The Thing - The Bugging of the American Ambassador in Russia

On August 4th, 1945 the Soviet Union presented Averell Harriman, American Ambassador in Russia, with a gift. It was beautiful carving of the American eagle. The Ambassador, taken with the work of art, hung it in his residential study, where it stayed for seven years.

What he didn’t know, was that embedded inside the carving was a tiny microphone and a long metal rod. What made this device unique was that it was impervious to discovery by regular methods, because it had no power supply or active electronic components. It was only active when a radio signal at 800 mhz was beamed at it.

So the Russian’s set up a device a distance away to beam a signal in the direction of the sculpture to listen in. It would activate the device and give it power. It was discovered in 1951 by mistake by a British radio operator who overheard the ambassador’s conversations being beamed on open radio waves.

At the time, the technology was groundbreaking. Today, a similar concept is in wide use with RFID tags. Most of us use them every day with our company security badges.

The discovery of the device led to an interesting moment of diplomacy at the United Nations between the two superpowers. Watch the below video to see what happened.