Professor Desmond Ball from the Australian National University (ANU) is an acknowledged academic expert on Pine Gap. When Australia’s Department of Defence refused to volunteer information about Pine Gap at the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on 9 August 1999, Professor Ball was called upon to provide information in the debate to renew the treaty allowing Pine Gap to remain.[24] His testimony in 1999 included his description of a portion of the purpose and capabilities of the Pine Gap satellites: ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ … █████████████████████████████████████████████.[25]
When Professor Ball was interviewed on the Stateline program, he quite openly discussed the role of telemetry in evaluating a weapon’s performance and stated that Pine Gap has a telemetry intercept capability. Prime Minister Hawke’s statement about Pine Gap in 1988 is in agreeance with Professor Ball’s statements on the Stateline program and in his Senate testimony that telemetry intercepted at Pine Gap is one of the ways in which the United States verifies arms control agreements. The deputy chief, Brian, also briefly commented on Pine Gap’s role in arms control when he stated that ‘The world is still an interesting place in relation to arms control and this [Pine Gap] is a useful adjunct to keeping that all under control.’
The Stateline program offered Australians a unique insight into the facility and the role Pine Gap plays in arms control. Much of the remainder of the program showed how American culture had taken hold in Alice Springs, with Aussies playing traditional American sports such as softball and gridiron football, and how a plethora of American food had found its way onto the shelves of the local grocery stores. The mayor and a Chamber of Commerce representative were also interviewed and they discussed the financial impact of Pine Gap on Alice Springs, stating that tens of millions of dollars were injected into the Alice Springs economy every year merely from the presence of Pine Gap and the resultant spending by the employees and United States Government. They mirrored the opinion of what Terry Lillis termed the ‘second-stream economy’, which was grateful that this monetary source was still alive and well as Pine Gap is still a major reason why the Alice Springs economy is strong and why unemployment in Alice Springs is at a very low level.
Near the end of the Clinton administration, the new director of the NSA, Lieutenant General Michael Hayden, visited many overseas sites where NSA employees were based to familiarise himself with various intelligence operations. Lt Gen. Hayden visited Pine Gap to receive an executive overview and take a carefully scripted tour of the Operations floor where operators at their workstations, both American and Australian, discussed many of our accomplishments with him. I was fortunate to be at work that day and met Lt Gen. Hayden when he arrived at my position, where I briefed him on various collection highlights. His arrival at Pine Gap was a great morale booster for those of us in Operations who were unable to meet with the senior leadership at NSA headquarters due to the remoteness of Alice Springs. He appeared to be very interested in our capabilities, asking many questions about how we performed our work, and seemed impressed with our achievements.
The Clinton years were a period of growth for Pine Gap as Operations expanded. My own career had developed and as well as having increasing management responsibilities and more experience in identifying various signals, I also represented Pine Gap when giving briefings at technical conferences in the United States. For five years I also attended the chief of Operations’ morning meeting as my division’s representative, briefing senior management on highlights from the division. In 1998 I was nominated by the senior leadership at Pine Gap for the NSA’s General Ben Ardisana Collector of the Year award. Pine Gap didn’t submit a candidate every year for this award, but I was humbled to be put forward for recognition of ‘excellence in the field of collection’.[26]
My original misgivings about President Clinton had turned around dramatically as he proved to be an effective statesman, strengthening partnerships and alliances. Some of his achievements included helping Mexico to avoid bankruptcy, negotiating a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, and providing leadership to NATO as the coalition achieved their objectives in the Balkans, which in turn helped to avoid the further slaughter of Muslims in that region. Around the world, the United States was generally respected, and individuals and businesses by and large flourished in a climate of economic growth and profitability. President Clinton had also overseen a more rapid rise in government wages to help retain employees, similar to what President Reagan had done in the 1980s. Clinton did, however, enact some budget cuts that affected Pine Gap in various ways,[27] but I believed these inconveniences were a small price to pay in return for the large budget surpluses achieved during his years in office.
At Pine Gap, the 2000 presidential election was divisive among the American military and civilian populations, with the military and ex-military primarily supporting George W Bush and civilians mainly supporting Al Gore. Many of my Australian friends who had seen the debates believed Al Gore acted with smugness and self-importance while George W Bush came across as ‘not very intelligent’. They were all quite amused by watching the debates and the debacle that followed the election in the state of Florida but, like many Americans, what they didn’t find amusing was the fact that the Supreme Court disallowed a recount to determine which candidate had actually won that state’s electoral votes. In essence, the Court allowed a ‘best guess’ to determine who would become the United States’ next president, disregarding many votes cast by Florida’s residents and resulting in a ruling that will forever tarnish the legacy of the United States’ highest court. The fact that President Bush’s brother Jeb was the influential governor of Florida also made it apparent to many that the decision to stop a recount wasn’t impartial.
The Supreme Court’s decision to allow a disputed election to stand unresolved in the minds of many voters would cast a shadow of illegitimacy on President-elect Bush that would deepen partisan lines in the United States for the next eight years. However, with the disputed presidential election decided by the end of 2000, President-elect George W Bush was handed an economy that was strong and an America that had won ‘hearts and minds’ around the world under the leadership of President Clinton. How President-elect Bush would build on those would partially determine his legacy.
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