The USAP, a civilian operation, has three year-round bases, the largest of which is McMurdo, and several seasonal bases. The U.S. military has personnel down there, and obviously other countries have their own Antarctic presence.
Is the mayor, director or administrator of McMurdo the top U.S. official on the continent?
Anyone? Bueller?
A starting point for reading:
I don’t think that the military personnel and civilians answer to the same authority, nor do the personnel at different facilities. Why would they?
Yeah I agree with Chronos. And it depends on what you mean by “Head Honcho”. For example, the McMurdo station is not located on a territory of the USA, so there would be no US governor, for example. I think New Zealand authorities might oversee some aspects of the land use.
Military personnel would be overseen by their superiors, just like research personnel would be overseen by their superiors. And if you follow the chain of command in either operation it will eventually devolve back to someone in the USA.
The paper I linked to in the first post shows that there is a US law enforcement officer, who are themselves overseen by LE staff in Hawaii or Florida.
Fascinating - thanks. Looks like some pretty good cooperation between the NSF, DOJ, FBI etc.