Pine Gap is a joint Australian-United States satellite communications and signals intelligence surveillance base and Australian Earth station approximately 18 km (11 mi) south-west of the town of Alice Springs.

[4][5][6][7][8] The classified NRO name for the Pine Gap base is Australian Mission Ground Station (AMGS), while the unclassified cover term for the NSA function of the facility is RAINFALL.

[citation needed] The location is strategically significant because it controls United States spy satellites as they pass over one-third of the globe, including China, North Korea, the Asian parts of Russia, and the Middle East.

[20][21] During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, it is alleged Pine Gap provided the IDF with communications and electronic intelligence which it had collected using two geosynchronous Orion satellites located over the Indian Ocean.

[10] Since the end of the Cold War, the station has mainly been employed to intercept and record weapons and communications signals from countries in Asia, such as China and North Korea.

[9] One of Pine Gap's primary functions is to locate radio signals in the Eastern Hemisphere, with the collected information fed into the US drone program.

[30][31] This was confirmed by an NSA document from 2013, which says that Pine Gap plays a key role in providing geolocation data for intelligence purposes, as well as for military operations, including air strikes.

[9] Journalist Brian Toohey states that Pine Gap intercepts electronic communications from Australian citizens including phone calls, emails and faxes as a consequence of the technology it uses.

[32] According to documents published in August 2017, Pine Gap is used as a ground station for spy satellites on two secret missions:[9] After the inexplicable March 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370, a Boeing 777 passenger jet, authorities suggested that Pine Gap or Jindalee (JORN) radar site might have data to help locate the missing aircraft.

[38] During his trial for espionage, US defence industry employee Christopher Boyce made a number of allegations related to the intelligence gathered at Pine Gap (including claiming that the CIA was involved in the Whitlam Dismissal).

Pine Gap features prominently in the third and fourth thriller novels of the Jack West Jr. series—The Five Greatest Warriors and The Four Legendary Kingdoms, respectively—by the Australian writer Matthew Reilly.

In the novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost, President Richard Nixon claims that Pine Gap is actually the site of an underground facility constructed by extraterrestrials.

The video featured an interview with Donna Mulhearn, one of the six members of the Christians Against All Terrorism group who attempted to sneak into Pine Gap in 2006, along with the discussion of the alleged CIA involvement in the Whitlam dismissal.