Pine Gap insider: a trumpet-blower, not whistle-blower
Inside Pine Gap: The Spy Who Came in from the Desert
By David Rosenberg
Hardie Grant Books, 2011
216 pages, $35 (pb)
David Rosenberg found 1960s television show Mission Impossible “irresistible” with its patriotic tales of high-tech US government spies thwarting the “bad guys”.
After an 18-year career as a US National Security Agency (NSA) electronic signals analyst at the CIA’s Pine Gap spy base in Australia’s remote interior, Rosenberg’s book, Inside Pine Gap, makes it clear that he has yet to grow up.
An electrical engineer, Rosenberg worked at Pine Gap in Alice Springs from 1990 to 2008. Pine Gap is the electronic eavesdropping, ground control base for US satellites collecting foreign signals intelligence.
Rosenberg describes his role as analysing the military capabilities of countries “that pose a threat” to the US and Australia.
Rosenberg is keen to “debunk the myths, rumours and concerns of protest organisations” by stressing that Pine Gap “does not kill babies or civilians” because it “isn’t capable of initiating either the launch or activation of any weapons”.
This is highly questionable. There is well-founded suspicion that Pine Gap has been used to target bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rosenberg himself reveals that Pine Gap was important for guiding GPS-navigated US weapons in Iraq by countering Iraq’s GPS-jammers.
Even if Rosenberg’s claim of Pine Gap having its hands off weapons triggers is true, however, the claim of Pine Gap being non-lethal is merely trivially true. The intelligence “eyes and ears” of a modern army are essential to its war-fighting capabilities.
Rosenberg spent much of his time locating enemy military and strategic targets, the better for US bombs to find them. Pine Gap, as Rosenberg also shows, locates downed US pilots, the better to return them to their job of killing.
Even though Rosenberg found the George W Bush administration’s reasons for attacking Iraq in 2003 to be groundless, he and the rest of the largely sceptical spies at Pine Gap continued to perform their patriotic duty ― to “save the lives of Americans and Australians engaged in military operations”.
In other words, supporting a horrendous war by “supporting the troops”.
The CIA doesn’t run its largest spy base outside the US to provide an economic stimulus package for Alice Springs or to run a humanitarian mission during wars.
Pine Gap exists to defend the military, political and economic interests of US capitalism and to help fight wars for these interests when deemed necessary.
The very premise of Rosenberg’s book ― that it has been approved by the NSW and the Australian government ― invalidates the book as a true account of Pine Gap. Rosenberg is not so much a whistle-blower as a trumpet-blower, loudly peddling myths useful to US governments and their spy agencies.
Rosenberg is also a huckster flogging the saccharine reassurances about Pine Gap that its Australian government hosts resort to so readily ― even though no Australian parliamentarian is allowed to enter the base.
In 1975, then-prime minister Gough Whitlam made noises about closing Pine Gap.
Subsequent prime ministers have not made the same mistake nor suffered the same fate as Whitlam ― an undemocratic sacking for, among other things, threatening the cosy world of the US military, their political masters and the US corporations they all serve.
From GLW issue 901
"Australia has the most restrictive media in the western world. Censorship by omission denies Australians their democratic right to make sense of whole stratas of political and foreign policy. That's why Green Left Weekly is a beacon, doing a job of honourable journalism, as an agent of people, not power."
Comments
@wtf
"Finding downed pilots is just that, finding them so the enemy doesn't commit barbaric atrocities against them." One sided you say? So launching a missile into a bunker full of women and children is not barbaric? Sounds like you work in the military? If you do, then you are a braver man than I, however your bravery is misdirected and a waste of human spirit and strength.
Facts?
Simple really-Pine Gap is used by the Yanks.The Yanks are the main imperialist power in the world,invading countries willy nilly and lecturing on 'human rights and democracy'.Pine Gap should be CLOSED.As should all Ameican bases in all countries that do not lie inside the boundaries of the United States.The best way to keep our soldiers safe is to not send them on missions to foreign countries at the behest of the other imperial powers.You can't practice self defense by attacking and occupying other countries.
WTF
No doubt my comment will not be published... but one can try. This is a one sided typical "hippie greenie" view of things. I prefer to look at thinks scientifically, and really don't know what to make of pine gap through all the lies, myths and fallacies written about it. At the end of the day if it is a "war aid" it is to protect soldiers, whether it is to kill or find, taking out an enemy that would kill our soldiers is still saving their lives!!! Finding downed pilots is just that, finding them so the enemy doesn't commit barbaric atrocities against them. We want them home to their families, not so they can keep on killing. Military personnel are not killers they are just the tool, the politicians are the ones that pull the political trigger, military personnel are just the ones on the ground and need to be kept safe.
Rather than writing one sided crap, how about writing something constructive and providing evidence and facts, or perhaps you do not have a university education which would have taught you this in the very basics of how to write a paper or article!!!!
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