Gift From Schoolchildren Let the Soviets Spy on the U.S. for 7 Years. It Was More Than a Mere Decoration.
For decades, the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. were involved in a tussle to outmaneuver each other and become the world's top superpower. Espionage had been a big aspect of this fight, with both parties at some point accusing each other of committing it, Atlas Obscura reported.
One of the most bizarre allegations involved a gift given by a group of Soviet schoolchildren to a U.S. ambassador. U.S. experts believe that Soviet officials inserted a bug in the gift that transmitted the ambassador's conversation to the Russians for many years.
The 'gift saga' seemingly began in 1946 when Soviet children from the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organisation presented a carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Averell Harriman, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Atlas Obscura reported. At that time, the present protocols were not in place and the seal was hung in the ambassador’s official residence at Spaso House in Moscow. It remained there for seven years, hidden from everyone's watchful eye.
The device was allegedly created by Russian inventor Léon Theremin, Mental Floss reported. After the device was publicized, it earned the moniker of 'The Thing.' The seal played the role of a sandwich cookie in the whole setup hiding between its layers a tiny capacitive membrane connected to a small quarter-wavelength antenna. A van outside the ambassador's house sent specific radio signals that activated the bug to transmit the conversations happening in its vicinity.
The technology was miles ahead of its time, Atlas Obscura reported. No battery or wires were needed for the device's operation. This aspect allowed the device to be hidden for such a long time from the U.S. authorities. "It represented, for that day, a fantastically advanced bit of applied electronics," George Kennan, the ambassador at the time the device was found said. "I have the impression that with its discovery the whole art of intergovernmental eavesdropping was raised to a new technological level."
British officials were the first to note out-of-place signals in the area, Mental Floss reported. The following year, an American listening to the military radio traffic picked up what they believed to be a conversation featuring American-accented voices. On investigation, they found that the voices could be coming from the Spaso house. Bug-searching sweeps ensued but returned no results.
Authorities were not convinced and decided to lay out a trap for the Russians, Mental Floss reported. Department's security technician, Joseph "the Rug Merchant" Bezjian asked Kennan to pass on a fake but important-sounding message to his secretary. As soon as Kennan began giving his important 'message' Bezigan's detectors picked a signal broadcasting the ambassador's voice. The signal led them straight to the seal with the bug.
Kennan was shaken by the knowledge that he and his predecessors, for so many years, did not have any moment of privacy in between the four walls of that office, Mental Floss reported. "It is difficult to make plausible the weirdness of the atmosphere in that room, while this strange scene was in progress …At this particular moment, one was acutely conscious of the unseen presence in the room of a third person: our attentive monitor. It seemed that one could almost hear his breathing. All were aware that a strange and sinister drama was in progress," he said of the day when Bezjian uncovered the bug.
Bezjian kept the bug under his pillow until he could send it to the U.S. for further analysis, Atlas Obscura reported. The alleged objective of this move was to create a better version of the bug and use it against the Soviet Union and other enemies.
'The Thing' did not come to light till 1960, Mental Floss reported. The U.S. revealed the existence of the bug when the Soviet Union accused it of espionage in the United Nations. The revelation was to prove that the act had been happening on both ends and for years.