Australian military and intelligence personnel involved in controversial US drone targeting operations could face crimes against humanity charges, according to former prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

Sorry, this audio has expired Malcom Fraser speaks to Ellen Fanning

Mr Fraser, Liberal prime minister from 1975-83, said Australians working at the US-run Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap - which reportedly plays a key role in locating drone targets - do not have the same legal protection as their US counterparts.

"The greater danger is the use to which Pine Gap is now put," Mr Fraser told RN Breakfast.

"Initially Pine Gap was collecting information - it was, if you like, listening in.

"It's now targeting weapons systems. It's also very much involved in the targeting of drones.

"The purposes for which drones are used are going to be outlawed at some point by international agreement, and the Americans might believe that Americans involved in those programs are given legal cover under the War Powers Resolution passed after 9/11.

"[It] gives totally unlimited power, no geographic limits, no time limits, using any means available or that might become available to an American president to do so.

"But that resolution gives no legal cover to Australians operating out of Pine Gap who are complicit in finding, identifying, locating the so-called target."

Questions over Australia's involvement in drone program

Washington's drone campaign in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and the resultant civilian casualties, has prompted fierce debate in the US on the legality of this type of remote warfare.

The controversy has been further fuelled by the deliberate targeting, in some strikes, of American nationals, who the US government claims were members of terrorist groups.

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Mr Fraser's doubts over the legality of Australian involvement comes just two weeks after details emerged of two Australian citizens who were reportedly killed by a drone strike in Yemen.

The Australian newspaper reported that "two men, believed to be in their 20s, were killed by a Predator drone strike on five Al Qaeda militants travelling in a convoy of cars in Hadramawt, eastern Yemen on November 19".

The only Australian Government response came via a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) statement.

"We understand the men were killed during a counterterrorism operation and do not intend to discuss its details," the statement said.

"There was no Australian involvement in, or prior awareness of, the operation."

DFAT would not confirm reports that the two men were extremists killed in a US-led drone strike on Al Qaeda operatives.

One was a dual New Zealand national who, according to NZ prime minister John Key, had attended a terrorist training camp.

Two Australian men were killed in a Predator drone strike in Yemen in November, according to reports. ( Supplied: US Army, file photo )

The Australian Government has subsequently refused to provide further details on the Yemen deaths.

Greg Barton, international director of the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University, says Mr Fraser makes a valid case questioning the legality of Australian involvement in the drone campaign.

"But the problem is we don't have any mechanism for discussing this, because everything in that space is conveniently hidden from public scrutiny," he said.

"[This is] in contrast with America where there is relatively more openness about the intelligence community.

"It speaks to a larger problem as to intelligence work that there is such a cloak of secrecy thrown over everything in Australia."

Pine Gap should be closed, Fraser says

For decades, Pine Gap was simultaneously protected by layers of secrecy while being publicly hailed by government as a jewel in the crown of the US-Australian strategic alliance.

Established at the height of the Cold War, the Pine Gap facility initially monitored the telemetry of Soviet ballistic missiles and Soviet communications satellites.

Today, the centre near Alice Springs is controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the Defence Department's signals intelligence agency, also has a team there.

For decades, ANU professor and strategic policy expert Des Ball conducted ground-breaking research on Pine Gap's operations.

Pine Gap, the secret US-run joint defence facility in the Northern Territory, reportedly plays a key role in the drone program. ( Wikipedia Commons, file photo )

Late last year he told Lateline that Pine Gap had become a key facility in Washington's XKeyscore program, the NSA's controversial computer system that searches and analyses vast amounts of internet data.

"At the top of [the list of priorities], you're going to find communications relating to terrorist activities, particularly if there's alerts about particular incidents," Professor Ball said.

How the US now acts on the intelligence gathered from this central Australian listening post is highly contentious.

In July 2013, Fairfax Media reported claims by former Pine Gap personnel that the base played a key role in the United States's controversial drone strikes that involved the "targeted killing" of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

"The [Taliban] know we're listening, but they still have to use radios and phones to conduct their operations. They can't avoid that," one former Pine Gap operator told Fairfax Media.

"We track them, we combine the signals intelligence with imagery, and once we've passed the geolocation [intelligence] on, our job is done.

"When drones do their job we don't need to track that target any more."

In October, US whistleblower former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the agency's key role in the targeted killing program described by the Washington Post as "the centrepiece of president Obama's counterterrorism strategy".

The Australian Defence Department has repeatedly refused to reveal the extent of its involvement with the US drone strike program at Pine Gap.

Now promoting his new book, Dangerous Allies, on Australia's strategic dependence on the US, Mr Fraser says the Pine Gap facility should be closed and he rejects concerns that such a move would result in Australia losing access to critical intelligence.

"In the time I was prime minister, through all the intelligence reports that came to me, there may have been one, but I cannot recall at government level, at the strategic level, a decision that was altered or changed because of secret intelligence," he said.