December 5, 2018 • 55 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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined
with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. 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
(00:44):
this show researching military basis or mysterious compounds across the planet.
And while we often travel outside of the bounds of
these United States, we tend to focus most often on
facilities here because hey, it's ours, our home turf, and honestly,
that means that we're going to hear about places in
(01:05):
the US or associated with US way more often than say,
a secret base in Pakistan. Yeah, and public documents that
we get access to generally are about stuff that happens
on our turf. 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
(01:26):
go ahead email us up give us those military connections. Yes,
like some of our fellow listeners did after we we
did an episode on Australia recently and someone wrote to
us about this very topic. I mean, someone else sent
us a Koala bear. No, you we should only say
quad on purpose like they we got. They got mad
(01:46):
because we call them calls. Did we explain that on air?
I don't think we did, 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 Awesome's.
And for the record, I feel that our country got
very much short changed in that in that regards nasty
(02:07):
tailed things. Here's the thing too, on that one, I
think I was the most egregious offender of of having
the bear suffix on that. And that's just the thing
I do. Sometimes I call Matt Maddie bear. Sometimes I
call Ben Benny bear, and I call my my kid
her name bear. So you know, it's just a thing
I do. It's a it's a sign of of of
affection and that I think something is cute, beautiful. What's
(02:27):
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're we're 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 story
(02:50):
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 U. S intelligence operation on
foreign soil. Welcome friends and neighbors to Pine Gap. Oh, yes,
and our story begins in this small little town called
(03:10):
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. Yes, Sydney,
this is not Alice Springs is located in something called
the Red Center. It's it's pretty far inland. It's surrounded
(03:33):
by different deserts, scrubby grasslands, and nowadays it's major official
industry is tourism. Like any town, Alice Springs is not perfect.
It has a pretty significant itinerant population and there's a
lot of racial tension, but it's soldiers on. Nonetheless, our
story kicks in the high gear. If you travel about
(03:56):
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 capital letters rainfall.
I have heard also that you will be promptly arrested
(04:17):
and find about three thousand dollars. It's true for your trouble.
It's like the same thing that happens if you try
and getting into area. Yeah, the Groom Lake area. It's
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
(04:41):
to drive as close as they could. Did you hear
this story off are day? I tell you he he
got to Uh, he got close enough to see some signs,
and then in the distance on on an abudding cliff,
he saw the glint of a sniper eifel and then
two trucks came out and started chasing them down and
(05:05):
almost ran them off. The road just as an intimidation tactics,
and it worked, and it worked, He's probably not going
to go back now. This place code named Rainfall, is remote.
It's in the heart of the outback. It's surrounded on
all sides by barren land and a cartoonishly high amount
of surveillance. As you said, Noel, this is a place
(05:26):
where you will be aggressively um deterred and 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 um Australian features that
you'll ever hear anybody talk about its kangaroos. And apparently
this particular location is just lousy with them. But most
(05:49):
other more, you know, urban parts of Austria, you're not
just gonna see kangaroos hopping out of the woodwork, but
um 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
(06:09):
of like an insider's perspective, which will also come into
play later. Weird crap in austrail yet did good? Ben?
Thanks and check out their Patreon because I think they
want some money to buy some mikes and nice mikes
are important. 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
(06:32):
security clearance. The only way to really see this compound
is by air or by climbing the nearby ridges of
the McDonald ranges that surround the site. What what do
you see when you happen to fly over this thing
and peek out the window at just the right time.
There are these big white domes that you've seen before,
(06:53):
probably at least in pictures or in spy movies. They're
called geodesic domes, and they just look almost like, um,
a golf ball, a really big golf ball, like Epcot. Yes,
exactly like like Epcot with a less detailed texture. Yeah, definitely,
But you'll you'll see those. That's the biggest thing you're
(07:15):
gonna notice. And those those golf balls will will get
into this a bit later. They are they are covers
for radar dishes, which you know is a little bit anticlimactic,
you know, because there's so many fun things that could
be in a giant golf ball. That's what they say
is in there. That's it thought lots of smaller golf balls. Officially,
(07:38):
this site has 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
(07:59):
at the side, people should say its purposes to quote
support national security of both the US and Australia. The
facility contributes to verifying arms control and disarmament agreements and
monitoring military developments. Yeah, okay. As you can imagine, folks,
(08:20):
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 nine, nine six six,
well started before then, obviously, but on December nine of
that year, Australia and Uncle Sam signed a treaty agreeing
(08:44):
to establish a quote Joint Defense Space Research Facility. Oh
it sounds so cool. 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,
(09:09):
while it makes it very inconvenient to travel to, it
didn't strike anyone as particularly strange because it's pretty common
to build space research facilities off the beaten path. You know,
if 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 Virginia for
(09:33):
thousands of miles. So of course you don't want this
thing to be in downtown Sydney or Melbourne. Is something
which is how you pronounce it. So but by nineteen seventy,
over four hundred American families had moved to the area
and operations, whatever they were at the time, space research
(09:54):
I guess began space military research. Space four we call
space search for short right space search. And this base
is pretty quiet, at least on 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
(10:18):
pun intended, generally under the radar until what happened in Well,
there was this thing called the Aussi 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
(10:40):
asked to give details on you know, whatever this treaty was,
for whatever it is that they're doing. There's an Aussie
Senate Committee on Treaties and uh, the government said no, basically,
we will not tell you, right, which happens sometimes with
our Senate and their committees. When they asked questions about intelligence.
H we can have a closed session maybe and we
(11:02):
can discuss with one person or another, but right, we
can preapprove the questions. 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. Yeah,
it's probably the best name we're going to run into
and this show it sounds like a real ladies man,
(11:23):
so does Ball. Dr des Ball and Professor des Ball
is an intelligence expert who's had a real, a real
wrinkle 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.
(11:44):
According to Professor Ball, the compound had by this point
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 stops this. It's
(12:07):
going to employ over a thousand people. And I hate
to clue you in Synate Committee, but space research does
not even begin to cover what these people actually do
at Pine Gap. And we're going to jump into that
right after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it
(12:34):
gets crazy. So, according to das Ball Dr das Ball,
ladies man Um hind Gap was monitoring things in space
more than space itself. So maybe like other satellites. Yes,
in fact, exactly that, other satellites, monitoring spy satellites. Yea.
(12:55):
And he outlined four potential categories of types of signals
that were to be collected at Pine Gap. And these
these are quite broad. Yeah, telemetry from advanced weapons development.
We're talking ballistic missiles, We're talking all kinds of other,
um things used for arms control verification, which is kind
(13:16):
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 for other communication satellites, which
could be a whole host of things nowadays, um or
even in those days. And also described the operational area
(13:36):
as containing three different sections. Oh, he also mentioned microwave emissions.
Oh yeah, microwave emissions. Forgot about those long long distance
telephone calls. Are you making some of those? Well, Pine
Gaps probably listening. Well, here's the thing too, We always
talk about the lag with like technology that the military
is aware of versus like when it kind of trickles
(13:56):
into the public sphere or whatever. So you gotta wonder
if like they were laying the groundwork for monitoring technology
that wasn't even even in use yet by consumers all
forms of technology perpet Yeah. So as you say, that's
uh satellite station keeping section, that was one of the
(14:17):
operational areas, signals processing station and the signals analysis section.
None of the Australians who worked there could go in it,
could visit that area, that entire area until these satellites
are key because together with the n Essays menwith Hill
Base in England, Pine Gap has become a command post
(14:38):
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 in
seven six hundred. It involved at least two spy satellites
(14:59):
and in a secret tooth in five document that leaked,
they were meant to provide quote 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 was later upgraded as part of a second mission
(15:19):
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 they're a little bit too high for a lot
(15:41):
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, 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 UM was it the key satellite program?
(16:02):
I can't remember, but yes, Corona Corona was it. So
they're more than, as you said, twenty miles above the
earth surface. But what are they doing. They are equipped
with these huge suites of surveillance technology that made your
point Nell have almost certainly was outpacing whatever was available
(16:24):
commercially or known publicly at the time. And they are
meant to monitor wireless communications on the ground, such as
the things sent and received by radios, satellite up links,
and cell phones. Possibly just like the cell phone that
you are using to listen to this podcast right now.
But thankfully you're just you're not streaming this right you're
(16:46):
just listening to us download on your phone. They don't,
they don't hear anything. It's fine. Well, it depends if
they consider it strategic and tactical military, scientific, political, and
or economic communication signal. They are deaf really going to
gather it. They're also not going to tell you. It's
meant to keep tabs on missiles or weapons test and
targeted countries, but also like a vacuum cleaner approach to
(17:10):
sweep up intelligence from any foreign data system, they can
find emphasis on military systems and provide that surveillance to
support US forces, which brings us to their secret rooms.
I knew there was going to be a secret room.
There's always a secret room. There really is there, and
there is in fact a secret room in Pine Gap
(17:32):
that no Australian employees can enter. No Australian employees can enter,
and it is specifically made for the United States military.
It's the US Cryptographic Room. 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. See
(17:53):
you got to be fair. That does seem fair. But
but to what end? Why? Why? Now? I don't even
know we'll get there. I'm sure you can never be
too sure when you're dealing with spycraft like this. One
Australian did make it in. Just one guy made it
in once. So according to Professor does Ball, there were
at least two areas of the facility back in the
(18:14):
day where Australian and Nationals were not permitted entry. One
was the U S National Communications and Cipher Room, and
I guess that would be the cryptographic room that you
mentioned that, and the other is the quote key room
where they do the final analysis of all incoming intelligence.
As we mentioned before, it's the analysis sector right right
(18:35):
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 was the shadow PM,
(18:56):
did enter once. We should pause for a second for
our US listeners and walk through what a shadow PM is.
It's not as cool as it sounds. Yes, it's just
shadow night. Really, it's when the moon cast shadows. That's
what it's. That's what it's all about. Its originally shadow BM,
but they changed it. Is it Prime Minister? It is?
It is So opposition parties in this kind of governmental
(19:18):
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 and say, well,
here's what I would have done, and that's why you
(19:40):
should elect us. I'm gonna make a rare sports analogy,
sort of like guarding someone in basketball. That's a very
good sports analogy. Yeah, they're mirroring. I like it. You
gotta bob when they bob, and weave when they weave,
and hopefully it'll balance out and you're you're sort of
basically playing defense, right. I don't know, and that makes
me think, you know, will be in just seeing to
extend that analogy a bit. I wonder if people would
(20:04):
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, It's
been a lot of time saying, well, the one team
got more points, and our strategy next time will be
(20:26):
to get more points, and everyone's like, oh, okay, I
get it. I personally love it when football commentators just
keep referring to hold running the football. They just said,
you're doing so they're doing such a good job of
running with the football, and I'm just so such a
basic description of a thing. It's like, well, let's say
you know, they're two they're two parts of the game. Here, boys,
(20:46):
you gotta run with the football. You gotta throw the football.
Sometimes you gotta kick the football, but mostly is running
with a football. These guys seem to think people are
doing a good job. They're doing a great job running
of football. Thanks. So what strange is right? So Bill
Hayden shadow p um, we know what that is now?
Uh he did enter the area once officially that first room,
(21:07):
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,
and that was the final analysis room, the key room.
So what's the truth for now? It's a mystery, But
we do know what goes on internally in Pine Gap
(21:30):
thanks to a guy's pretty much recurring guest on our
show now, or at least a recurring contributor, Edward Snowden. Oh, yes,
the American intelligence contractor who turned whistle blower several years ago.
It's crazy how long it's been since Edward Snowden came
out as a whistle blower. But he's saying that Pine
Gap is described as playing a significant role in supporting
(21:51):
both intelligence activities and military operations. 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. Right. Well, I guess what he's saying is
in addition to monitoring monitoring the satellites and looking at
some of those communications, this facility is actually making real
(22:14):
time contributions to places where battles are being fought, oh,
like the drone programs and other stuff. 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
(22:39):
really destroy these missiles? Are they really going to deploy
a nuke? It turned out that they were going full
snoopy and like, here's where you should bomb, right So,
according to another guy, Professor Richard Tanter, who was a
senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute and Honorary Melbourne
University Professor or pine Gap, also contributes data for CIA
(23:03):
drone operations and countries in which the US is not
at war so Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth. 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 knows whatever ends up happening.
(23:24):
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 Aussee 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.
(23:46):
And here's why this drone assassination, targeting and nuclear weapons
stuff is important. First, to backtrack a little, it's clear
that Pine Gap is part of Five Eyes and Project Echelon.
We have previous episode on that. The important t L
d R or I guess t L d L for
this purpose of this medium is that the important part
(24:10):
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 that, Okay, let's
say the US or the n s A cannot legally
(24:31):
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 uh, legal chucking and jiving there. That's
(24:51):
that's the problem critics have with this place. The problem
that Dr Tanterer has with the leaked documents that were
time by an outfit like the Intercept is that there's
not only a huge transformation in pine Gaps, function in
recent history. But these these documents, as paperwork he got,
(25:14):
provide authoritative confirmation 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,
(25:34):
providing the ability for the American military to identify and
place in real time the location of targets of interest.
So let's say, uh, somebody for some reason wants to
send a drone out to assassinate um me sure, now,
to assassinate Mattes right here and his phones right there.
(25:57):
This this means that they can find not Matt, not
you in particular map, but they can find your phone.
And that makes coordinating drones a controversial topic because they're
they're pulling stuff from a simcard, right and maybe just
for the purposes of targeting. They're not pulling the content
of the conversation, text, calls, cute emoji that you send
(26:20):
to and from that device. According to one drone operator,
we're not going after people. Were going after the phones,
and we're hoping that the person on the other end
of that missile is the actual bad guy. So if
you are in a war torn area, be careful what
phones you pick up. And that's how that's how noncombatants
(26:43):
and innocent civilians have been murdered. Well, and also those
drones there, they're they're kind of blunt 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 that how fire missile
or you know other classes of missiles that explode with
(27:03):
a radius. Yeah, yeah, they're called tactical, but probably the
best way to say it is comparatively tactic, right, as
opposed to like wiping out an entire city. Maybe just
wipe out a city block right, right, or a wedding, yeah,
instead of a building an entire skyscraper. If you look
at some of this stuff on live leak that you
(27:24):
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 a part of a building. Part of a building.
Yeah yeah, but that's that's the thing that becomes so
(27:45):
divisive so quickly. So Supporters of extra judicial killings involving
U a v s will say that it is really
the best, most safe way to preserve the lives of
military members and the minimu eyes the possibility of civilian casualties.
Opponents will say, uh no, because it's like the old
(28:07):
autonomous vehicle argument. We're still we're still screwing up 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 may be
more likely to roll the dice and just give it
a go. You're not having to send out your best
men and women for the job. That's I mean, that's
a that's a good argument as well, because one of
(28:30):
the balances for um Western societies that you often here
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 democracies because
the people have a voice in government in this situation. Unfortunately,
(28:56):
Australians largely do not because this maybe now a joint
United States and Australian bass, but a lot of the
drone work is coming from the U S side, and
we should establish highlight underlying italicized bold the following this
(29:17):
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, these are the
ones you will hear about in UM security journals, in
(29:38):
viable publications and stuff. But there's good reason. And there's
good reason, yeah, because it's real. And after we take
a quick break, will examine some of the stranger stories
about Pine Gap. Okay, so for some reason here in
(30:04):
our notes we have this section titled the Crazy has
come out to play. I don't mean to be in
any way Denta grading with that. It's just these are
some pretty insane things. The outlandish claims, now outlandish claims,
they're they're so far outlandish that they're literally extraterrestrial out
of lands. But it's it's no surprise that Pine Gaff
(30:28):
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 where do you guys want
to go first? You want to do the UFO stuff first,
to know, I know where you want to start? You
know where we want to start? Boy? Do I ever
(30:49):
the secret portal? Yes? I want to talk about portals?
Have you guys ever seen a portal? Donny Darko reference?
Apparently the this maybe this is one of the stream
just conspiratorial claims about Pine Gap And the argument is
that the CIA has has been conducting time travel experiments
(31:12):
and super soldier programs in pine Gaps sort of because
they're using portals to send people to Mars where where
in a lot of these things are conducted and we
have to yeah, we have to treat this with a
willbarrow assault. There's a fringe researcher named Richard Souder who
(31:32):
claimed to have spoken with a whistleblower named rich Hansen,
and according to Souder, Hansen is not 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. There you go, yeah. So,
(31:55):
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
c I A. So we know that part is true.
Um portals, time portals, uh me have the plot of
(32:19):
the movie Time Cop Jean Claude van Dam, 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 fund at it too much. What if
rich Hanson is a real person and Sawder was also
genuine when he was telling the story. I mean, there is,
(32:40):
and there is an alternate universe where this occurs some
some other dimension if you believe in the multidimensional stuff.
And thank you for the setup, mat because it is
true that Sauder, by the way, also claims in his
book Underground, Bases and Tunnels that the base Pine Gap
or Rainfall operates in all internate dimensions, so exist on
(33:01):
multiple planes of reality at once. But see, if if
multiverse theories are correct, then isn't everything existing in multiplicity
at all? Is not the whole point? No, I think
what he means there is that it operates. You can
reach through and you can, you know, pick up your
screwdriver from this other dimension, bring it back over to
(33:24):
this dimension, or step through to what end? I guess
are you affecting the timeline in ways that military militaristically
tactical ways. Well, so, yeah, good question, Matt. I think
you're you're going even larger. You're going to the meta level,
which is that if all if if universes are infinite,
(33:45):
and all possible things exist in some some sort of reality, timeline,
branch sphere, what have you, then there would be one
or many where this thing is actually true and we
just happened to be living in and where that's not
the case at that last. But well, here's here's the
(34:06):
problem with that, which is 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 the
(34:30):
Saudi crown prince and the US government, then how are
these people still alive? Yeah? How in the holy kangaroo
are these people still alive? Blowing up the truth, exposing
the hidden secrets of reality tripping time traveling c I
(34:52):
a financed Nichi ubermanh out on Mars, you know what
I mean. Yeah, So again that's underground Bases and Tunnels
book that you can find somewhere at some time in
some dimension this dimension maybe act now before the before
the Mandela effect kicks in, right, So okay, so you
(35:15):
gotta do that. That's probably one of one of the
strangest and craziest, but one has I think many more
people taking it seriously. Is the association of pine Gap
with the activity of unidentified flying objects. And it dates
way back to just a few years after things really
(35:37):
got rolling there in nine. This is true. Um. 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. UM. So he he
(36:00):
decided to take a look, take a closer look, and
he 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, and he kept watching it.
This I guess security must have been less tight at
that time, because he's there for a while. He watches
(36:22):
it for about half an hour, and during this time
he sees another beam of blue light emanating from the
UFO towards the ground where it's it's hitting several of
those raydomes, those um golf ball things, right, and it's
it's hitting the light is hitting those directly. And then
(36:43):
the lights cease and another light beam appears, and this
time from the raydomes to the craft and this goes
back and forth, this exchange of light bright burst again
for about half an hour, and then the disc begins
to spin more and more weickly. Flash boom, It shoots
into the sky and disappears. WHOA. Now, let's I have
(37:06):
a couple of questions about that one that we cannot
answer right now, because I imagine it being more of
a laser beam of light. Um, 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 a beam of light
(37:26):
from one of those things. Um, that's the only thing
I can imagine, because if not, is it refueling. Well yeah,
but but here's the whole thing, Like, Okay, how could
you discern that the light was coming from the ground
up to the craft? Right? It would be if it's
just a um, a splash of light essentially, you know,
like like a spotlight or something, you would be able
(37:47):
to tell, Oh, it's more centered on the on the ground,
and then it's a little wider up top nearer wherever
the craft is a thousand feet up, it would occur.
That kind of light shaping would occur if it was
just a ight, if it was a laser beam, how
could you tell which way it was traveling because it's
instant travel speed of lights. So a good question kind
(38:09):
of go, okay, maybe weather balloon? Right, Maybe it was
something that he saw that he just didn't understand quite possibly. Well,
in ninety five, then let's 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,
(38:34):
and they they all said, hey, here's a here's a
cool idea. Let's try to sneak a peek at all
the weird stuff they have to be doing down their
Pine Gaps all right, let's do it. And so out
of nowhere, this big white object appears to take off
from the base below them at a breakneck speed, and
(38:55):
as soon as the witnesses were able to focus on
this thing that taking off, it had vanished into the sky.
The pilot made a report of this sighting as soon
as they landed, and the plane was fine, obviously, thankfully,
both the pilot and all of the passengers were asked
to wait for investigators who were gonna come and get
some more details from them. But when the investigators show
(39:19):
up again, according to the story, they told the witnesses
that they were for They men and blacked them, and
so get everything you've seen about this. Don't talk about
anything you saw nothing. Do you think they flashed them?
That would be cool, That would be cool. But then
how would this story have gotten out? Oh, you're right.
One one person wasn't looking directly really quickly. I always
(39:42):
wondered if that would work. And men and black. But
then we have more reports of UFOs and Pine Gap.
Oh yeah, there were five anonymous witnesses who said they
saw something else. It was another sighting there at Pine Gap. Uh.
They they wanted to be anonymous due to their their
(40:03):
apparent positions within the Australian government. You know, you it's
one of those things, those situations where you can't prove
that these people are part of the Australian government, 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
(40:25):
their encounter this night, to this this moment um. One
message 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.
There's five of them, and they split themselves into two
(40:47):
groups using two different vehicles, and they approached the base
from two different positions. Smart. 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 or I
don't know, campus is the right word for it. Massive compound,
(41:07):
uh and that's only five people to cover that with
only two vehicles. But anyway, they're just gonna check it
out for as long as they can, they say, 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
(41:27):
started ferrying all these large groups of workers in coveralls
to the to the large radomes, the big golf ball
looking things. So they're like, huh, I wonder what those
guys are doing. And then and things changed. Yeah, As
this was all taking place, as this brew ha ha
ha haad i imagining pillar of light shot upward from
(41:51):
the ground to the sky. They don't specify whether it's
shot out from one of these radomes or dishes. A
strange cloud was forming high above the base around this
pillar of light, and when it vanished, they saw five
strange craft making their way to the base, according to
the report, four diamond shaped UFOs and one of a
(42:14):
quote cigar shape, which the people that move On when
we visited Uh move On a while back, talked about
it seems to be a relatively common shape, at least
in their in 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
(42:35):
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? Like that, but with lights,
(42:59):
it's like kind of electronic dolphin. And this 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 Pine Gap.
They're not even the most famous. Several of the most
(43:20):
well known reports include reliable witnesses 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 again? These secret areas become a
very common thing when you're talking about Pine Gap. Pine Gap,
the secret doors become a real thing. It's very common
(43:43):
occurrence when people are talking about seeing things at Pine Gap,
either either doors to secret places or see like you're saying,
secret doors that just exist within a wall somewhere or
within part of a base that you would never imagine
that there's a door there, and we know, I mean
it makes sense to have those sorts of entrances and
(44:04):
exits built into secret places, right, especially when there's a
large underground area. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, look no further
than Nora rad 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
(44:25):
these UFO reports, and it's the one. Okay. So one
of the big 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
(44:46):
about yet, and that these things are a tremendous tactical
advantage to whichever country possesses them or whichever private company
multinational possesses them. That leads us to ask, well, how
close are the US and Australa really? That's been my
question from the start, and I'm sure feels like they're
giving up a whole lot of their own sovereignty you know,
(45:07):
to have this facility that largely benefits US and not them,
and if anything put to their country in the line
of fire, potentially, yeah, absolutely, if there really is to
go BacT to this question, if there really is some
sort of top secret mind blowing flight or anti gravity technology,
(45:27):
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. Maybe at some given time,
what if the Australian government, We're the ones who were
first contacted, and the United States placed the the facility
(45:49):
there and begin 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 I like that that has
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
(46:11):
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 meant the base
due to its uh, extra dimensional properties or something had
to be built in that specific spot for some specific reason.
(46:32):
There is a portole Lamars, but it only occurs there
because of some I don't know, gobbledegook pseudoscience electromagnetic park superpositions,
because of the dreamtime, because of the dream which we
originally recognized as a dreamtime. Oh my god, we're writing
the movie now, Stargate Auseie Gate, Alice Gate. I want
(47:00):
to go down that rabbit hole further, but I think
we need to wrap this up, gentlemen. Yeah, so let's
end on the present day, as of 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
(47:22):
balls who mentioned earlier. Those things help them. It's weather
worth better. It's just weather proofing. I mean, that's the
adial explanation. Yeah, just to keep the rust off. The
North Korean situation is one of the most crucial because
of the basis proximity to the Korean peninsula and therefore
the proximity of Australia, the city of Darwin and Northern
(47:44):
Territory is about thirty six hundred miles from pyeong Youang
with a and that puts a within range of an
I C b M or intercontinental ballistic missile, which makes
the question are there I C B M s out
there in Pine Gap? Somewhere? Are their silos? I wonder
you think they would put all their eggs in one
(48:05):
basket like that? And why would you do that when
you've just got super carriers and carriers everywhere, plenty of
other military bases right, and subs and whatever else. And
the problem here is if we were to war game
a bit, if the US did become involved in a
in a hot war with the DPRK Democratic People's Republic
(48:29):
of Korea, then Australia could quickly would almost certainly be
quickly dragged into this conflict. And despite being isolated pretty
far inland, Pine Gap would be instrumental in the us
UH the informational aspects of the U S side of
the war. But also it would have a huge target
on its back because if you if you blow that
(48:50):
thing up, you're poking an eye, you know what I mean?
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 arms length about a
lot of the stuff. What do we have on them,
or what do they have on us? Or what where?
That's that's my fascination with this whole story. What makes
(49:12):
it symbiosis rather than paris exactly? And I think, you know,
given what I know about our country and our our
our tendency that maybe strong arm less powerful countries, I
would tend to think it might be more in the
parasitic type of relationship. Here's the deal where I would
I think it would be difficult for you to name
(49:32):
twenty places in the plane in other countries that don't
have a U. S. Military base in them. Yeah, well,
I mean, but I mean twenty, Like, yes, you can
name a few that we know for sure, but but
in most places there is a U. S. 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
(49:54):
and it's way out of the way, and there's a
visible you know, police state, your patient of any kind.
I mean, it's just that's a research facility. It's you know,
essentially on paper. And also it's well, it's not a
reason it is on paper maybe, but I don't know
if we can even be called that anymore because the
cover story got blown out of the water so hard.
(50:15):
I am going to take take you up on that, Matt.
I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna come back. We're back
in the studio and see if I can find twenties
twenty countries that don't have US basis. I don't know
if I can. I want to say there are several
in Africa that don't. Yeah, but they they got presents
with out outpost outsourced military forces, which I think we
(50:39):
should count. So this, this is fascinating because it does
it's a huge question to your point, Noll. Probably one
of the best arguments for it is going to be
the idea of mutual security preventing perhaps the rise of
a new hedgemon in the region, namely China. So maybe
(51:03):
Australia is of the mind that we 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 um, it is 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,
(51:24):
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 we do wanna,
we do wanna depict that part, just to be fair. Also,
on a pop culture note, if you want to see
stories that take place in Pine Gap fictional stories, check
(51:48):
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. Yes,
I'm watching the trailer right now. It looks it looks
like a lot of fun, does it is? I wonder
what the tone is. Do you think it's like twenty
four Quantico or something. It feels very much like one
of those police procedurals kind of thing with a little
(52:11):
more style. Maybe, Oh thank god, it's kind an American
flag in an Australian flag. It's this Pine Gap. It's
got a whole team. I like it. Do do they
look like they're legitimate intelligence workers or do they all
look like waiters from Los Angeles? They look like figures
from us. Of course they're watered from. That's amazing, so
(52:31):
so so this this is literally like a like a
UM Law and Order in C I S type situation,
but headquartered in Pine Gap. And it's like an Adventure
of the Week kind of story. I don't know, 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. Well it exists. Watch the Can you
watch the show without sound and without captions and maybe
(52:54):
come back and tell us what you're taking? All right?
So that 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 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
(53:16):
gets a lot of ink here in the United States.
And what better way to end the episode than leaving
the last word to Professor Tanter. It goes as follows quote.
Pine Gap literally hard wires us into the activities of
the American military, and in some cases that means we
(53:38):
will copy 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. 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
(54:00):
the terms of the consequences. Geez, you have it, you
have it, the score something to think on. So thank
you everyone for giving us a listen. We would like
to hear your opinion, maybe not just a pine gap,
but your opinion of US military bases on foreign soil anyway. Yeah, well,
(54:21):
do you live in a different country where there's US
military base, what are your your experiences with that? And
is it a joint operation in the way that this
one is or is it solely US run sort of
like Quintanamo. Uh, 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
(54:45):
you haven't checked it out yet, hop on, we have
some We have some pretty good memes. Oh yeah, good
memes and even better people. They're on their contributing all
the time, all right. Uh. And oh, by the way,
if you if you've ever had any kind of unidentified
flying act or submerged submerged object, or any other experience
like that, Please let us know. We'd love to hear
(55:05):
your story and hopefully incorporated into an episode at some point. So, yeah,
do all that stuff. You can call us one eight
three three S T d W y t K, leave
a message you might get on the show. Either way,
we want to hear from you. But if you don't
want to do any of those things right now, you
can send us an email. We are conspiracy and how
(55:26):
Stuff Works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined
with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. 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
(00:44):
this show researching military basis or mysterious compounds across the planet.
And while we often travel outside of the bounds of
these United States, we tend to focus most often on
facilities here because hey, it's ours, our home turf, and honestly,
that means that we're going to hear about places in
(01:05):
the US or associated with US way more often than say,
a secret base in Pakistan. Yeah, and public documents that
we get access to generally are about stuff that happens
on our turf. 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
(01:26):
go ahead email us up give us those military connections. Yes,
like some of our fellow listeners did after we we
did an episode on Australia recently and someone wrote to
us about this very topic. I mean, someone else sent
us a Koala bear. No, you we should only say
quad on purpose like they we got. They got mad
(01:46):
because we call them calls. Did we explain that on air?
I don't think we did, 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 Awesome's.
And for the record, I feel that our country got
very much short changed in that in that regards nasty
(02:07):
tailed things. Here's the thing too, on that one, I
think I was the most egregious offender of of having
the bear suffix on that. And that's just the thing
I do. Sometimes I call Matt Maddie bear. Sometimes I
call Ben Benny bear, and I call my my kid
her name bear. So you know, it's just a thing
I do. It's a it's a sign of of of
affection and that I think something is cute, beautiful. What's
(02:27):
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're we're 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 story
(02:50):
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 U. S intelligence operation on
foreign soil. Welcome friends and neighbors to Pine Gap. Oh, yes,
and our story begins in this small little town called
(03:10):
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. Yes, Sydney,
this is not Alice Springs is located in something called
the Red Center. It's it's pretty far inland. It's surrounded
(03:33):
by different deserts, scrubby grasslands, and nowadays it's major official
industry is tourism. Like any town, Alice Springs is not perfect.
It has a pretty significant itinerant population and there's a
lot of racial tension, but it's soldiers on. Nonetheless, our
story kicks in the high gear. If you travel about
(03:56):
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 capital letters rainfall.
I have heard also that you will be promptly arrested
(04:17):
and find about three thousand dollars. It's true for your trouble.
It's like the same thing that happens if you try
and getting into area. Yeah, the Groom Lake area. It's
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
(04:41):
to drive as close as they could. Did you hear
this story off are day? I tell you he he
got to Uh, he got close enough to see some signs,
and then in the distance on on an abudding cliff,
he saw the glint of a sniper eifel and then
two trucks came out and started chasing them down and
(05:05):
almost ran them off. The road just as an intimidation tactics,
and it worked, and it worked, He's probably not going
to go back now. This place code named Rainfall, is remote.
It's in the heart of the outback. It's surrounded on
all sides by barren land and a cartoonishly high amount
of surveillance. As you said, Noel, this is a place
(05:26):
where you will be aggressively um deterred and 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 um Australian features that
you'll ever hear anybody talk about its kangaroos. And apparently
this particular location is just lousy with them. But most
(05:49):
other more, you know, urban parts of Austria, you're not
just gonna see kangaroos hopping out of the woodwork, but
um 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
(06:09):
of like an insider's perspective, which will also come into
play later. Weird crap in austrail yet did good? Ben?
Thanks and check out their Patreon because I think they
want some money to buy some mikes and nice mikes
are important. 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
(06:32):
security clearance. The only way to really see this compound
is by air or by climbing the nearby ridges of
the McDonald ranges that surround the site. What what do
you see when you happen to fly over this thing
and peek out the window at just the right time.
There are these big white domes that you've seen before,
(06:53):
probably at least in pictures or in spy movies. They're
called geodesic domes, and they just look almost like, um,
a golf ball, a really big golf ball, like Epcot. Yes,
exactly like like Epcot with a less detailed texture. Yeah, definitely,
But you'll you'll see those. That's the biggest thing you're
(07:15):
gonna notice. And those those golf balls will will get
into this a bit later. They are they are covers
for radar dishes, which you know is a little bit anticlimactic,
you know, because there's so many fun things that could
be in a giant golf ball. That's what they say
is in there. That's it thought lots of smaller golf balls. Officially,
(07:38):
this site has 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
(07:59):
at the side, people should say its purposes to quote
support national security of both the US and Australia. The
facility contributes to verifying arms control and disarmament agreements and
monitoring military developments. Yeah, okay. As you can imagine, folks,
(08:20):
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 nine, nine six six,
well started before then, obviously, but on December nine of
that year, Australia and Uncle Sam signed a treaty agreeing
(08:44):
to establish a quote Joint Defense Space Research Facility. Oh
it sounds so cool. 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,
(09:09):
while it makes it very inconvenient to travel to, it
didn't strike anyone as particularly strange because it's pretty common
to build space research facilities off the beaten path. You know,
if 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 Virginia for
(09:33):
thousands of miles. So of course you don't want this
thing to be in downtown Sydney or Melbourne. Is something
which is how you pronounce it. So but by nineteen seventy,
over four hundred American families had moved to the area
and operations, whatever they were at the time, space research
(09:54):
I guess began space military research. Space four we call
space search for short right space search. And this base
is pretty quiet, at least on 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
(10:18):
pun intended, generally under the radar until what happened in Well,
there was this thing called the Aussi 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
(10:40):
asked to give details on you know, whatever this treaty was,
for whatever it is that they're doing. There's an Aussie
Senate Committee on Treaties and uh, the government said no, basically,
we will not tell you, right, which happens sometimes with
our Senate and their committees. When they asked questions about intelligence.
H we can have a closed session maybe and we
(11:02):
can discuss with one person or another, but right, we
can preapprove the questions. 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. Yeah,
it's probably the best name we're going to run into
and this show it sounds like a real ladies man,
(11:23):
so does Ball. Dr des Ball and Professor des Ball
is an intelligence expert who's had a real, a real
wrinkle 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.
(11:44):
According to Professor Ball, the compound had by this point
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 stops this. It's
(12:07):
going to employ over a thousand people. And I hate
to clue you in Synate Committee, but space research does
not even begin to cover what these people actually do
at Pine Gap. And we're going to jump into that
right after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it
(12:34):
gets crazy. So, according to das Ball Dr das Ball,
ladies man Um hind Gap was monitoring things in space
more than space itself. So maybe like other satellites. Yes,
in fact, exactly that, other satellites, monitoring spy satellites. Yea.
(12:55):
And he outlined four potential categories of types of signals
that were to be collected at Pine Gap. And these
these are quite broad. Yeah, telemetry from advanced weapons development.
We're talking ballistic missiles, We're talking all kinds of other,
um things used for arms control verification, which is kind
(13:16):
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 for other communication satellites, which
could be a whole host of things nowadays, um or
even in those days. And also described the operational area
(13:36):
as containing three different sections. Oh, he also mentioned microwave emissions.
Oh yeah, microwave emissions. Forgot about those long long distance
telephone calls. Are you making some of those? Well, Pine
Gaps probably listening. Well, here's the thing too, We always
talk about the lag with like technology that the military
is aware of versus like when it kind of trickles
(13:56):
into the public sphere or whatever. So you gotta wonder
if like they were laying the groundwork for monitoring technology
that wasn't even even in use yet by consumers all
forms of technology perpet Yeah. So as you say, that's
uh satellite station keeping section, that was one of the
(14:17):
operational areas, signals processing station and the signals analysis section.
None of the Australians who worked there could go in it,
could visit that area, that entire area until these satellites
are key because together with the n Essays menwith Hill
Base in England, Pine Gap has become a command post
(14:38):
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 in
seven six hundred. It involved at least two spy satellites
(14:59):
and in a secret tooth in five document that leaked,
they were meant to provide quote 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 was later upgraded as part of a second mission
(15:19):
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 they're a little bit too high for a lot
(15:41):
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, 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 UM was it the key satellite program?
(16:02):
I can't remember, but yes, Corona Corona was it. So
they're more than, as you said, twenty miles above the
earth surface. But what are they doing. They are equipped
with these huge suites of surveillance technology that made your
point Nell have almost certainly was outpacing whatever was available
(16:24):
commercially or known publicly at the time. And they are
meant to monitor wireless communications on the ground, such as
the things sent and received by radios, satellite up links,
and cell phones. Possibly just like the cell phone that
you are using to listen to this podcast right now.
But thankfully you're just you're not streaming this right you're
(16:46):
just listening to us download on your phone. They don't,
they don't hear anything. It's fine. Well, it depends if
they consider it strategic and tactical military, scientific, political, and
or economic communication signal. They are deaf really going to
gather it. They're also not going to tell you. It's
meant to keep tabs on missiles or weapons test and
targeted countries, but also like a vacuum cleaner approach to
(17:10):
sweep up intelligence from any foreign data system, they can
find emphasis on military systems and provide that surveillance to
support US forces, which brings us to their secret rooms.
I knew there was going to be a secret room.
There's always a secret room. There really is there, and
there is in fact a secret room in Pine Gap
(17:32):
that no Australian employees can enter. No Australian employees can enter,
and it is specifically made for the United States military.
It's the US Cryptographic Room. 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. See
(17:53):
you got to be fair. That does seem fair. But
but to what end? Why? Why? Now? I don't even
know we'll get there. I'm sure you can never be
too sure when you're dealing with spycraft like this. One
Australian did make it in. Just one guy made it
in once. So according to Professor does Ball, there were
at least two areas of the facility back in the
(18:14):
day where Australian and Nationals were not permitted entry. One
was the U S National Communications and Cipher Room, and
I guess that would be the cryptographic room that you
mentioned that, and the other is the quote key room
where they do the final analysis of all incoming intelligence.
As we mentioned before, it's the analysis sector right right
(18:35):
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 was the shadow PM,
(18:56):
did enter once. We should pause for a second for
our US listeners and walk through what a shadow PM is.
It's not as cool as it sounds. Yes, it's just
shadow night. Really, it's when the moon cast shadows. That's
what it's. That's what it's all about. Its originally shadow BM,
but they changed it. Is it Prime Minister? It is?
It is So opposition parties in this kind of governmental
(19:18):
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 and say, well,
here's what I would have done, and that's why you
(19:40):
should elect us. I'm gonna make a rare sports analogy,
sort of like guarding someone in basketball. That's a very
good sports analogy. Yeah, they're mirroring. I like it. You
gotta bob when they bob, and weave when they weave,
and hopefully it'll balance out and you're you're sort of
basically playing defense, right. I don't know, and that makes
me think, you know, will be in just seeing to
extend that analogy a bit. I wonder if people would
(20:04):
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, It's
been a lot of time saying, well, the one team
got more points, and our strategy next time will be
(20:26):
to get more points, and everyone's like, oh, okay, I
get it. I personally love it when football commentators just
keep referring to hold running the football. They just said,
you're doing so they're doing such a good job of
running with the football, and I'm just so such a
basic description of a thing. It's like, well, let's say
you know, they're two they're two parts of the game. Here, boys,
(20:46):
you gotta run with the football. You gotta throw the football.
Sometimes you gotta kick the football, but mostly is running
with a football. These guys seem to think people are
doing a good job. They're doing a great job running
of football. Thanks. So what strange is right? So Bill
Hayden shadow p um, we know what that is now?
Uh he did enter the area once officially that first room,
(21:07):
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,
and that was the final analysis room, the key room.
So what's the truth for now? It's a mystery, But
we do know what goes on internally in Pine Gap
(21:30):
thanks to a guy's pretty much recurring guest on our
show now, or at least a recurring contributor, Edward Snowden. Oh, yes,
the American intelligence contractor who turned whistle blower several years ago.
It's crazy how long it's been since Edward Snowden came
out as a whistle blower. But he's saying that Pine
Gap is described as playing a significant role in supporting
(21:51):
both intelligence activities and military operations. 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. Right. Well, I guess what he's saying is
in addition to monitoring monitoring the satellites and looking at
some of those communications, this facility is actually making real
(22:14):
time contributions to places where battles are being fought, oh,
like the drone programs and other stuff. 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
(22:39):
really destroy these missiles? Are they really going to deploy
a nuke? It turned out that they were going full
snoopy and like, here's where you should bomb, right So,
according to another guy, Professor Richard Tanter, who was a
senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute and Honorary Melbourne
University Professor or pine Gap, also contributes data for CIA
(23:03):
drone operations and countries in which the US is not
at war so Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth. 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 knows whatever ends up happening.
(23:24):
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 Aussee 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.
(23:46):
And here's why this drone assassination, targeting and nuclear weapons
stuff is important. First, to backtrack a little, it's clear
that Pine Gap is part of Five Eyes and Project Echelon.
We have previous episode on that. The important t L
d R or I guess t L d L for
this purpose of this medium is that the important part
(24:10):
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 that, Okay, let's
say the US or the n s A cannot legally
(24:31):
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 uh, legal chucking and jiving there. That's
(24:51):
that's the problem critics have with this place. The problem
that Dr Tanterer has with the leaked documents that were
time by an outfit like the Intercept is that there's
not only a huge transformation in pine Gaps, function in
recent history. But these these documents, as paperwork he got,
(25:14):
provide authoritative confirmation 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,
(25:34):
providing the ability for the American military to identify and
place in real time the location of targets of interest.
So let's say, uh, somebody for some reason wants to
send a drone out to assassinate um me sure, now,
to assassinate Mattes right here and his phones right there.
(25:57):
This this means that they can find not Matt, not
you in particular map, but they can find your phone.
And that makes coordinating drones a controversial topic because they're
they're pulling stuff from a simcard, right and maybe just
for the purposes of targeting. They're not pulling the content
of the conversation, text, calls, cute emoji that you send
(26:20):
to and from that device. According to one drone operator,
we're not going after people. Were going after the phones,
and we're hoping that the person on the other end
of that missile is the actual bad guy. So if
you are in a war torn area, be careful what
phones you pick up. And that's how that's how noncombatants
(26:43):
and innocent civilians have been murdered. Well, and also those
drones there, they're they're kind of blunt 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 that how fire missile
or you know other classes of missiles that explode with
(27:03):
a radius. Yeah, yeah, they're called tactical, but probably the
best way to say it is comparatively tactic, right, as
opposed to like wiping out an entire city. Maybe just
wipe out a city block right, right, or a wedding, yeah,
instead of a building an entire skyscraper. If you look
at some of this stuff on live leak that you
(27:24):
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 a part of a building. Part of a building.
Yeah yeah, but that's that's the thing that becomes so
(27:45):
divisive so quickly. So Supporters of extra judicial killings involving
U a v s will say that it is really
the best, most safe way to preserve the lives of
military members and the minimu eyes the possibility of civilian casualties.
Opponents will say, uh no, because it's like the old
(28:07):
autonomous vehicle argument. We're still we're still screwing up 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 may be
more likely to roll the dice and just give it
a go. You're not having to send out your best
men and women for the job. That's I mean, that's
a that's a good argument as well, because one of
(28:30):
the balances for um Western societies that you often here
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 democracies because
the people have a voice in government in this situation. Unfortunately,
(28:56):
Australians largely do not because this maybe now a joint
United States and Australian bass, but a lot of the
drone work is coming from the U S side, and
we should establish highlight underlying italicized bold the following this
(29:17):
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, these are the
ones you will hear about in UM security journals, in
(29:38):
viable publications and stuff. But there's good reason. And there's
good reason, yeah, because it's real. And after we take
a quick break, will examine some of the stranger stories
about Pine Gap. Okay, so for some reason here in
(30:04):
our notes we have this section titled the Crazy has
come out to play. I don't mean to be in
any way Denta grading with that. It's just these are
some pretty insane things. The outlandish claims, now outlandish claims,
they're they're so far outlandish that they're literally extraterrestrial out
of lands. But it's it's no surprise that Pine Gaff
(30:28):
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 where do you guys want
to go first? You want to do the UFO stuff first,
to know, I know where you want to start? You
know where we want to start? Boy? Do I ever
(30:49):
the secret portal? Yes? I want to talk about portals?
Have you guys ever seen a portal? Donny Darko reference?
Apparently the this maybe this is one of the stream
just conspiratorial claims about Pine Gap And the argument is
that the CIA has has been conducting time travel experiments
(31:12):
and super soldier programs in pine Gaps sort of because
they're using portals to send people to Mars where where
in a lot of these things are conducted and we
have to yeah, we have to treat this with a
willbarrow assault. There's a fringe researcher named Richard Souder who
(31:32):
claimed to have spoken with a whistleblower named rich Hansen,
and according to Souder, Hansen is not 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. There you go, yeah. So,
(31:55):
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
c I A. So we know that part is true.
Um portals, time portals, uh me have the plot of
(32:19):
the movie Time Cop Jean Claude van Dam, 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 fund at it too much. What if
rich Hanson is a real person and Sawder was also
genuine when he was telling the story. I mean, there is,
(32:40):
and there is an alternate universe where this occurs some
some other dimension if you believe in the multidimensional stuff.
And thank you for the setup, mat because it is
true that Sauder, by the way, also claims in his
book Underground, Bases and Tunnels that the base Pine Gap
or Rainfall operates in all internate dimensions, so exist on
(33:01):
multiple planes of reality at once. But see, if if
multiverse theories are correct, then isn't everything existing in multiplicity
at all? Is not the whole point? No, I think
what he means there is that it operates. You can
reach through and you can, you know, pick up your
screwdriver from this other dimension, bring it back over to
(33:24):
this dimension, or step through to what end? I guess
are you affecting the timeline in ways that military militaristically
tactical ways. Well, so, yeah, good question, Matt. I think
you're you're going even larger. You're going to the meta level,
which is that if all if if universes are infinite,
(33:45):
and all possible things exist in some some sort of reality, timeline,
branch sphere, what have you, then there would be one
or many where this thing is actually true and we
just happened to be living in and where that's not
the case at that last. But well, here's here's the
(34:06):
problem with that, which is 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 the
(34:30):
Saudi crown prince and the US government, then how are
these people still alive? Yeah? How in the holy kangaroo
are these people still alive? Blowing up the truth, exposing
the hidden secrets of reality tripping time traveling c I
(34:52):
a financed Nichi ubermanh out on Mars, you know what
I mean. Yeah, So again that's underground Bases and Tunnels
book that you can find somewhere at some time in
some dimension this dimension maybe act now before the before
the Mandela effect kicks in, right, So okay, so you
(35:15):
gotta do that. That's probably one of one of the
strangest and craziest, but one has I think many more
people taking it seriously. Is the association of pine Gap
with the activity of unidentified flying objects. And it dates
way back to just a few years after things really
(35:37):
got rolling there in nine. This is true. Um. 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. UM. So he he
(36:00):
decided to take a look, take a closer look, and
he 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, and he kept watching it.
This I guess security must have been less tight at
that time, because he's there for a while. He watches
(36:22):
it for about half an hour, and during this time
he sees another beam of blue light emanating from the
UFO towards the ground where it's it's hitting several of
those raydomes, those um golf ball things, right, and it's
it's hitting the light is hitting those directly. And then
(36:43):
the lights cease and another light beam appears, and this
time from the raydomes to the craft and this goes
back and forth, this exchange of light bright burst again
for about half an hour, and then the disc begins
to spin more and more weickly. Flash boom, It shoots
into the sky and disappears. WHOA. Now, let's I have
(37:06):
a couple of questions about that one that we cannot
answer right now, because I imagine it being more of
a laser beam of light. Um, 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 a beam of light
(37:26):
from one of those things. Um, that's the only thing
I can imagine, because if not, is it refueling. Well yeah,
but but here's the whole thing, Like, Okay, how could
you discern that the light was coming from the ground
up to the craft? Right? It would be if it's
just a um, a splash of light essentially, you know,
like like a spotlight or something, you would be able
(37:47):
to tell, Oh, it's more centered on the on the ground,
and then it's a little wider up top nearer wherever
the craft is a thousand feet up, it would occur.
That kind of light shaping would occur if it was
just a ight, if it was a laser beam, how
could you tell which way it was traveling because it's
instant travel speed of lights. So a good question kind
(38:09):
of go, okay, maybe weather balloon? Right, Maybe it was
something that he saw that he just didn't understand quite possibly. Well,
in ninety five, then let's 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,
(38:34):
and they they all said, hey, here's a here's a
cool idea. Let's try to sneak a peek at all
the weird stuff they have to be doing down their
Pine Gaps all right, let's do it. And so out
of nowhere, this big white object appears to take off
from the base below them at a breakneck speed, and
(38:55):
as soon as the witnesses were able to focus on
this thing that taking off, it had vanished into the sky.
The pilot made a report of this sighting as soon
as they landed, and the plane was fine, obviously, thankfully,
both the pilot and all of the passengers were asked
to wait for investigators who were gonna come and get
some more details from them. But when the investigators show
(39:19):
up again, according to the story, they told the witnesses
that they were for They men and blacked them, and
so get everything you've seen about this. Don't talk about
anything you saw nothing. Do you think they flashed them?
That would be cool, That would be cool. But then
how would this story have gotten out? Oh, you're right.
One one person wasn't looking directly really quickly. I always
(39:42):
wondered if that would work. And men and black. But
then we have more reports of UFOs and Pine Gap.
Oh yeah, there were five anonymous witnesses who said they
saw something else. It was another sighting there at Pine Gap. Uh.
They they wanted to be anonymous due to their their
(40:03):
apparent positions within the Australian government. You know, you it's
one of those things, those situations where you can't prove
that these people are part of the Australian government, 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
(40:25):
their encounter this night, to this this moment um. One
message 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.
There's five of them, and they split themselves into two
(40:47):
groups using two different vehicles, and they approached the base
from two different positions. Smart. 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 or I
don't know, campus is the right word for it. Massive compound,
(41:07):
uh and that's only five people to cover that with
only two vehicles. But anyway, they're just gonna check it
out for as long as they can, they say, 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
(41:27):
started ferrying all these large groups of workers in coveralls
to the to the large radomes, the big golf ball
looking things. So they're like, huh, I wonder what those
guys are doing. And then and things changed. Yeah, As
this was all taking place, as this brew ha ha
ha haad i imagining pillar of light shot upward from
(41:51):
the ground to the sky. They don't specify whether it's
shot out from one of these radomes or dishes. A
strange cloud was forming high above the base around this
pillar of light, and when it vanished, they saw five
strange craft making their way to the base, according to
the report, four diamond shaped UFOs and one of a
(42:14):
quote cigar shape, which the people that move On when
we visited Uh move On a while back, talked about
it seems to be a relatively common shape, at least
in their in 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
(42:35):
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? Like that, but with lights,
(42:59):
it's like kind of electronic dolphin. And this 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 Pine Gap.
They're not even the most famous. Several of the most
(43:20):
well known reports include reliable witnesses 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 again? These secret areas become a
very common thing when you're talking about Pine Gap. Pine Gap,
the secret doors become a real thing. It's very common
(43:43):
occurrence when people are talking about seeing things at Pine Gap,
either either doors to secret places or see like you're saying,
secret doors that just exist within a wall somewhere or
within part of a base that you would never imagine
that there's a door there, and we know, I mean
it makes sense to have those sorts of entrances and
(44:04):
exits built into secret places, right, especially when there's a
large underground area. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, look no further
than Nora rad 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
(44:25):
these UFO reports, and it's the one. Okay. So one
of the big 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
(44:46):
about yet, and that these things are a tremendous tactical
advantage to whichever country possesses them or whichever private company
multinational possesses them. That leads us to ask, well, how
close are the US and Australa really? That's been my
question from the start, and I'm sure feels like they're
giving up a whole lot of their own sovereignty you know,
(45:07):
to have this facility that largely benefits US and not them,
and if anything put to their country in the line
of fire, potentially, yeah, absolutely, if there really is to
go BacT to this question, if there really is some
sort of top secret mind blowing flight or anti gravity technology,
(45:27):
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. Maybe at some given time,
what if the Australian government, We're the ones who were
first contacted, and the United States placed the the facility
(45:49):
there and begin 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 I like that that has
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
(46:11):
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 meant the base
due to its uh, extra dimensional properties or something had
to be built in that specific spot for some specific reason.
(46:32):
There is a portole Lamars, but it only occurs there
because of some I don't know, gobbledegook pseudoscience electromagnetic park superpositions,
because of the dreamtime, because of the dream which we
originally recognized as a dreamtime. Oh my god, we're writing
the movie now, Stargate Auseie Gate, Alice Gate. I want
(47:00):
to go down that rabbit hole further, but I think
we need to wrap this up, gentlemen. Yeah, so let's
end on the present day, as of 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
(47:22):
balls who mentioned earlier. Those things help them. It's weather
worth better. It's just weather proofing. I mean, that's the
adial explanation. Yeah, just to keep the rust off. The
North Korean situation is one of the most crucial because
of the basis proximity to the Korean peninsula and therefore
the proximity of Australia, the city of Darwin and Northern
(47:44):
Territory is about thirty six hundred miles from pyeong Youang
with a and that puts a within range of an
I C b M or intercontinental ballistic missile, which makes
the question are there I C B M s out
there in Pine Gap? Somewhere? Are their silos? I wonder
you think they would put all their eggs in one
(48:05):
basket like that? And why would you do that when
you've just got super carriers and carriers everywhere, plenty of
other military bases right, and subs and whatever else. And
the problem here is if we were to war game
a bit, if the US did become involved in a
in a hot war with the DPRK Democratic People's Republic
(48:29):
of Korea, then Australia could quickly would almost certainly be
quickly dragged into this conflict. And despite being isolated pretty
far inland, Pine Gap would be instrumental in the us
UH the informational aspects of the U S side of
the war. But also it would have a huge target
on its back because if you if you blow that
(48:50):
thing up, you're poking an eye, you know what I mean?
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 arms length about a
lot of the stuff. What do we have on them,
or what do they have on us? Or what where?
That's that's my fascination with this whole story. What makes
(49:12):
it symbiosis rather than paris exactly? And I think, you know,
given what I know about our country and our our
our tendency that maybe strong arm less powerful countries, I
would tend to think it might be more in the
parasitic type of relationship. Here's the deal where I would
I think it would be difficult for you to name
(49:32):
twenty places in the plane in other countries that don't
have a U. S. Military base in them. Yeah, well,
I mean, but I mean twenty, Like, yes, you can
name a few that we know for sure, but but
in most places there is a U. S. 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
(49:54):
and it's way out of the way, and there's a
visible you know, police state, your patient of any kind.
I mean, it's just that's a research facility. It's you know,
essentially on paper. And also it's well, it's not a
reason it is on paper maybe, but I don't know
if we can even be called that anymore because the
cover story got blown out of the water so hard.
(50:15):
I am going to take take you up on that, Matt.
I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna come back. We're back
in the studio and see if I can find twenties
twenty countries that don't have US basis. I don't know
if I can. I want to say there are several
in Africa that don't. Yeah, but they they got presents
with out outpost outsourced military forces, which I think we
(50:39):
should count. So this, this is fascinating because it does
it's a huge question to your point, Noll. Probably one
of the best arguments for it is going to be
the idea of mutual security preventing perhaps the rise of
a new hedgemon in the region, namely China. So maybe
(51:03):
Australia is of the mind that we 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 um, it is 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,
(51:24):
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 we do wanna,
we do wanna depict that part, just to be fair. Also,
on a pop culture note, if you want to see
stories that take place in Pine Gap fictional stories, check
(51:48):
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. Yes,
I'm watching the trailer right now. It looks it looks
like a lot of fun, does it is? I wonder
what the tone is. Do you think it's like twenty
four Quantico or something. It feels very much like one
of those police procedurals kind of thing with a little
(52:11):
more style. Maybe, Oh thank god, it's kind an American
flag in an Australian flag. It's this Pine Gap. It's
got a whole team. I like it. Do do they
look like they're legitimate intelligence workers or do they all
look like waiters from Los Angeles? They look like figures
from us. Of course they're watered from. That's amazing, so
(52:31):
so so this this is literally like a like a
UM Law and Order in C I S type situation,
but headquartered in Pine Gap. And it's like an Adventure
of the Week kind of story. I don't know, 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. Well it exists. Watch the Can you
watch the show without sound and without captions and maybe
(52:54):
come back and tell us what you're taking? All right?
So that 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 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
(53:16):
gets a lot of ink here in the United States.
And what better way to end the episode than leaving
the last word to Professor Tanter. It goes as follows quote.
Pine Gap literally hard wires us into the activities of
the American military, and in some cases that means we
(53:38):
will copy 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. 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
(54:00):
the terms of the consequences. Geez, you have it, you
have it, the score something to think on. So thank
you everyone for giving us a listen. We would like
to hear your opinion, maybe not just a pine gap,
but your opinion of US military bases on foreign soil anyway. Yeah, well,
(54:21):
do you live in a different country where there's US
military base, what are your your experiences with that? And
is it a joint operation in the way that this
one is or is it solely US run sort of
like Quintanamo. Uh, 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
(54:45):
you haven't checked it out yet, hop on, we have
some We have some pretty good memes. Oh yeah, good
memes and even better people. They're on their contributing all
the time, all right. Uh. And oh, by the way,
if you if you've ever had any kind of unidentified
flying act or submerged submerged object, or any other experience
like that, Please let us know. We'd love to hear
(55:05):
your story and hopefully incorporated into an episode at some point. So, yeah,
do all that stuff. You can call us one eight
three three S T d W y t K, leave
a message you might get on the show. Either way,
we want to hear from you. But if you don't
want to do any of those things right now, you
can send us an email. We are conspiracy and how
(55:26):
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Noel Brown
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