Is this the end of Pine Gap? Never.
The Cold War has finally ended but Pine Gap, or ‘The Base’ as it’s become known, is expanding and it’s getting involved in conflicts across the world.
Host Alex Barwick finally goes inside Pine Gap and meets a spy who has spent years working within the perimeter.
To get in touch confidentially, please visit abc.net.au/news/confidential-tips
Credits
(Ghost sounds at Halloween)
Alex Barwick: How's the lolly haul?
Alex's daughter: Um, good.
We just went to a house that gave a whole handful of chocolate.
Alex Barwick: Alright, let's have a look at what you've got in there.
Alex's daughter: There's a lot of lollies which I've never heard of.
They might be American.
Alex Barwick (VO): I'm dressed as a zombie pirate with my 11-year-old daughter and her friend.
We've all got fake blood on our faces and cobwebs in our hair.
Halloween is huge in Alice Springs, particularly here in the suburbs that are home to a lot of Pine Gap workers.
The houses are nicer, the lawns are green – a big deal in the desert – and on this one night of the year they’re transformed into graveyards, covered in corpses, and home to frighteningly large mechanical ghosts.
It feels like the whole town has descended for a sugar hit.
Mr Monopoly: Yeah, there's probably 10,000 people that come through this neighbourhood trick or treating.
Feels like it anyways.
Alex Barwick (VO): I’m standing beneath a balloon arch of blow-up pumpkins and white skulls in a driveway chatting with a guy dressed a lot like Mr Monopoly.
There's a growing line of trick or treaters behind me but I can't quite believe this man with the fake moustache is happy to chat.
Mr Monopoly: The Americans that are here from the base, you know, kind of started Halloween because Halloween’s huge in America.
Alex Barwick: Do you work at the base?
Mr Monopoly: I do, yeah.
Alex Barwick: Can you talk about that at all?
Mr Monopoly: Nope (laughs).
Alex Barwick: Nothing at all?
Mr Monopoly: Nothing at all.
Alex Barwick: Are you a gardener there?
Mr Monopoly: I'm a gardener.
Alex Barwick (VO): This is a bit of an Alice Springs in-joke.
If someone tells you they're a ‘gardener’ in Alice Springs, they're a spy. And they don't want any further questions.
Alex Barwick: Alright, that's it, you're not going to tell me anything else, are you?
Mr Monopoly: No, I'm not.
Alex Barwick (VO): Like that... the conversation dies.
I’m Alex Barwick, I live and work in this outback town and I've seen the candy flow freely in Alice Springs for years, but the secrets have been held tight.
Everybody knows someone who works at Pine Gap. Everyone knows a spy, or at least a gardener.
The authorities refuse to confirm the numbers but about 800 residents in Alice Springs work at the base - half Australian, half American.
It's a huge employer in a small town.
So, you'd think someone would talk, but they don't.
When the Cold War ended along with the 80s, some thought Pine Gap had run its course but this spy base hidden in a valley on the edge of my town had been scaling up.
The words ‘space research’ had finally been removed from the entry sign - that cover story long dead.
Now it read ‘Joint Defence Facility’.
More satellites were eavesdropping, more antenna were listening and the United States and Iraq were counting down to the Gulf War.
And finally, I’ve managed to track down an American who was there, and he’s willing to talk.
I can hardly believe it. After countless emails, phone calls, off the record coffees - finally someone’s agreed to sit down on the record and take me inside Pine Gap.
This is Spies in the Outback, Episode 4: The spy who loved Alice.
David Rosenberg: So, the room is typically quite small, it's very sterile.
There's really nothing on the wall.
I don't think they want any distractions in the room.
So, it's very sparse.
You do have the wiring from the equipment.
They have a strap that goes around your chest to measure respiration and they also measure how much you're perspiring say, on your hands and fingers, and then they just ask you questions.
Alex Barwick (VO): David Rosenberg is taking his first polygraph test.
He’s in America, more than 16,000ks from the now growing tourist town of Alice Springs.
He sits opposite the examiner in a large boxy building surrounded by endless car parks deep inside the NSA - America's National Security Agency in Maryland.
Less than an hour's drive to the White House.
If he passes, he'll join one of the most secretive organisations in the world.
David Rosenberg: You're just waiting for the first questions to start.
Have I ever committed a crime against the United States government?
Do I know any individuals who might be a threat to the United States government?
In my first polygraph test, I actually failed that test.
Then I did a second test.
They said you failed your second test, we're going to send you up for a third one now.
I was on a three-strikes-and-you're-out situation.
Alex Barwick (VO): David's childhood dream of becoming a spy was on the line.
David Rosenberg: One of my favourite shows was Mission Impossible.
And I just loved seeing how they would, you know, bug the phones or bug the apartments or bug the cars of their adversaries and get information that helped them beat the so-called bad guys.
And I thought that was something that I would love to do.
So, I knew that if I didn't pass that one, that I was probably not going to work for the NSA.
Alex Barwick (VO): Soon after the third polygraph test, he got a letter saying he’d passed.
In fact, David was also offered a job with the CIA; the Central Intelligence Agency.
David Rosenberg: The NSA basically uses electronic intelligence to intercept communications, that would be of interest, the CIA will place operatives overseas.
Alex Barwick (VO): In a nutshell, The CIA is basically your James Bond spies - humans under cover in foreign countries gathering information, conducting covert operations.
The NSA on the other hand is all about spying without having to ever set foot in another country, they've got eyes and ears just about everywhere.
Anyway, these two job offers are on the table. But the NSA pay was better, and David thought their work was more interesting.
David Rosenberg: So, I decided to accept the job offer and that's how I began my career with the NSA.
Alex Barwick (VO): You’re probably wondering, if it’s all so secretive, how on earth can David talk to me?
It’s a fair question.
Everyone who enters Pine Gap to do any kind of work, and I mean every single person, from the spies to the pool maintenance person, has to sign a legal document promising never to talk about the place.
But David has meticulously pulled together his story, and he’s got everything checked and approved by the NSA.
It took a lot of negotiation, but he did it, he got the greenlight to speak about his time at the base.
And he's the only American who has.
‘Cause let’s face it, you don’t want to go rogue talking about stuff the NSA does.
While the CIA had set up the secret spy base deep in the Australian outback, the NSA was now very involved.
David Rosenberg: They are actually the world's largest government electronic eavesdropping organization.
They have a very large budget as well that dwarfs that of the CIA.
Alex Barwick (VO): David’s wife was also a spy; they’d met on orientation day at the NSA.
But after a few years things were rocky, their finances were tight and the promise of a promotion down under was appealing.
David Rosenberg: We needed to do something where we can get additional funds, and when you are an employee from the NSA who goes to Pine Gap, they give you quite a bit of extra money.
The only problem was that she did not want to come out to Alice Springs with me.
Alex Barwick (VO): David decided to go anyway and then suddenly things in the Middle East heated up.
Archival news report: Iraq invades Kuwait and overthrows it’s government.
Alex Barwick (VO): Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein had ordered the invasion and occupation of neighbouring Kuwait, he wanted their oil and more power in the region.
America was weighing up its response.
It was October 1990 and the Gulf War had kicked off.
And that meant, they needed to crank things up a gear at Pine Gap.
David Rosenberg: The government wanted to have, have me trained up earlier so that I could be ready to hit the ground running when the actual conflict started.
So rather than send me to Pine Gap at the end of October, they sent me out there early.
And I was just overwhelmed with excitement about what they were doing, and I was very keen to get out there.
Alex Barwick (VO): David Rosenberg admits he only knew Australia in stereotypes before he flew out, but he soon settled in.
David Rosenberg: You know, people knew about Paul Hogan and Crocodile Dundee.
I had never taken a trip that long before and I could not believe the expanse within Australia.
Alex Barwick (VO): He remembers rolling up to the gates on his first day.
David Rosenberg: You're met with a very imposing security checkpoint.
You would see in front of you, a very, very large fence.
It would be covered with razor wire at the top.
There's a large overhang where vehicles are inspected, they look underneath the car, they have individuals open the boot of their car to inspect what's in there, look in your back seat.
You have to have your badge with you.
Alex Barwick (VO): And everything and everyone is being watched.
David Rosenberg: So, they would have as many security cameras, as many as many motion sensors, that they feel they would need to keep everybody safe.
Alex Barwick (VO): Finally, he makes it through all this security.
David Rosenberg: I was taken to the operations floor, the doors open.
I see a very dark area.
Not a lot of lights are on because there is so much equipment, so many computer screens that you have to see.
Alex Barwick (VO): I’m picturing a dark office with no windows. Not my ideal work set up, but it was probably a cool oasis from the desert heat?
David Rosenberg: The operations floor is expansive.
It's divided into sections where you have communications analysts. you have electronic intelligence analysts, people looking at radar signals.
So, you're looking at a massively high-tech facility.
You immediately know that you are in a very, very special place and there's probably very few places on earth that would look like the Pine Gap operations floor.
Alex Barwick (VO): Australia, apparently, now had full knowledge of what the spy base was doing and Pine Gap had new spies like David Rosenberg.
David Rosenberg: Mission director basically came over the loudspeaker and told us that the naval assets had just released cruise missiles on the government of Iraq and the occupying forces in Kuwait.
Alex Barwick (VO): Five months after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, and after months of ignoring international calls to withdraw, the US-led bombing started on January the 17th1991.
Archival news report: The American Defence Secretary Dick Cheney summarising what's claimed to be a successful US led first strike against targets in Iraq and Kuwait.The massive attack involved some 400 raids in the first three hours.
David Rosenberg: Pine Gap was certainly one of those ground sites that was collecting information on weapon systems; where were the weapons located? what kind of communication systems were out there?
Those were the focus of what we were doing at the Pine Gap facility.
Alex Barwick (VO): David isn't specific about what his team’s involvement was in the Gulf War but it's clear their work was vital.
Pine Gap’s role in the war marked a shift in how the US military operated; less troops on the ground, more bombs from the sky.
David Rosenberg: So the U.S. had a strategy to use cruise missiles, to use aerial bombardment, well and truly in advance of any kind of a ground incursion. That would basically soften up the Iraqi military.
So you can then send in your ground troops and hopefully that would be a very short ground war with minimal loss of life.
Alex Barwick (VO): After dropping almost 90,000 tonnes of bombs from the skies, what’s known as the hundred-hour ground war began.
David Rosenberg: Because it took about 100 hours for Saddam to capitulate and the advance on Baghdad was stopped.
So, from that perspective if you look at it, that's quite an amazing result.
Alex Barwick: And would you describe Pine Gap as being crucial in enabling this kind of shift in the style of warfare the United States was engaged in?
David Rosenberg: Pine Gap played a major role in gathering intelligence and reporting intelligence as well.
Alex Barwick: And in relation to the Gulf War?
David Rosenberg: In relation to the Gulf War, certainly.
Alex Barwick (VO): And there it was, this spy base hidden in the folds of the MacDonnell Ranges had transformed, providing crucial intelligence for America's war fighting machine.
A war that might have dragged on for years, over in a matter of months. And a big part of that was Pine Gap.
On the other side of the range, back in the suburbs of Alice Springs, Russell Goldflam with his golden curly hair and peace group pamphlets, was watching the Gulf War unfold on the news.
He and the Alice Springs Peace Group had spent more than a decade calling for Pine Gap's closure, concerned it was a Cold War nuclear target and unhappy about the Australia/U.S. alliance.
Russell Goldflam: The Gulf War was a very powerful reminder to us that Pine Gap was still an enormously important part of the American war machine.
Alex Barwick (VO): But for the first time he wondered whether Pine Gap could save lives.
Iraq had started firing missiles at Israel during the Gulf War.
Russell Goldflam: I've got family who live in Israel and I was concerned about the threat to Israeli civilians of rockets being fired from Baghdad.
I remember being at a peace group meeting and raising this, saying, well you know, in some ways, maybe there's some benefit to Pine Gap in that it could detect these rocket bases and take them out and stop civilians in Israel being killed.
Now, me saying that was itself highly controversial.
Alex Barwick (VO): Was Russell really saying Pine Gap was ok now?
Russell Goldflam: I wasn't, but I was really wrestling with, you know, trying to be devil's advocate to myself and to my comrades.
Despite that argument, on the whole, Pine Gap is doing far more harm than good and we should oppose Australia's involvement in the Gulf War, and we did.
Alex Barwick (VO): There’d still been plenty of bloodshed even though it was a short war.
It ended on February 28th 1991 - less than two months since the bombing campaign began and six months after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Pine Gap never sleeps, it operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You often hear people in Alice Springs speculate about what's out there; are there tunnels? Do they have their own supermarket?
Turns out, it's a pretty good set up to keep staff entertained. Well, it was in David's time.
He’d finish work and slip into his swimmers, bathing suit, whatever you call it.
David Rosenberg: All of us from our shift would get off and go to the pool and set up the net and have a game of water volleyball.
Alex Barwick (VO): The pool was an oasis and it had been hard fought to be installed.
David Rosenberg: The heat was so oppressive there that one of the chiefs wanted to get a pool for the staff members there.
And the argument initially went, ‘Oh, we just like a pool for rest and relaxation’.
But the government said, ‘No, we don't put pools in for that reason’.
So, the clever chief decided to change his request to say, ‘We need an emergency water reservoir for fires that might break out at Pine Gap and a pool would serve that purpose’.
With that request the pool was approved.
Alex Barwick (VO): I can’t help but think of the gaping contrast between this scene and the carnage in people’s lives across the globe, blown apart thanks to Pine Gap’s intelligence.
Or closer to home, of Arrernte Elder Felicity Hayes talking about how the Traditional Owners of the land Pine Gap sits on still don’t have a connection to mains power or water.
After a game of water polo, David and his colleagues would head to the most remote and exclusive bar in outback.
David Rosenberg: And it is called the Bull Bar.
Alex Barwick (VO): It was also inside the gates, near the pool.
David Rosenberg: I've been to the Bull Bar many times yes.
We’d go there with the crew after a shift and just unwind, have a couple of beers.
They have a pool table there, they have dartboards, they have food and drink.
And the great thing about the, the Bull Bar is it's located at Pine Gap and you never have to drive to Pine Gap, you just catch a bus home so you could drink and then let somebody else do the driving.
Alex Barwick (VO): The buses have been rolling through the streets of Alice Springs for decades.
It’s a perk of the job, but also probably part of the secrecy.
A car park gives a much clearer idea of how many staff work at a place, the scale of the operation.
Anyway, back to David, poolside.
He loved his new life in a small town but being sent to Pine Gap was classified as a hardship tour.
David Rosenberg: I think the description of hardship was based on being an isolated area, a very low population.
Also, I think because of the, the weather, it was very oppressively hot.
Alex Barwick (VO): David's annual salary package was worth a quarter of a million dollars by the time he left Pine Gap in 2008.
David Rosenberg: So, to compensate for the fact that it was a hardship tour, they added quite a bit of extra money onto your salary.
In addition to that, they provided you with housing.
Also, if you had a car they would ship your car over for you at no cost and you could drive your left-hand drive vehicle around Alice Springs. Any house you...
Alex Barwick (VO): And let’s not forget about the travel perks. That came along with a very healthy amount of leave.
David Rosenberg: I wouldn't necessarily have to go to the United States, I could go to Europe.
Alex Barwick (VO): And of course...
David Rosenberg: They also flew us business class,
Alex Barwick (VO): And you wouldn't believe who was booking David's travel.
That little girl who lived on a chook farm with her dad, the local politician, and who remembered the Americans arriving with their new houses and fancy haircuts.
Helen Kilgariff was now the travel agent of choice for spies in the outback.
Helen Kilgariff: My sister and I had a travel agency, and we had lots of American clients.
And the business just boomed.
Alex Barwick (VO): The travel agency was on the main shopping strip in town – Todd Street.
Alex Barwick: Did you ever do bookings for David Rosenberg?
Helen Kilgariff: Yeah, why?
I hope I'm not talking out of school here; but, yes, he was one of our clients.
Alex Barwick: Yeah, what do you remember about him?
Helen Kilgariff: He was tall, brown hair, quite good looking.
Like, he wasn't a ball of muscle or anything, but he was definitely well built.
Alex Barwick (VO): Yep, Helen sure remembered him.
She even remembered some of the holidays he booked.
Helen Kilgariff: I'm so trained up not to say anything about what people did and where they went.
He did a Europe trip once that was, I thought, ‘Oh my God, that is a great trip’.
Alex Barwick (VO): David remembers Helen too.
David Rosenberg: She was just a wonderful person, a bubbly personality.
Sometimes I’d just be walking through the Alice Springs precinct, even if I wasn't going on a trip, I’d just come in and say hello.
Alex Barwick (VO): And he could also count on her discretion.
Helen Kilgariff: You know, sometimes you'd pick things up... so we possibly knew more than the run of the mill person in town.
Alex Barwick: What do you mean?
Helen Kilgariff: It was very, very secret at first.
Alex Barwick: Did you know that the CIA was involved?
Helen Kilgariff: I knew that the CIA was out there.
I could probably have told you which, some of our clients who were CIA.
Alex Barwick: How did you know?
Helen Kilgariff: Well, you know, you just did.
I wouldn't say a lot of the things that we knew.
Even now I wouldn't.
Alex Barwick (VO): Helen's pretty sure she was investigated at the time.
Helen Kilgariff: They would have looked into us to make sure that we were okay, I’m sure.
You can't have that much to do with people who were top secret without some sort of little profile.
Alex Barwick (VO): I'm clearly more surprised than Helen by the extraordinary access she had to Pine Gap because secrecy was and is paramount at the base.
Alex Barwick: When you were socializing with non-Pine Gap people, would you be kind of monitoring yourself?
David Rosenberg: I just say, ‘I work at Pine Gap and I work for the Department of Defence’. And that's all I ever said.
Some of my other friends would be cheeky, they'd say that they're gardeners or they do the plumbing or something like that.
Alex Barwick (VO): Because people were still disappearing, well getting sent home, if they spoke out of line.
David Rosenberg: I didn't want to be one of those people.
We had one person from the military at the casino, doing some gambling and he was talking to some women.
I think he might've said, a little bit too much and the next day he was put on a plane and sent back to the US for some kind of military disciplinary action, I would assume.
Alex Barwick: How often did that happen?
David Rosenberg: It happened a few times.
Alex Barwick (VO): Even in relationships, spies can’t fully share.
David and his first wife separated not long after he’d moved to Australia.
He fell in love again and remarried.
David Rosenberg: You know I would come home to her and I'd just say, ‘Oh, you know, had an interesting day, it was good’. But I wouldn't elaborate on anything in detail that I would have done.
I don’t even know if she knew if I worked for the NSA.
Alex Barwick (VO): Bad day in the office? Forget unloading or letting off steam.
So what did they talk about?
Pine Gap gossip.
David Rosenberg: I would simply talk about how this couple's breaking up or something.
Alex Barwick: It sounds like lots of people were breaking up.
Is that true? What was going on?
David Rosenberg: Yeah, there would be quite a lot of marriages breaking up.
One couple would break up and then you'd see one of those individuals with somebody else who also works at Pine Gap.
There was even a swingers club at Pine Gap and I know that one couple broke up because of that.
Alex Barwick (VO): Um, okay. I wasn’t expecting swingers when I started looking into one of the most secretive places on the planet.
Swinging aside, David says there were clear instructions on how to get involved in Alice Springs life.
David Rosenberg: We were advised to take part in the community, whether it be, let's say, through a charity or through sporting events or through your children's schools.
Everybody was advised to make a contribution.
We wanted the American presence at Alice Springs to be a positive one.
Alex Barwick (VO): I’ve had a few people describe Americans working at Pine Gap as like ambassadors.
I think it's true, most Americans I've ever met in Alice Springs have been polite, part of a basketball or baseball team, volunteering somewhere.
Because what’s happening at Pine Gap is serious business and it’s growing.
David Rosenberg: I saw Pine Gap expand many, many times.
The operations floor seemed to continue to grow every five years or so with new capabilities.
You know with the launch of new satellite, you quite often get a new antenna placed at Pine Gap.
Alex Barwick (VO): The Gulf war had seen an influx in military staff, not that any of them wore a uniform, and there were more enormous white round golf ball shaped radomes on the desert floor than ever.
Pine Gap's eyes and ears were everywhere.
David Rosenberg: So, I knew that Pine Gap was looking at signals coming out of the Soviet Union, out of China, out of the Middle East, out of Korea.
Alex Barwick (VO): That’s a huge chunk of the world.
Australia was assisting the US military to fight in wars or drop bombs on countries we often weren’t at war with.
Were there ever civilian casualties?
It all just feels so far away. But it’s not, it was happening 18ks from my house.
But there is one incident that made it all the way to Hollywood.
It’s 1995, The Bosnian War, Europe's most devastating conflict since World War II, has been going for three years.
There are bodies piling up on both sides over a region formerly known as Yugoslavia.
NATO finally intervenes to try and stop the bloodshed.
David Rosenberg: Captain Scott O'Grady was overflying Bosnia Herzegovina in 1995.
Alex Barwick (VO): The 29-year-old was flying an F-16 Falcon, a single engine supersonic fighter aircraft in the skies above Bosnia.
He was meant to be enforcing the NATO no fly zone.
Suddenly the instruments on his dashboard started flickering.
A missile was coming straight for him.
David Rosenberg: He was, he was shot down.
Alex Barwick (VO): The plane exploded and broke in two.
He somehow hit the eject button and parachuted down it took 25 minutes to reach the ground.. where he found himself in hostile territory.
David Rosenberg: If you're working at a facility that's designed to collect pilot's emergency transmission frequency, your thoughts are, is that pilot alive? Did the transmitter break upon impact?
Alex Barwick (VO): David and his team were immediately on the hunt.
David Rosenberg: Facilities like Pine Gap that use satellites could then be tasked to collect a pilot's emergency transmission frequency.
Alex Barwick (VO): O'Grady knew he had to hide.
He flung off his parachute and ran into the forest nearby.
David Rosenberg: When a pilot gets shot down quite often there might be several days that go by before the pilot might feel it's safe to transmit.
Alex Barwick (VO): Scott O'Grady was alive, but he had burns on his neck.
And he had to eat grass and bugs to survive.
David Rosenberg: So, when you're tasked to look for a emergency transmission signal, you have to stay on that job.
You can't take your equipment away from looking for that signal
And as each day goes by you lose faith that the pilot’s actually alive.
Alex Barwick (VO): O'Grady was behind enemy lines and using any emergency communication could have alert the Bosnian Serbs to his location.
It was a risk.
David Rosenberg: It was actually four days later until Captain O'Grady transmitted a signal.
Alex Barwick (VO): David was ecstatic.
David Rosenberg: When you get the signal, you're elated on the ground because you know the pilot’s alive.
You take that signal and you send it back, the military gets it.
They establish contact with O'Grady and devise a plan to get him out Bosnia Herzegovina.
Alex Barwick (VO): And then the hours ticked by.
David Rosenberg: So, we're sitting there, at Pine Gap, just waiting, waiting, waiting for some result from collecting the signal and sending it back to the military.
Two days later six days after he shot down the U.S. military sends in a rescue mission.
Archival news report: At 2.08 local time, search planes pinpointed O'Grady's location in northwest Bosnia near Bihać, just a few kilometres from where the tail section of his F16 crashed after being shot down at the weekend.
David Rosenberg: You feel very grateful that, you know, you might have been part of that solution.
Archival news report: When the news came through, President Clinton reportedly celebrated with a cigar on the White House balcony.
Alex Barwick (VO): Privately they celebrated at Pine Gap. In fact there were often parties at the base, Christmas parties and annual fourth of July celebrations.
David Rosenberg: You'd just be walking around sampling the food, you'd be having a chat with people, trying the wines and the beers.
Everybody would be laughing, it would just be, it would just be a fun day out.
Alex Barwick (VO): Pine Gap workers and their families celebrated Independence Day just outside the front gates.
Helen Kilgariff: There was the apple pie competition.
Alex Barwick (VO): Yes, of course the Kilgariffs were invited to the base – the movers and shakers of town were on the guest list.
Helen Kilgariff: Australian apple pies and American apple pies are completely different.
Theirs had a lot more cinnamon, it had lots of sugar on the top, it was kind of a flakier pastry.
Alex Barwick (VO): I imagine travel agent to the spies Helen Kilgariff holding a glass of champagne as she considers her mouthful of apple pie.
She fondly remembers the tough job of pie judging at these picnics.
Helen Kilgariff: There was this big lawned area there where there'd be kids games, there might be a jumping castle.
So, we would know lots and lots of people there.
I don't think there was a lot of Australians there except the Australians who worked at the base.
Alex Barwick (VO): I remember when I first arrived in Alice Springs 16 years ago seeing shelves of American candy at the local supermarket and wolfing down a pumpkin pie at a friend’s Thanksgiving celebration.
The Americanisation of my outback town is subtle and in your face all at once.
Picnics and parties at the base sounded fun, and my kids loved the sweet and scary generosity of Halloween.
But at the turn of the millennium a new kind of terror would strike that would change the world and Pine Gap for ever.
Archival news report: Hundreds, possibly thousands of people have died in an apparently coordinated attack.
Three commercial airliners were hijacked and crashed into both towers of the Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Alex Barwick (VO): This is Expanse: Spies in the Outback.
Season three of the ABC’s Expanse podcast is hosted and produced by me, Alex Barwick; supervising producer Piia Wirsu, sound engineer and producer Grant Wolter; executive producer Blythe Moore, with thanks to Elsa Silberstein for additional production and research and to ABC Alice Springs.
Acknowledging the traditional owners of the land this podcast is created on: Arrernte land, Awakabal land and the land of the Stoney Creek nations.
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