who claimed to have spoken with a whistleblower
named rich Hansen, and according to Sowder, Hanson is not
(32:35):
only a part or was not only once a part
of these ultra secret programs, but he left for Mars
military service from a time portal in Australia.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, so this is interesting because it is true that
various people who did work for work at Pine Gap
at one point or another did say that the bosses
were CIA, So we know that part is true.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, portals, time portals.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Let me have the plot of the movie Time Coop
starring Jean Claude van Dam.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Except this time on Mars, and this time it's personal
on Mars. But I mean, okay, we don't want to
I don't want to poke fun at it too much?
What if rich Hansen is a real person and Soder
was also genuine when he was telling the story. I
mean there is, and there is an alternate universe where
(33:38):
this occurs some other dimension.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
If you believe in the multi dimensional stuff and think
for this setup, Matt, Because it is true that Soder,
by the way, also claims in his book Underground, Bases
and Tunnels that the base, pine Gap or rainfall operates
in alternate dimensions. So exist a multiple planes of reality
at once.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
But see if if multiverse theories are correct, then isn't
everything existing in multiplicity at all?
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Not the whole point? No, I think what he means
there is that it operates section you can reach through
and you can, you know, pick up your screwdriver from
this other dimension, bring it back over to this dimension,
or step through to what end? I guess are you
affecting the timeline in ways that military militaristically tactical ways.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Well, so, yeah, good question, Matt. I think you're you're
going even larger. You going to the meta level, which
is that if all if if universes are infinite, and
all possible things exist in some some sort of reality timeline,
branch sphere, what have you. Then there would be one
(34:49):
or many where this thing is actually true, and we
just happen to be living in one where that's not
the case.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Oh did I say.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
In your mouth at that last? But well, here's the
problem with that, which is a very familiar problem to
anybody who reads about this sort of stuff. If it
is an ultra secret program and we live in a
reality where a very public Washington Post journalist just very
publicly got dismembered for not even saying horrible things about
(35:25):
the Saudi crown prince and the US government, then how
are these people still alive?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
How in the holy kangaroo are these people still alive?
Blowing up the truth, exposing the hidden secrets of reality
tripping time traveling. CIA financed Nietzsche ubermansh Out on Mars,
(35:54):
so you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, So again, that's underground bases in tunnels, a book
that you can find somewhere at some time in some
dimension in this dimension.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Maybe all right, act now before the Mandela effect kicks in, right,
So okay, so you got through that. That's probably one
of the strangest and craziest, but one that has I
think many more people taking it seriously. Is the association
of pine Gap with the activity of unidentified flying objects,
(36:27):
and it dates way back to just a few years
after things really got rolling there in nineteen seventy This
is true.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
In nineteen seventy three, there was a cartographer who reported
seeing a vertical shaft of blue light, very very blindingly
bright vertical shaft of blue light in front of him
just after the stroke of midnight. And it was clearly
the source of this was the base. So he decided
to take a look, take a closer look, and he
(36:56):
moved his vehicle to the base a little bit closer,
and he saw a large, gleaming disk hovering about a
thousand feet from the ground.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, and he kept watching it. I guess security must
have been less tight at that time, Yeah, because he's
there for a while. He watches it for about half
an hour, and during this time he sees another beam
of blue light emanating from the UFO toward the ground
where it's hitting several of those ray domes, those golf
(37:32):
ball things, right, and it's the light is hitting those directly.
And then the light cease and another light beam appears,
and this time from the ray domes to the craft
and this goes back and forth, this exchange of light
bright burst again for about half an hour, and then
(37:52):
the disc begins to spin more and more quickly. Flash boom,
it shoots into the sky and disappears.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
WHOA.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Now, I have a couple of questions about that one
that we cannot answer right now. Okay, because I imagine
it being more of a laser beam of light. If
there's some kind of I'm just imagining that. It's completely true,
there's some form of energy or communications transfer occurring in
some way. That's why you would have a beam of
(38:21):
light from one of those things. That's the only thing
I can imagine, because if not.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Is it refueling.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well yeah, but here's the whole.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Thing, Like, Okay, how could you discern that the light
was coming from the ground up to the craft?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Right?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
It would be if it's just a splash of light essentially,
you know, like like a spotlight or something, you would
be able to tell, Oh, it's more centered on the
on the ground, and then it's a little wider up
top near wherever the craft is a thousand feet up.
It would occur that kind of light shaping would occur.
If it was just a light, if it was a
laser beam, how could you tell which way it was
(38:59):
trapped because it's incidant.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Speed of light, So a good question.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
That kind of thing just makes me go, okay, maybe weather.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Balloon, right, Maybe it was something that he saw they
just didn't understand. Quite possibly. Well, in nineteen seventy five,
then let's look at this one. There was a pilot
and several passengers on a private plane near Pine Gaps airspace,
which is obviously restricted airspace, and they all said, hey,
(39:32):
here's a cool idea. Let's try to sneak a peek
at all the weird stuff they have to be doing
down there Pine Gap.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
All right, mate, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
And so out of nowhere, this big, wide object appears
to take off from the base below them at a
breakneck speed. And as soon as the witnesses were able
to focus on this thing that was taking off and
it vanished into the sky. The pilot made a report
of this sighting as soon as they landed, and the
(40:02):
plane was fine, obviously, thankfully, both the pilot and all
of the passengers were asked to wait for investigators who
were going to come and get some more details from them.
But when the investigators show up again, according to the story,
they told the witnesses that they were for They men
in black them they so, I forget everything you've seen
about this. Don't talk about anything. You saw nothing.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Do you think they flashed them?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
That would be cool, That would be cool. But then
how would this story have gotten out?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh, you're right on one person wasn't looking directly.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I always wondered if that would work in men and planet.
But then we have more reports of UFOs and Pine Gap.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
In nineteen eighty four there were five anonymous witnesses who
said they saw something else. It was another sighting there
at Pine Gap. They they wanted to be anonymous due
to their apparent positions within the Australia government. You know,
it's one of those things, those situations where you can't
prove that these people are part of the Australian government,
(41:06):
but they said they were, and that's why they want
to be anonymous. So there's let's say the leader of
this group had been receiving all kinds of reports about
UFO sightings just above Pine Gap or near Pine Gap
in the weeks leading up to this thing that would
become their encounter this night to this moment. One message
(41:26):
that was received by this leader of the group was
a little more mysterious than the rest, and it advised
that something big was going to happen at Pine Gap
in the upcoming days. So guess what they did. They're
five of them, and they split themselves into two groups
using two different vehicles, and they approached the base from
two different positions.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I'm smart.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's very smart. Good idea. All right, now, let's keep
going down there. Once they get there, they essentially start
staking out the grounds, which is again we're talking about
a massive campus campus is the right word for it,
massive compound, and that's only five people to cover that
with only two vehicles. But anyway, they're just gonna check
(42:07):
it out for as long as they can. They stay
there for days. The first three days there's absolutely no
activity that they notice, at least anything of note. But
on the fourth night everything changed when several large military
vehicles started ferrying all these large groups of workers in
coveralls to the large rate domes, the big golf ball
(42:28):
looking things. So they're like, huh, I wonder what those
guys are doing.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And then.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Then things changed.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, as this was all taking place, as this brew
haha haha, I imagine a pillar of light shot upward
from the ground to the sky. They don't specify whether
it's shot out from one of these raate domes or dishes.
A strange cloud was forming high above the base around
(42:59):
this pillar of light, and when it vanished, they saw
five strange craft making their way to the base, according
to the report, for diamond shaped UFOs and one of
a quote cigar shape, which the people at Moufon when
we visited move On a while back, talked about it
seems to be a relatively common shape, at least in
(43:20):
their experience. Once these craft were over the base, the
pillar of light appeared again, this time from the craft
above to the grounds below. So we see that repeat, right,
almost like communication. And this went on for several minutes. Yeah,
it seems like the visual analog of a dial up modem.
Sound do you guys remember that, Paul, Can we get
a sound cue of a dial up modem? Please? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Like that, but with lights, it's like an electronic dolphin.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
And this exchange went on for a while, and the
strange cloud was still coalescing, and then like that they vanished.
And these are just a few of the UFO reports
originating in Pine Gap. They're not even the most famous.
Several of the most well known reports include reliable witnesses
(44:17):
like police officers, multiple groups of people from differing vantage
points seeing the same thing. And then this consistent report
of hidden doors. Did you guys see anything about it?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Again, these secret areas become a very common thing when
you're talking about Pine Pine Gap, These secret doors become
a real thing. It's very common occurrence when people are
talking about seeing things at Pine Gap, either doors to
secret places or see like you're saying, secret doors that
just exist within a wall somewhere or within part of
(44:49):
a base that you would never imagine that there's a
door there.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
And we know, I mean it makes sense to have
those sorts of entrances and exits built into secret places, right.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Especially when there's a large underground area.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Mm hmm, Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look no further than
Norad or that hotel that turned out to secretly be
a bunker for senators here in the States, which everyone
thought we were crazy when we mentioned it at first.
I'm just saying, but there's a counterpoint to these UFO reports,
and it's the one. Okay. So one of the big
(45:24):
theories about unidentified flying objects, which, of course, as we
said before, not necessarily extraterrestrial. One of the big arguments
is that these things are man made technology or human
made technology that the public just doesn't know about yet,
and that these things are a tremendous tactical advantage to
(45:46):
whichever country possesses them or whichever private company multinational possesses them.
That leads us to ask, well, how close are the
US and Australia really.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
That's been my question for the start. Yeah, I'm sure
it feels like they're giving up a whole lot of
their own sovereignty, you know, to have this facility that
largely benefits us, right and not them, And if anything
put to their country in the line of fire.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Potentially, yeah, absolutely, If there really is to go back
to this question, if there really is some sort of
top secret mind blowing flight or anti gravity technology, something
that would change the world were to ever come out,
why would the US place it in a foreign country,
regardless of how friendly their relations may be at some
given time.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
What if the Australian government were the ones who were
first contacted and the United States placed the facility there
and began, you know, hey, we've got the biggest military,
We're the ones who need to be handling this kind
of thing. And then it became a joint operation, but
the Australians were always the first.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
I like that has like a ring of patriotism too
for Australians there. But this is okay. If we're speculating,
this is something that seemed that gets me really quickly
into the realm of science fiction. If we wanted to
go profoundly deep into the rabbit hole, we could speculate
that maybe there was some sort of geographical constraint that
(47:15):
meant the base due to its extra dimensional properties, or
something had to be built in that specific spot for
some specific reason. There is a porto of Lamars, but
it only occurs there because of some I don't know,
gobbledegook pseudo science electromagnetic quark superpositions, because of the dream time,
(47:37):
because of the dream which we originally recognized as the
dream time. Oh my god, we're writing the movie now,
Stargate Aussigate. I'm a oh, Alice Gate, Alice Gate.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
I want to go down that rabbit hole further. But
I think we need to wrap this up, gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah, so let's end on the present day. As of
twenty seventeen, which is the closest we could get to
the present day for public reporting, Pine Gap is still expanding.
It's got a total of about thirty eight radio dishes,
many covered in those golf balls we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Those things help them.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
It's weather work better.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
It's just weatherproofing.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
I mean, that's the official explanation. Yeah, interesting, just to
keep the rust off. The North Korean situation is one
of the most crucial because of the base's proximity to
the Korean peninsula and therefore the proximity of Australia. The
city of Darwin and Northern Territory is about thirty six
(48:41):
hundred miles from Pyeongyang with a and that puts a
within range of an ICBM or intercontinental ballistic missile.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
OOH, which begs the question, are their ICBMs out there
in Pine Gap somewhere? Are there silos?
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Hmmm?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
I wonder you think they will put all their eggs
one basket like that.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
And why would you do that when you've just got
supercarriers and carriers everywhere.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Plenty of other military bases right, yeah, and subs and
whatever else. And the problem here is if we were
at a war game a bit, if the US did
become involved in a hot war with the dprkade Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, then Australia could quickly would almost
(49:26):
certainly be quickly dragged into this conflict. And despite being
isolated pretty far inland, Pine Gap would be instrumental in
the informational aspects of the US side of the war.
But also it would have a huge target on its
back because if you blow that thing up, you're poking
(49:47):
an eye, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Oh? Absolutely, That's my question, Like, how does it behoove
the Australian government, who aren't even allowed into the US
cryptography room, you know, it seems like they're kept at
arm's length about a lot of the stuff. What do
we have on them or what do they have on us?
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Or what where?
Speaker 3 (50:04):
That's that's my fascination with this whole story.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
What makes it symbiosis rather than parasites exactly?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
And I think, you know, given what I know about
our country and our tendency that maybe strong arm less
powerful countries, I would tend to think it might be
more the parasitic type of relationship.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, here's the deal, where I would I think it
would be difficult for you to name twenty places in
the planet other countries that don't have a US military
base in the exactly. Yeah, well, I mean, but I
mean twenty, Like, yes, we can name a few that
we know for sure, but but in most places there
(50:39):
is a US military presence, and it's just how it is.
In this case, maybe it's even a little less intrusive
because it's intelligence collection.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
And it's way out of the way, and it's also
there's a visible, you know, police state occupation of any kind.
I mean, it's just it's a research facility. It's a
you know, essentially on paper.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
And also it's well it's not a reason it is
on paper maybe, but I don't know if it can
even be called that anymore because the cover story got
blown out of the water so hard. I am going
to take take you up on that, mat. I'm going
to come back. I'm going to come back more back
in the studio and see if I can find twenty
twenty countries that don't have US basis. I don't know
(51:20):
if I can.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
I want to say there are several in Africa that don't.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Yeah, but they have. But they have got outposts of
outsourced military forces, which I think we should count. So this,
this is fascinating because it does. It's a huge question.
To your point, Nol. Probably one of the best arguments
for it is going to be the idea of mutual
(51:49):
security preventing perhaps the rise of a new hedgemon in
the region, namely China. So maybe Australia is of the
mind that you already have a good relationship with the US.
Let's keep that going. I don't know, you know, it
goes to speculation. No, it is true that it is
(52:10):
true that there are supporters of Pine Gap in Australia
and their primary, the primary thing they say is don't
believe all the conspiratorial stuff, all the all the alarmist hoopla.
The truth of the matter is that this is good
for us and it helps keep our country safer. So
we do wanna depict that part, just to be fair. Also,
(52:34):
on a pop culture note, if you want to see
stories that take place in Pine Gap fictional stories, check
out the new series I think it's on Netflix. It's
about Pine Gap and it's called as we like to say,
on the show in a burst of creativity Pine Gap.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Yes, I'm watching the trailer right now. It looks it
looks like a lot of fun, does it is?
Speaker 1 (52:57):
I wonder what the tone is. Do you think it's
like twenty four or Quantico or something.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
It feels very much like one of those police procedur
rules kind of thing with a little more style.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Maybe, Oh, thank god, does.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Every Oh it's got an American flag in an Australian flag,
it says Pine Gap. It's got a whole team.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
I like it. Do do they look like they're legitimate
intelligence workers or do they all look like waiters from
Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (53:22):
They look like from us.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Of course they're waiters from Los That's amazing. So so
so this this is literally like a like a Law
and Order n CIS type situation, but headquartered in Pine Gap.
And it's like an Adventure of the Week kind of story.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
I don't know, Okay, is it more like X Files?
I don't know nothing about. I just watched the trailer
without sound and it it looked like that.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Well it exists.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Watch the Can you watch the show without sound without
captions and maybe come back and tell us what your
take is.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Yes, please.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
All right, So that's that's where we are now. These
do not answer all of the questions about pine Gap,
but we do want to We do want to thank
all of our listeners out in Australia, in that part
of the world who said, hey, our fellow listeners would
like to hear more about this, because I don't think
it gets a lot of ink here in the United States.
(54:14):
And what better way to end the episode than leaving
the last word to Professor Tanter.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
It goes as follows. Quote. Pine Gap literally hardwires us
into the activities of the American military, and in some
cases that means we will cop the consequences. Like it
or not. Pine Gap will be contributing hugely in real
time to those operations as well as in preparation for them.
(54:44):
So whether or not the Australian government thinks that an
attack on North Korea is either justified or a wise
and sensible move, we will be part of that will
be culpable in the terms of the consequences. Geez, there
you have it.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
You have it.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
I know the score.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Something to think on. So thank you everyone for giving
us a listen. We would like to hear your opinion.
Maybe not just of Pine Gap, but your opinion of
US military basis on foreign soil anyway.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, well, do you live in a different country where
there's a US military base, what are your experiences with that?
Speaker 1 (55:22):
And is it a joint operation in the way that
this one is or is it solely US run sort
of like Guintanamo. Let us know. You can find us
on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. On Facebook especially, we are
Here's where it gets crazy. That's our community page. If
you haven't checked it out yet, hop on, we have
(55:43):
some We have some pretty good memes.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
Oh yeah, good memes, and even better people are contributing
all the time.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
All right.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
And oh, by the way, if you if you've ever
had any kind of unidentified flying object or submerged submerged
object or any other experience like that, please let us know.
We'd love love to hear your story and hopefully incorporate
it into an episode at some point. So yeah, and
that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
(56:12):
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (56:24):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show, Conspiracy Realist. Our classic this
week is for our friends down South, way down South,
not quite Antarctica, a little bit further north, Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh, this is Pine Gap, guys. I think, if I'm
not mistaken, this was turned into an entire spy series
on television called Pine Gap. I think it was after
it was made to a TV show after we covered it.
But it's such a secretive thing. What does it remind
you of? What's the Is there an American equivalent?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Uh hororpera of fifty one? It's like in that sort
of echelon. Yeah, conspiratorial locations, but Pine Gap is unique
and Pine Gap at the time in twenty eighteen, it
employed over eight hundred different people and officially no one
(00:53):
knew what it did.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
All right, Well, let's infiltrate the gap.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
From UFOs to psychic powers, government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Mission Control dec At. Most importantly, you are you,
you are here that makes this stuff. They don't want
you to know. This episode in particular, has been a
long time in coming, because, as you might already know,
we spend a lot of time on this show researching
military bases or mysterious compounds across the planet. And while
(01:48):
we often travel outside of the bounds of these United States,
we tend to focus most often on facilities here because hey,
it's our home turf, and honestly, that means that we're
gonna hear about places in the US or associate with
US way more often than say, a secret base in Pakistan.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, in public documents that we get access to generally
are about stuff that happens on our turf.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
We need way more of foreign intelligence agency connections. So
on the off chance that you're listening and you feel
like you catch a wild hair, please go ahead email us,
look us up, give us.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Those military connections.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yes, like some of our fellow listeners did after we
did an episode on Australia recently and someone wrote to
us about this very topic.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I mean, someone else sent us a koala bear.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
No, you should only say on purpose.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Like got they got mad because we call them?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Did we explain that on air.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I don't think we did.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, So everyone in the US is very much aware
that koala are marsupials. The most common marsupials for us
here in the States are possums, And for the record,
I feel that our country got very much short changed
that in that regard those nasty tailed things.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Here's the thing too, on that one, I think I
was the most egregious offender of you having the bear
suffix on that. And that's just a thing I do.
Sometimes I call Matt Mattie bear, sometimes I call Ben
Benny bear, and I call my kid her name bear.
So you know, it's just a thing I do. It's
a sign of affection and that I think something is cute, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
What's true is that it is koala. Bear is just
the term that people in the US use. It's not
It's clearly not accurate. But we do want to set
the record straight. We are surprisingly up to date on
what is and is not a marsupial and have been
for years now. Speaking of for years now, your fellow
listeners have been asking us to dig into a strange
(03:47):
story of another compound on the other side of the world.
A secretive access restricted facility, called by some and mainly
by critics, the most important US intelligence operation on foreign soil.
Welcome friends and neighbors to Pine Gap.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yes, and our story begins in this small little town
called Alice Springs, which only has about twenty four thousand people,
but it's the second largest population in Australia's Northern Territory,
where obviously by those numbers there aren't many people.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yes, Sydney, this is not. Alice Springs is located in
something called the Red Center. It's pretty far inland. It's
surrounded by different deserts, scrubby grasslands, and nowadays its major
official industry is tourism. Wo Like any town, Alice Springs
is not perfect. It has a pretty significant itinerant population,
(04:45):
and there's a lot of racial tension, but its soldiers on. Nonetheless,
our story kicks in the high gear. If you travel
about ten fifteen minutes south of Alice Springs, you will
see some signs saying no more photographs, turn around immediately
restricted area. And if you ignore those and somehow get
past the security, you'll find a compound code named all
(05:08):
capital letters Rainfall.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I have heard also that you will be promptly arrested
and find about three thousand dollars. Wow, it's true for
your trouble.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
It's like the same thing that happens if you try
and get into Area fifty one.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, the Groom Lake area. It's interesting. One of my
friends who works at our local watering hole, was out
exploring this area and he and his ridiculous brother had
the amazing idea of trying to drive as close as
they could. Did you hear this story off air day?
I tell you he got to He got close enough
(05:48):
to see some signs, and then in the distance, on
an abutting cliff, he saw the glint of a sniper
rifle and then two trucks came out and started chasing
them down and almost ran them off the road, just
as an intimidation tactic. Hikes and it worked, and it worked.
(06:09):
He's probably not going to go back now. This place,
cod named Rainfall, is remote. It's in the heart of
the outback. It's surrounded on all sides by barren land
in a cartoonishly high amount of surveillance. As you said, Noel,
this is a place where you will be aggressively.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Deterred and monitored, which is appropriate and will come into play.
I also just want to point out early on this
is also probably one of the most cliche Australian features
that you'll ever hear anybody talk about is kangaroos, and
apparently this particular location is just lousy with them. But
most other more urban parts of Australia you're not just
(06:49):
gonna see kangaroos hopping out of the woodwork, but here
you are very likely to because of the climb in
the desert and the wide open spaces and all that.
And I just want to give a shout out to
this podcast that I learned a lot from called Weird
Crap in Australia from the Modern Mountdown Network. So shout
out to those guys because they did a good job
talking about this episode and have with kind of like
an insider's perspective, which will also come into play later.
(07:10):
We had crap in AUSTRALAI yet did good Ben. Thanks
and check out their Patreon because I think they want
some money to buy some mikes and nice mics are important.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
There you go, So back to Rainfall. This base is
reached by traveling down a dead end road marked with
as we said earlier, signs warning away visitors without security clearance.
The only way to really see this compound is by
air or by climbing the nearby ridges of the MacDonald
(07:39):
Ranges that surround the site. What do you see when
you happen to fly over this thing and peek out
the window at just the right time.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
There are these big white domes that you've seen before,
probably at least in pictures or in spy movies. They're
called geodesic domes, and they just look almost like a
golf ball, a really big golf ball, like Epcot. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Ooh, like Epcot, like Epcot with a less detailed texture.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, definitely. Well you'll see those. That's the biggest thing
you're gonna notice.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
And those golf balls. We'll get into this a bit later.
They are covers for radar dishes, which you know, is
a little bit anti climactic, you know, because there's so
many fun things that could be in a giant golf ball.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's what they say is in there.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
That's thought lots of smaller golf balls.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Officially, this site is known by the tremendously sexy name
the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap. As of now, it
employs well over eight hundred Australian and American employees. They
used to be primarily American back in the day, but
there was a little bit of a hubbub about that.
According to leaked US intelligence documents, when asked what happens
(08:57):
at the site, people should say its purpose is to.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Quote support national security of both the US and Australia.
The facility contributes to verifying arms control and disarmament agreements
and monitoring military developments.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, okay, As you can imagine, folks, the sheer size
of this enterprise makes it a crucial part of the
local economy. But it brings us to a bigger question,
how did this thing get here? The story starts on
or around December ninth, nineteen sixty six. Well started before then, obviously,
(09:36):
but on December ninth of that year, Australia and Uncle
Sam signed a treaty agreeing to establish a quote Joint
Defense Space Research Facility.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Oh it sounds so cool.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, it's a pretty vague term, but on the offset
it does sound neat right. I mean, who's against space research?
I think we can all agree we need to learn
more about space. The facility started off with two antenna
so it looked to be a pretty small operation. And
the remote nature of this site, while it makes it
very inconvenient to travel to, it didn't strike anyone as
(10:11):
particularly strange, because it's pretty common to build space research
facilities off the beaten path. You know, if you have
an observatory, you want to avoid light pollution. If you
have a radio telescope, you can sometimes shut legally shut
down all radio sources if you're in West Virginia right
for thousands of miles. So of course you don't want
(10:33):
this thing to be in downtown Sydney or Melbourne or something,
which is how you pronounce it. But by nineteen seventy,
over four hundred American families had moved to the area,
and operations, whatever they were at the time, space research,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Began space military research.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Space.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
We call it space search for short space search. And
this base is pretty quiet, at least in the international
sphere and the public eye. It doesn't get a ton
of scrutiny. It grows in size and scope quietly, quietly, quietly,
staying pun intended, generally under the radar until nineteen ninety nine.
(11:20):
What happened in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, there was this thing called the Ausi Senate Committee
on Treaties, and there were some gentlemen who were asked about,
you know, what is this facility? What does it do?
Those gentlemen were part of the Australian government. They said
no when asked to give details on you know, whatever
this treaty was or whatever it is that they're doing.
(11:44):
There's an Ossi Senate Committee on Treaties and the government
said no, basically, we will not tell you.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Right, which happens sometimes with our Senate and their committees
when they ask questions about intelligence agents.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
We can have a closed session maybe and we can
discuss with one person or another.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
But right, we can preapprove the questions. Yes, right. So
the committee calls on a very interesting character in this story,
a professor named des Ball, which I think is a
great name.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, it's probably the best name we're going to run
into in this show.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
It sounds like a real ladies man.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So des Ball, doctor des Ball, and Professor des Ball
is an intelligence expert who's had a real, a real
brinkle in his undies about Pine Gap four years and
years and years. He's been a huge opponent of it.
They called on him to explain exactly what Pine Gap did.
(12:42):
According to professor Ball, the compound had by this point
nineteen ninety nine expanded and now it housed about eighteen
different antenna instead of two, and the staff had increased
from four hundred in the early sixties to six hundred
in the nineties. And furthermore, he says to these folks,
you know what's eventually going to happen if no one
(13:03):
stops this. It's going to employ over one thousand people.
And I hate to clue you in Senate Committee, but
space research does not even begin to cover what these
people actually do at Pine Gap.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And we're going to jump into that right after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
So, according to des Ball, doctor des Baal ladies Man,
pine Gap was monitoring things in space more than space itself.
M So maybe like other satellites. Yes, in fact, exactly that,
other satellites, monitoring spy satellites.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
And he outlined four potential categories of types of signals
that were to be collected at Pine Gap. And these
are quite broad.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, telemetry from advanced weapons development. We're talking ballistic missiles,
we're talking all kinds of other things used for arms
control verification, which is kind of a thing that we've
kind of know. That's what they're doing. That's what they
say in the mission statement up above. They're looking at
signals from anti missile anti aircraft radars, transmissions that intended
(14:23):
for other communication satellites, which could be a whole host
of things nowadays or even in those days, and also
described the operational area as containing three different sections.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Oh oh, he also mentioned microwave emissions.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Oh yeah, microwave emissions. Forgot about those long long distance
telephone calls. Are you making some of those? Well, pine
gaps probably listening.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Well, here's a thing too. We always talk about the
lag with like technology that the military is aware of
versus like when it kind of trickles into the public
sphere or whatever. So he got to wonder if like
they were laying the groundwork for monitoring technology that wasn't
even in use yet by consumers.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
All forms of technology, purpet perpet.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, So, as you're saying, METS satellite station keeping section,
that was one of the operational areas, Signals processing station
and the signals analysis section. None of the Australians who
worked there could go, could visit that area, that entire
area until nineteen eighty. These satellites are key because, together
with the n essays Men with Hill Base in England,
(15:31):
Pine Gap has become a command post for two missions
that were not officially in the cards at all, Two
missions that the Australian citizenry was never allowed to vote
on nor really allowed to know about for a long time.
The first was one named M seven to six hundred.
(15:52):
It involved at least two spy satellites, and in a
secret two thousand and five document that leaked, they were
meant to provide continuous coverage of the majority of the
Eurasian land Mass and Africa, so that's Asia, Europe, all
the stands, Russia and then the African continent. This initiative
(16:13):
was later upgraded as part of a second mission named
M eight three hundred, which had a four satellite constellation
and then covered all the hits Soviet Union, China, South Asia,
East Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe and territories in the
Atlantic Ocean. But what exactly are these things doing. They're
(16:36):
a little bit too high for a lot of people
to see them, you know, unless you know exactly where
you're supposed to be looking and you've got a telescope
and stuff. But we had said in previous episodes, the
real devil in the details for anybody who wants a
secret spy satellite is that there's not a way to
disguise it. That's how people found. What were they the CIA?
(16:57):
Was it the key satellite program?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I can't remember, but yes, Corona Corona, that was it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So they're more than, as I said, twenty thousand miles
above the Earth's surface. But what are they doing. They
are equipped with these huge suites of surveillance technology that
made to your point, noal have almost certainly was outpacing
whatever was available commercially or known publicly at the time.
And they are meant to monitor wireless communications on the ground,
(17:27):
such as the things sent and received by radios, satellite uplinks,
and cell phones, possibly just like the cell phone that
you are using to listen to this podcast right now.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But thankfully you're just you're not streaming this right you're
just listening to us download on your phone. They don't,
they don't hear anything.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It's fine.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, it depends if they consider it a strategic and
tactical military, scientific, political, or economic communication signal. They are
definitely going to gather it. They're also not going to
tell you. It's meant to keep tabs on missiles or
weapons tests and targeted countries. But also like a vacuum
cleaner approach to sweep up intelligence from any foreign data system,
(18:10):
they can find emphasis on military systems and provide that
surveillance to support US forces, which brings us to their
secret rooms.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I knew there was going to be a secret room.
There's always a secret room.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
There really is there. And there is in fact a
secret room in Pine Gap that no Australian employees can enter.
What no Australian employees can enter, and it is specifically
made for the United States military. It's the US cryptographic Room.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And to be fair, according to this story, there's a
secret room that the US allegedly can't enter, which is
the Australian cryptographic room.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
See got to be fair.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
That does seem fair. But to what end? No, I
don't even know. We'll get there.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I'm sure you can never be too sure when you're
dealing with spycraft like this.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
One Australian did make it in. Just one guy made
it in once. So according to Professor Desbaal, there were
at least two areas of the facility back in the
day where Australian and nationals were not permitted entry. One
was the US National Communications in cipher room and I
guess how would be the cryptographic room that you mentioned
that and the other is the quote key room where
(19:23):
they do the final analysis of all incoming intelligence.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
As we mentioned before, it's the analysis sector.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Right right right exactly. So there was a when he
gave this testimony. It's interesting because there was a handwritten
addendum that was sort of a response to it. And
with that mention of the first room the communication and
cipher room, somebody wrote correct, But Bill Hayden, when he
(19:51):
was the shadow PM did enter once. We should pause
for a second for our US listeners and walk through
what a shadow PM is. As cool as it sounds.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yes, it's just shadow night. Really, it's when the moon
cast shadows. That's what it's.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
That's what it's own.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
It was originally shadow BM, but they changed it.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Is it Prime Minister?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
It is? It is so opposition parties in this kind
of governmental structure create people who create positions that mirror
what the dominant party is doing. So if there's a
PM for dominant party, then the opposition party has their
own PM called the shadow PM, and their job is
to react to different policy and legislation, usually diss it
(20:34):
and say, well, here's what I would have done, and
that's why you should elect us.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I'm going to make a rare sports analogy. Go sort
of like guarding someone in basketball.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
That's a very good sports analogy.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, they're mirroring.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I like it. You got a bob when they bob,
and weave when they weave, and hopefully it'll balance out,
and you're sort of basically playing defense. Right.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I don't know, and that makes me think, you know,
it would be interesting to extend that analogy a bit.
I wonder if people would watch it in a sports game.
If after the game, the you know, like the shadow
goalie or something said this is what I would have done.
I don't know. I guess that's what sports pundits already do. Right.
(21:15):
It spent a lot of time saying, well, the one
team got more points, and our strategy next time will
be to get more points, and everyone's like.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Oh, okay, I get it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I personally love it when football commentators just keep referring
to hold running the football. They just say, you're doing
so They're doing such a good job of running with
the football. It's just such a basic description of a thing.
It's like, well, it's it. You know, they're two.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
There are two parts of the game here, boys. You
gotta run with a football. You gotta throw the football.
Sometimes you got to kick the football, but mostly is
running with a football.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
These guys seem to think people are doing a good job.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Of doing a great job running at a football.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
So what's strange? Is all right? So Bill Hayden's shadow PM,
we know what that is now. He We did enter
the area once officially, that first room, so one Australian
has been in there that we know of. But here's
the thing. Next to the description of the second room,
there's handwriting that says all caps, no such area.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
And that was the final analysis room, the key room.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So what's the truth for now? It's a mystery. But
we do know what goes on internally in Pine Gap
thanks to a guy's pretty much a recurring guest on
our show now, or at least a recurring contributor. Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Oh yes, the American intelligence contractor who turned whistleblower several
years ago. It's crazy how long it's been since Edward
Snowden came out as a whistleblower. But he's saying that
Pine Gap is described as playing a significant role in
supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
But like, why wouldn't they be. I mean, given the
size of the installation and the technology that they have.
If they're doing that and we know they're doing that,
surely this is part of it.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, I guess what he's saying is in addition to
monitoring the satellites and looking at some of those communications,
this facility is actually making real time contributions to places
where battles are being fought.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh oh, like the drone programs, M and other stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah. So to crystallize that, the primary point the Snowden
revelations are making is that while this was advertised as
something to help monitor global peace through verifying arms control,
did these countries really destroy these missiles? Are they really
going to deploy a nuke? It turned out that they
(23:41):
were going full snoopy and.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Like here's where you should bomb?
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Mm hmm. Right. So, according to another guy, professor Richard Tanter,
who's a Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute and
Honorary Melbourne University Professor pine Gap also contributes data for
CIA drone operations in countries in which the US is
not at war, ah so Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth.
(24:07):
It's also critically important in and I love the way
he said this quote whatever the United States is going
to do on the Korean Peninsula, it sounds like he
doesn't know, We don't know, No one really.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Knows whatever ends up happening.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
We should also point out that Professor Tanter himself is
pretty biased against the base. He's president of the Australian
Board of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and he
wants the Aussie government to make a very clear headed
assessment of whether it is in Australia's best interest to
contribute data for drone assassinations and the targeting of nuclear weapons.
(24:43):
And here's why this drone assassination, targeting of nuclear weapons
stuff is important. First, to backtrack a little, it's clear
that pine Gap is part of five Eyes in Project Echelon.
We have previous episode on that the important TLDR or
I guess TLDL for this purpose of this medium is
(25:05):
that the important part here is that countries may have
laws that do not allow them to invade your privacy
if you are a citizen of that country, but they
can make bilateral and multilateral agreements such that you know,
like the Okay, let's say, the US or the NSA
(25:26):
cannot legally monitor your text messages or figure out what
kind of weird erotic fan figure into, but the United
Kingdom can, and then they can share it with the US,
so the US is getting the same stuff. There's just
a little bit of legal chucking and driving there. That's
(25:48):
the problem critics have with this place. The problem that
doctor Tanter has with the leaked documents that were obtained
by an outfit like the Intercept is that there's not
only a huge transformation in pine gaps function in recent history,
but these documents is paperwork He got provide authoritative confirmation
(26:13):
that pine Gap is involved in the geolocation of cell
phones used by people from the Pacific to the edge
of Africa. And this shows us that pine Gap knows
the geolocations. That means it derives the phone numbers, and
it often derives the content of any communications, providing the
ability for the American military to identify in place, in
(26:35):
real time the location of targets of interest. So let's
say somebody for some reason wants to send a drone
out to assassinate.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Me.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Sure, how to assassinate Matt. My phone's right here and
his phone's right there. This this means that they can
find map, not you and particular map, but they can
find your phone. And that makes coordinating drones a controversial
topic because they're pulling stuff from a SIM card, right,
(27:08):
and maybe just for the purposes of targeting. They're not
pulling the content of the conversation, text, calls, cute emoji
that you send to and from that device. According to
one drone operator, we're not going after people. We're going
after the phones, and we're hoping that the person on
the other end of that missile is the actual bad guy.
(27:30):
So if you are in a war torn area, be
careful what phones you pick up.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, just don't.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
And that's how that's how non combatants and innocent civilians
have been murdered.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Well, and also those drones there are kind of blood instruments.
We don't really think we think of them, I think
falsely as being some sort of like targeted super assassination machine.
But it's like a radius, right, isn't.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
This a health fire missile or you know other classes
of missiles that explode with a radius.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, yeah, they're called tactical, but probably the best way
to say it is comparatively tactic, you go, right.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
As opposed to like wiping out an entire city, right,
maybe just wipe out a city block.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Right, right, or a wedding, yeah yeah, instead of a
building an entire skyscraper.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
If you look at some of this stuff on live
leak that you can find with the targeted strikes with drones,
I mean it's a depending on again, it just depends
on the munitions. But one missile wouldn't take out a
block at all. It would It would take out a
room for sure, or like part of a building, part
of a building.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah yeah, But that's that's the thing that becomes so
divisive so quickly. So supporters of extra judicial killings involving
UAVs will say that it is really the best, most
safe way to preserve the lives of military members and
to minimize the possibility of civilian casualties. Opponents will say no,
(29:01):
because it's like the old autonomous vehicle argument, we're still
we're still screwing up.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, And and it doesn't have this Devil's Advocate doesn't
have the potential to make you more trigger happy. If
there's no human cost on our end, it makes you
maybe more likely to roll the dice and give it
a go. You're not having to send out your best
men and women for the job.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's I mean, that's that's a good argument as well,
because one of the balances for Western societies that you
often hear touted is that the public is supposed to
be able to react to this. It's often said that
wars are more politically expensive for representative democracies and straight
(29:44):
democracies because the people have a voice in government in
this situation. Unfortunately, Australians largely do not. Because this may
be now a joint United States and Australian base, but
a lot of the drone work is coming from the
(30:05):
US side, and we should establish highlight underline, italicized bold
the following this issue with drone targeting and widespread vacuum
cleaner approach surveillance. These are the criticisms of pine Gap
that you will hear most often in legitimate journalism, right,
(30:27):
these are the ones you will hear about in security journals,
in viable publications and stuff. And there's good reason, yeah,
because it's real. And after we take a quick break,
we'll examine some of the stranger stories about Pine Gap. Okay,
(30:56):
so for some reason here in our notes we have
this section titled Crazies Come out to Play. I don't
mean to be in any way denigrading with that, it's
just these are some pretty insane things. They're outlandish claims,
now outlandish claims. They're so far outlandish that they're literally extraterrestrial. Oh,
(31:18):
out of land. But it's no surprise that Pine Gap
has become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories and excreasingly.
I like the word you use, Matt, outlandish claims. We've
got a few of the really out there ones. I
don't know where do you guys want to go first?
Do you want to do the UFO stuff first?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I know where you want to start? You know where
we want to start?
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Boy? Do I ever? It's the secret Portal? Yes, I
want to talk about portals. Have you guys ever seen
a portal that's a Donny Darko reference? Apparently, this.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Maybe this is one of the strangest conspiratorial claims about
Pine Gap. The argument is that the CIA has has
been conducting time travel experiments and super soldier programs in
Pine Gap sort of because they're using portals to send
(32:13):
people to Mars, wherein a lot of these things are
conducted and we have to yeah, we have to treat
this with a wheelbarrow assault. There's a fringe researcher named
Richard Sowder who claimed to have spoken with a whistleblower
named rich Hansen, and according to Sowder, Hanson is not
(32:35):
only a part or was not only once a part
of these ultra secret programs, but he left for Mars
military service from a time portal in Australia.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, so this is interesting because it is true that
various people who did work for work at Pine Gap
at one point or another did say that the bosses
were CIA, So we know that part is true.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, portals, time portals.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Let me have the plot of the movie Time Coop
starring Jean Claude van Dam.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Except this time on Mars, and this time it's personal
on Mars. But I mean, okay, we don't want to
I don't want to poke fun at it too much?
What if rich Hansen is a real person and Soder
was also genuine when he was telling the story. I
mean there is, and there is an alternate universe where
(33:38):
this occurs some other dimension.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
If you believe in the multi dimensional stuff and think
for this setup, Matt, Because it is true that Soder,
by the way, also claims in his book Underground, Bases
and Tunnels that the base, pine Gap or rainfall operates
in alternate dimensions. So exist a multiple planes of reality
at once.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
But see if if multiverse theories are correct, then isn't
everything existing in multiplicity at all?
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Not the whole point? No, I think what he means
there is that it operates section you can reach through
and you can, you know, pick up your screwdriver from
this other dimension, bring it back over to this dimension,
or step through to what end? I guess are you
affecting the timeline in ways that military militaristically tactical ways.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Well, so, yeah, good question, Matt. I think you're you're
going even larger. You going to the meta level, which
is that if all if if universes are infinite, and
all possible things exist in some some sort of reality timeline,
branch sphere, what have you. Then there would be one
(34:49):
or many where this thing is actually true, and we
just happen to be living in one where that's not
the case.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Oh did I say.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
In your mouth at that last? But well, here's the
problem with that, which is a very familiar problem to
anybody who reads about this sort of stuff. If it
is an ultra secret program and we live in a
reality where a very public Washington Post journalist just very
publicly got dismembered for not even saying horrible things about
(35:25):
the Saudi crown prince and the US government, then how
are these people still alive?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
How in the holy kangaroo are these people still alive?
Blowing up the truth, exposing the hidden secrets of reality
tripping time traveling. CIA financed Nietzsche ubermansh Out on Mars,
(35:54):
so you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, So again, that's underground bases in tunnels, a book
that you can find somewhere at some time in some
dimension in this dimension.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Maybe all right, act now before the Mandela effect kicks in, right,
So okay, so you got through that. That's probably one
of the strangest and craziest, but one that has I
think many more people taking it seriously. Is the association
of pine Gap with the activity of unidentified flying objects,
(36:27):
and it dates way back to just a few years
after things really got rolling there in nineteen seventy This
is true.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
In nineteen seventy three, there was a cartographer who reported
seeing a vertical shaft of blue light, very very blindingly
bright vertical shaft of blue light in front of him
just after the stroke of midnight. And it was clearly
the source of this was the base. So he decided
to take a look, take a closer look, and he
(36:56):
moved his vehicle to the base a little bit closer,
and he saw a large, gleaming disk hovering about a
thousand feet from the ground.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, and he kept watching it. I guess security must
have been less tight at that time, Yeah, because he's
there for a while. He watches it for about half
an hour, and during this time he sees another beam
of blue light emanating from the UFO toward the ground
where it's hitting several of those ray domes, those golf
(37:32):
ball things, right, and it's the light is hitting those directly.
And then the light cease and another light beam appears,
and this time from the ray domes to the craft
and this goes back and forth, this exchange of light
bright burst again for about half an hour, and then
(37:52):
the disc begins to spin more and more quickly. Flash boom,
it shoots into the sky and disappears.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
WHOA.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Now, I have a couple of questions about that one
that we cannot answer right now. Okay, because I imagine
it being more of a laser beam of light. If
there's some kind of I'm just imagining that. It's completely true,
there's some form of energy or communications transfer occurring in
some way. That's why you would have a beam of
(38:21):
light from one of those things. That's the only thing
I can imagine, because if not.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Is it refueling.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well yeah, but here's the whole.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Thing, Like, Okay, how could you discern that the light
was coming from the ground up to the craft?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Right?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
It would be if it's just a splash of light essentially,
you know, like like a spotlight or something, you would
be able to tell, Oh, it's more centered on the
on the ground, and then it's a little wider up
top near wherever the craft is a thousand feet up.
It would occur that kind of light shaping would occur.
If it was just a light, if it was a
laser beam, how could you tell which way it was
(38:59):
trapped because it's incidant.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Speed of light, So a good question.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
That kind of thing just makes me go, okay, maybe weather.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Balloon, right, Maybe it was something that he saw they
just didn't understand. Quite possibly. Well, in nineteen seventy five,
then let's look at this one. There was a pilot
and several passengers on a private plane near Pine Gaps airspace,
which is obviously restricted airspace, and they all said, hey,
(39:32):
here's a cool idea. Let's try to sneak a peek
at all the weird stuff they have to be doing
down there Pine Gap.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
All right, mate, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
And so out of nowhere, this big, wide object appears
to take off from the base below them at a
breakneck speed. And as soon as the witnesses were able
to focus on this thing that was taking off and
it vanished into the sky. The pilot made a report
of this sighting as soon as they landed, and the
(40:02):
plane was fine, obviously, thankfully, both the pilot and all
of the passengers were asked to wait for investigators who
were going to come and get some more details from them.
But when the investigators show up again, according to the story,
they told the witnesses that they were for They men
in black them they so, I forget everything you've seen
about this. Don't talk about anything. You saw nothing.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Do you think they flashed them?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
That would be cool, That would be cool. But then
how would this story have gotten out?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh, you're right on one person wasn't looking directly.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I always wondered if that would work in men and planet.
But then we have more reports of UFOs and Pine Gap.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
In nineteen eighty four there were five anonymous witnesses who
said they saw something else. It was another sighting there
at Pine Gap. They they wanted to be anonymous due
to their apparent positions within the Australia government. You know,
it's one of those things, those situations where you can't
prove that these people are part of the Australian government,
(41:06):
but they said they were, and that's why they want
to be anonymous. So there's let's say the leader of
this group had been receiving all kinds of reports about
UFO sightings just above Pine Gap or near Pine Gap
in the weeks leading up to this thing that would
become their encounter this night to this moment. One message
(41:26):
that was received by this leader of the group was
a little more mysterious than the rest, and it advised
that something big was going to happen at Pine Gap
in the upcoming days. So guess what they did. They're
five of them, and they split themselves into two groups
using two different vehicles, and they approached the base from
two different positions.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I'm smart.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's very smart. Good idea. All right, now, let's keep
going down there. Once they get there, they essentially start
staking out the grounds, which is again we're talking about
a massive campus campus is the right word for it,
massive compound, and that's only five people to cover that
with only two vehicles. But anyway, they're just gonna check
(42:07):
it out for as long as they can. They stay
there for days. The first three days there's absolutely no
activity that they notice, at least anything of note. But
on the fourth night everything changed when several large military
vehicles started ferrying all these large groups of workers in
coveralls to the large rate domes, the big golf ball
(42:28):
looking things. So they're like, huh, I wonder what those
guys are doing.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And then.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Then things changed.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, as this was all taking place, as this brew
haha haha, I imagine a pillar of light shot upward
from the ground to the sky. They don't specify whether
it's shot out from one of these raate domes or dishes.
A strange cloud was forming high above the base around
(42:59):
this pillar of light, and when it vanished, they saw
five strange craft making their way to the base, according
to the report, for diamond shaped UFOs and one of
a quote cigar shape, which the people at Moufon when
we visited move On a while back, talked about it
seems to be a relatively common shape, at least in
(43:20):
their experience. Once these craft were over the base, the
pillar of light appeared again, this time from the craft
above to the grounds below. So we see that repeat, right,
almost like communication. And this went on for several minutes. Yeah,
it seems like the visual analog of a dial up modem.
Sound do you guys remember that, Paul, Can we get
a sound cue of a dial up modem? Please? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Like that, but with lights, it's like an electronic dolphin.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
And this exchange went on for a while, and the
strange cloud was still coalescing, and then like that they vanished.
And these are just a few of the UFO reports
originating in Pine Gap. They're not even the most famous.
Several of the most well known reports include reliable witnesses
(44:17):
like police officers, multiple groups of people from differing vantage
points seeing the same thing. And then this consistent report
of hidden doors. Did you guys see anything about it?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Again, these secret areas become a very common thing when
you're talking about Pine Pine Gap, These secret doors become
a real thing. It's very common occurrence when people are
talking about seeing things at Pine Gap, either doors to
secret places or see like you're saying, secret doors that
just exist within a wall somewhere or within part of
(44:49):
a base that you would never imagine that there's a
door there.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
And we know, I mean it makes sense to have
those sorts of entrances and exits built into secret places, right.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Especially when there's a large underground area.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Mm hmm, Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look no further than
Norad or that hotel that turned out to secretly be
a bunker for senators here in the States, which everyone
thought we were crazy when we mentioned it at first.
I'm just saying, but there's a counterpoint to these UFO reports,
and it's the one. Okay. So one of the big
(45:24):
theories about unidentified flying objects, which, of course, as we
said before, not necessarily extraterrestrial. One of the big arguments
is that these things are man made technology or human
made technology that the public just doesn't know about yet,
and that these things are a tremendous tactical advantage to
(45:46):
whichever country possesses them or whichever private company multinational possesses them.
That leads us to ask, well, how close are the
US and Australia really.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
That's been my question for the start. Yeah, I'm sure
it feels like they're giving up a whole lot of
their own sovereignty, you know, to have this facility that
largely benefits us, right and not them, And if anything
put to their country in the line of fire.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Potentially, yeah, absolutely, If there really is to go back
to this question, if there really is some sort of
top secret mind blowing flight or anti gravity technology, something
that would change the world were to ever come out,
why would the US place it in a foreign country,
regardless of how friendly their relations may be at some
given time.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
What if the Australian government were the ones who were
first contacted and the United States placed the facility there
and began, you know, hey, we've got the biggest military,
We're the ones who need to be handling this kind
of thing. And then it became a joint operation, but
the Australians were always the first.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
I like that has like a ring of patriotism too
for Australians there. But this is okay. If we're speculating,
this is something that seemed that gets me really quickly
into the realm of science fiction. If we wanted to
go profoundly deep into the rabbit hole, we could speculate
that maybe there was some sort of geographical constraint that
(47:15):
meant the base due to its extra dimensional properties, or
something had to be built in that specific spot for
some specific reason. There is a porto of Lamars, but
it only occurs there because of some I don't know,
gobbledegook pseudo science electromagnetic quark superpositions, because of the dream time,
(47:37):
because of the dream which we originally recognized as the
dream time. Oh my god, we're writing the movie now,
Stargate Aussigate. I'm a oh, Alice Gate, Alice Gate.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
I want to go down that rabbit hole further. But
I think we need to wrap this up, gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah, so let's end on the present day. As of
twenty seventeen, which is the closest we could get to
the present day for public reporting, Pine Gap is still expanding.
It's got a total of about thirty eight radio dishes,
many covered in those golf balls we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Those things help them.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
It's weather work better.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
It's just weatherproofing.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
I mean, that's the official explanation. Yeah, interesting, just to
keep the rust off. The North Korean situation is one
of the most crucial because of the base's proximity to
the Korean peninsula and therefore the proximity of Australia. The
city of Darwin and Northern Territory is about thirty six
(48:41):
hundred miles from Pyeongyang with a and that puts a
within range of an ICBM or intercontinental ballistic missile.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
OOH, which begs the question, are their ICBMs out there
in Pine Gap somewhere? Are there silos?
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Hmmm?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
I wonder you think they will put all their eggs
one basket like that.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
And why would you do that when you've just got
supercarriers and carriers everywhere.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Plenty of other military bases right, yeah, and subs and
whatever else. And the problem here is if we were
at a war game a bit, if the US did
become involved in a hot war with the dprkade Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, then Australia could quickly would almost
(49:26):
certainly be quickly dragged into this conflict. And despite being
isolated pretty far inland, Pine Gap would be instrumental in
the informational aspects of the US side of the war.
But also it would have a huge target on its
back because if you blow that thing up, you're poking
(49:47):
an eye, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Oh? Absolutely, That's my question, Like, how does it behoove
the Australian government, who aren't even allowed into the US
cryptography room, you know, it seems like they're kept at
arm's length about a lot of the stuff. What do
we have on them or what do they have on us?
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Or what where?
Speaker 3 (50:04):
That's that's my fascination with this whole story.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
What makes it symbiosis rather than parasites exactly?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
And I think, you know, given what I know about
our country and our tendency that maybe strong arm less
powerful countries, I would tend to think it might be
more the parasitic type of relationship.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, here's the deal, where I would I think it
would be difficult for you to name twenty places in
the planet other countries that don't have a US military
base in the exactly. Yeah, well, I mean, but I
mean twenty, Like, yes, we can name a few that
we know for sure, but but in most places there
(50:39):
is a US military presence, and it's just how it is.
In this case, maybe it's even a little less intrusive
because it's intelligence collection.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
And it's way out of the way, and it's also
there's a visible, you know, police state occupation of any kind.
I mean, it's just it's a research facility. It's a
you know, essentially on paper.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
And also it's well it's not a reason it is
on paper maybe, but I don't know if it can
even be called that anymore because the cover story got
blown out of the water so hard. I am going
to take take you up on that, mat. I'm going
to come back. I'm going to come back more back
in the studio and see if I can find twenty
twenty countries that don't have US basis. I don't know
(51:20):
if I can.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
I want to say there are several in Africa that don't.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Yeah, but they have. But they have got outposts of
outsourced military forces, which I think we should count. So this,
this is fascinating because it does. It's a huge question.
To your point, Nol. Probably one of the best arguments
for it is going to be the idea of mutual
(51:49):
security preventing perhaps the rise of a new hedgemon in
the region, namely China. So maybe Australia is of the
mind that you already have a good relationship with the US.
Let's keep that going. I don't know, you know, it
goes to speculation. No, it is true that it is
(52:10):
true that there are supporters of Pine Gap in Australia
and their primary, the primary thing they say is don't
believe all the conspiratorial stuff, all the all the alarmist hoopla.
The truth of the matter is that this is good
for us and it helps keep our country safer. So
we do wanna depict that part, just to be fair. Also,
(52:34):
on a pop culture note, if you want to see
stories that take place in Pine Gap fictional stories, check
out the new series I think it's on Netflix. It's
about Pine Gap and it's called as we like to say,
on the show in a burst of creativity Pine Gap.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Yes, I'm watching the trailer right now. It looks it
looks like a lot of fun, does it is?
Speaker 1 (52:57):
I wonder what the tone is. Do you think it's
like twenty four or Quantico or something.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
It feels very much like one of those police procedur
rules kind of thing with a little more style.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Maybe, Oh, thank god, does.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Every Oh it's got an American flag in an Australian flag,
it says Pine Gap. It's got a whole team.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
I like it. Do do they look like they're legitimate
intelligence workers or do they all look like waiters from
Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (53:22):
They look like from us.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Of course they're waiters from Los That's amazing. So so
so this this is literally like a like a Law
and Order n CIS type situation, but headquartered in Pine Gap.
And it's like an Adventure of the Week kind of story.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
I don't know, Okay, is it more like X Files?
I don't know nothing about. I just watched the trailer
without sound and it it looked like that.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Well it exists.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Watch the Can you watch the show without sound without
captions and maybe come back and tell us what your
take is.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Yes, please.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
All right, So that's that's where we are now. These
do not answer all of the questions about pine Gap,
but we do want to We do want to thank
all of our listeners out in Australia, in that part
of the world who said, hey, our fellow listeners would
like to hear more about this, because I don't think
it gets a lot of ink here in the United States.
(54:14):
And what better way to end the episode than leaving
the last word to Professor Tanter.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
It goes as follows. Quote. Pine Gap literally hardwires us
into the activities of the American military, and in some
cases that means we will cop the consequences. Like it
or not. Pine Gap will be contributing hugely in real
time to those operations as well as in preparation for them.
(54:44):
So whether or not the Australian government thinks that an
attack on North Korea is either justified or a wise
and sensible move, we will be part of that will
be culpable in the terms of the consequences. Geez, there
you have it.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
You have it.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
I know the score.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Something to think on. So thank you everyone for giving
us a listen. We would like to hear your opinion.
Maybe not just of Pine Gap, but your opinion of
US military basis on foreign soil anyway.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, well, do you live in a different country where
there's a US military base, what are your experiences with that?
Speaker 1 (55:22):
And is it a joint operation in the way that
this one is or is it solely US run sort
of like Guintanamo. Let us know. You can find us
on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. On Facebook especially, we are
Here's where it gets crazy. That's our community page. If
you haven't checked it out yet, hop on, we have
(55:43):
some We have some pretty good memes.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
Oh yeah, good memes, and even better people are contributing
all the time.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
All right.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
And oh, by the way, if you if you've ever
had any kind of unidentified flying object or submerged submerged
object or any other experience like that, please let us know.
We'd love love to hear your story and hopefully incorporate
it into an episode at some point. So yeah, and
that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
(56:12):
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (56:24):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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