Pine Gap, known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, is a prickly reminder that Australia remains annexed to the security interests of the United States, given the largely US-operated effort in Alice Springs, Central Australia.

As the late scholar of strategic studies Desmond Ball pithily remarked in 1988, it is “an espionage operation. Euphemisms should not be allowed to obscure this essential point.”

It grew out of a desire on the part of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1965 to establish a remote Australian-sited ground control station intended for signals intelligence satellites. Land belonging to the Central Arrernte people was accordingly excised the following year for the site.

The decision, in typically rough fashion, was made without consultation and discussion with local residents or elders, a secret place that became what Trevor Paglen would describe as a “blank space on the map … erased from the public record.”

The facility includes some 800 personnel from the US National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and such Australian agencies as the Australian Signals Directorate and Australian Federal Police.

Over the years, the base has become increasingly corporatised with a heavy American accent: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, IBM and Hewlett Packard all have a presence. A mere 10% of the constituted personnel are said to be Australian government employees.

The base periodically attracts protesters, angry at the base’s role in furnishing targeting data for US and allied drone and missile........

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