US bases including Pine Gap saw Australia put on nuclear alert, but no-one told Gough Whitlam

“The Australian government takes the attitude that there should not be foreign military bases, stations, installations in Australia. We honour agreements covering existing stations. We do not favour the extension or prolongation of any of those existing ones.” – Gough Whitlam

ABC News, By Alex Barwick for the Expanse podcast Spies in the Outback, 25 Apr 24

During the 1972 election campaign, Gough Whitlam promised to uncover and share Pine Gap’s secrets with Australians.(ABC Archives/Nautilus Institute)

When Australia was placed on nuclear alert by the United States government in October 1973, there was one major problem.

No-one had told prime minister Gough Whitlam.

One of the locations placed on “red alert” was the secretive Pine Gap facility on the fringes of Alice Springs.

Officially called a “joint space research facility” until 1988, the intelligence facility was in the crosshairs with a handful of other US bases and installations around Australia.

In fact, almost all United States bases around the world were placed on alert as conflict escalated in the Middle East. Whitlam wasn’t the only leader left out of the loop.

A prime minister in the dark

“Whitlam got upset that he hadn’t been told in advance,” Brian Toohey, journalist and former Labor staffer to Whitlam’s defence minister Lance Barnard, said.

Toohey said Whitlam should have been told that facilities including North West Cape base in Western Australia, and Pine Gap were being put on “red alert”.

“There had been a new agreement knocked out by Australian officials with their American counterparts, that Australia would be given advance warning.”

They weren’t.

Suddenly, the world was on the brink of nuclear war.

Why were parts of Australia on ‘red alert’?

The Cold War superpowers backed opposing sides in the Yom Kippur War.

The Soviet Union supported Egypt and the United States was behind Israel.

As the proxy war escalated in October 1973, United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger believed the crisis could go nuclear and issued a DefCon 3 alert.

A DefCon 3 alert saw immediate preparations to ensure the United States could mobilise in 15 minutes to deliver a nuclear strike.

The aim was to deter a nuclear strike by the Soviets.

And, it simultaneously alerted all US bases including facilities in Australia that a nuclear threat was real.

This level of alert has only occurred a few times, including immediately after the September 11 attacks.

Politics, pressure and protest

The secretive intelligence facility in outback Australia caused Whitlam more trouble beyond the red alert.

During the 1972 election campaign, the progressive politician had promised to lift the lid on Pine Gap and share its secrets with all Australians.

“He gave a promise that he would tell the Australian public a lot more about what Pine Gap did,” Toohey said.

But according to Toohey, the initial briefing provided to Whitlam and Barnard by defence chief Arthur Tange left the prime minister with little to say.

“Tange came along and he said basically that there was nothing they could be allowed to say. And that was just ridiculous,” Toohey said.

“He said, the one thing he could tell them was the bases could not be used in any way to participate in a war. Well, of course they do.”

Whitlam would cause alarm in Washington when he refused to commit to extending Pine Gap’s future.

In 1974 on the floor of parliament he said:

According to Toohey, “the Americans were incredibly alarmed about that”.

“As contingency planning, the whole of the US Defence Department said that they would shift it to Guam, a Pacific island that America owned,” he said.

And the following year, allegations would emerge that the CIA were involved in the prime minister’s dismissal on November 11, 1975…………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-24/when-australia-was-put-on-nuclear-alert-expanse-podcast/103733194