Why is Newscorp advertising Pine Gap's role in the Korean missile launches?  A bulletin posted 2 hours ago explains how the CIA base in the middle of Australia was used to organise counter-measures.

Aegis class missile ships, similar to those being built in Adelaide, would have received missile trajectory information important in calculating counter-measures, the report says.

The Murdoch story explains how Pine Gap is one of only two U.S. ground stations used to collect infromation from satellites monitoring the Asia Pacific region.  The other station is located in Alaska.

Given reports that Pine Gap was used in attempts to lob 30 missiles a go at Al Qaeda houses and bases, you could make a fair guess that this base on Australian land was involved in co-ordinating the mssiles that struck the house of Al Qaeda leader Al Zaqawi a couple of weeks ago.

It's still amazing to me that the security at such an important base was loose enough to allow access by a couple of praying protesters last year.  Perhaps the base is not as important as it's beimg made out to appear.