Project Rainfall : the secret history of Pine Gap / Tim Gilling.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilling, Tom, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Central Intelligence Agency--Australia--Northern Territory--History.

United States.

United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

Secret service--Australia--Northern Territory.

Secret service.

Intelligence service--Australia--Northern Territory.

Intelligence service.

Defense information, Classified.

Military surveillance--Australia.

Military surveillance.

Military bases, American--Australia--Northern Territory--History.

Military bases, American.

Military surveillance--Australia--Northern Territory--History.

Military relations.

History.

Pine Gap (N.T.)--History.

Pine Gap (N.T.).

Joint Defence Space Research Facility (Pine Gap, N.T.).

United States--Military relations--Australia.

Australia--Military relations--United States.

Australia.

Northern Territory.

Northern Territory--Pine Gap.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 306 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Sydney, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2019.

Summary:

Pine Gap is a top secret American spy base on Australian soil, but how much do we really know about it? At the height of the Cold War the chief of one of Australia's spy agencies joined three CIA men at a remote site in Central Australia to toast the success of a top secret project known in US intelligence circles as RAINFALL. The CIA listening station at Pine Gap was officially called the Joint Defence Space Research Facility, but it had nothing to do with research and was joint in name only: Australians were hired as cooks and janitors but the first spies were all American. The job of the satellites controlled from Pine Gap was to eavesdrop on Soviet missile tests. While government ministers denied that Australia was a nuclear target, bureaucrats in Canberra secretly planned for Armageddon in the suburbs of Alice Springs. No longer just a listening station, Pine Gap has metamorphosed into a key weapon in the Pentagon's war on terror, with Australians in frontline roles. Drawing on declassified documents in Australian and US archives, Tom Gilling's explosive new book tells, for the first time, the uncensored story of Australia's most secret place.

Contents:

Introduction

1 The space race

2 Decision No. 546

3 Pine Gapski

4 Memo to Mr Bailey

5 Cooks, bakers, computer operators

6 No need to know

7 Make it 'no comment'

8 The beauty of the doms

9 An Aussie bomb

10 Chinese whispers

11 Keep your hands off

12 The birds

13 Number two on the shit list

14 'I can't stand that [****]'

15 NSSM 204

16 Never again

17 Drop that hamburger

18 Apocalypse now?

19 Reds, ratbags and radicals

20 No admission

21 A magnet for protest

22 Desert Storm

23 The canteen tour

24 Hunting for Osama

25 Snowden

26 Rainfall

27 A saucerful of secrets

Bibliography.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-306).

ISBN:

9781760528430

1760528439

OCLC:

1104072875