CIA document shows NT Pine Gap spy base could be attack target, foreign policy expert says

By Alyssa Betts


 

A top secret CIA document from the end of the Cold War shows just how likely it is that the Northern Territory's Pine Gap joint spy base could be a target, a foreign policy expert has said.

The CIA this month put nearly a million historical documents online, and the 1980s document shows authorities expected the Pine Gap joint spy base near Alice Springs to be attacked in the event of a US-Soviet nuclear fight.
A 1987 briefing, marked "top secret", refers to a draft Australian defence white paper given to the US that conceded Pine Gap "would be attacked" if the US and the Soviet Union had a nuclear fight.
But Australia's final white paper that year used different wording.
It said in the event of such a remote chance of nuclear conflict, there was a "risk" the spy base "might" be attacked.

Pine Gap still high-priority target: expert

The University of Melbourne's Professor Richard Tanter said the risks Pine Gap represented were as great as ever, and that the Defence Department remained internally concerned the base was a high-priority nuclear target.
Professor Tanter, also a senior researcher at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, said a country such as China could not yet reach Pine Gap with conventionally armed missiles.
"It does, however, have more than one set of land-based missiles, which could certainly reach Pine Gap as well as submarine-launch missiles," he said.
"So, an attack on Pine Gap would have to be effectively a missile attack with a nuclear-armed missile."
Professor Tanter said the difference in language between the Australian and US briefings from 1987 was revealing and said there needed to be an "informed debate" about Pine Gap, to allow the public to make up its own mind.
"But we need to have it done on the basis that the government is telling the truth about what it knows on such a really serious issue."
He said he expected Australians would begin to rethink ties to America in light of Donald Trump taking the reins.

"I've no doubt that many Australians are going to be asking in the months to come, whether it's wise that we allow ourselves to be so automatically tied to American foreign policy," he said

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