signed in 1947. Officially termed the "UKUSA
* PACT," this was an agreement between Britain, the U.S.A., Canada, New
* Zealand, Australia and the NATO countries.
*
* The UKUSA PACT was, quite simply and bluntly, an agreement between
these
* countries to collect and collate information on their respective
citizens
* and to share this information with each other and pass on to Fort
Meade.
*
* On March 9th 1977, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Bill Hayden,
asked
* "questions on notice" on the subject. On April 19, Prime Minister
Malcom
* Fraser, declined to answer the questions, "in the interests of
national
* security."
*
* The first clue of the Australian Headquarters of PROJECT PLATFORM
appeared
* in 1975. Then, as today, government undertakings involving expenditure
* over a certain amount must be presented to a Senate body, the Joint
* Parliamentary Accounts Committee (JPAC). In 1975 JPAC was asked to
* examine and approve finance for the construction of a new building in
* Deakin, a leafy suburb of Canberra.
*
* This quite massive building was to be constructed behind an existing,
much
* smaller one, which, until then, had been known to the public only as
the
* "Deakin Telephone Exchange."
*
* That it was not, and never had been, simply a "telephone exchange"
finally
* came to light in the 1975 JPAC Approval Re****t, when it admitted that
the
* existing building had a comprehensive basement which housed NASA's
micro-
* wave communications headquarters in Australia. Part of the
justification
* of the "need" for the new, much larger building, was that by 1980, it
was
* expected that NASA would run out of room in their existing home.
*
* Apart from NASA, it is now admitted that Deakin houses the National
* C
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