Twilight Time

Hailed by former US president Jimmy Carter as “the man who saved the world,” Des Ball was an “insurgent intellectual” who emerged as a key figure in the turbulent political landscape of the Cold War. The Australian scholar and security expert’s theories on the fallacy of nuclear action and his advice to the US Department of Defense played significant roles in the de-escalation of global conflict during the 1970s, while his investigation of the controversial US military base Pine Gap during the ’80s enraged ASIO—which kept a security file on him. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ball offered guidance on signals intelligence in Burma and Thailand, and his work in East Timor revealed secrets the government would have preferred to keep hidden.