Summer, 1945, and after shedding blood together for many years to defeat the Nazis,
the United States and the Soviet Union embrace each other fondly and prepare to carve out a
bright, hopeful future for all humanity. Just kidding, as the second world war wound down,
both sides prepared for the inevitable third world war- against each other.
It started with children, which should have been the first tip off to US intelligence
services because children are terrible. As the US ambassador to the Soviet Union was moving
into his fresh new digs in Moscow, a group of children arrived with a gift. The Vladimir Lenin
All-Union Pioneer Organization 1, an organization kind of like the Boy Scouts but with a million
names because it was Soviet, had hand-delivered a present to the ambassador as a sign of
their nation's gratitude for critical US aid during the fight against Hitler. The gift was
impressive, a hand-carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States,
and the ambassador was overwhelmed with gratitude. Turns out though, the gift was sort of a self-gift
for the Soviets. Kind of like when you surprise your girlfriend with dinner out on the town-
at the place you want to go. US Ambassador Averell Harriman
promptly hung up the wooden seal inside of his private study, where conveniently he'd end up
doing most of his official ambassadorial work, like sharing juicy state secrets with visitors
or making sensitive phone calls back home to the United States. Without even knowing it,
Harriman had just given the Soviets a means to spy on every single one of his conversations,
and it wouldn't be discovered for seven years. The Soviet Union spying on people wasn't exactly a
new concept even in 1945, the nation had after all run a massively successful intelligence network
even before the second world war. When you move your ambassador into a home built by Soviets
on Soviet soil, you can expect that it's going to come with more than a few listening devices.
Thus the ambassador's home was searched carefully for any bugs planted in the walls, floors,
ceilings, vents, etc., and yet discovered nothing. Even sweeping the home for tell-tale radio signals
revealed no planted listening devices, putting the ambassador at ease and dropping his guard.
But how did the US miss this very obvious listening device planted
right in the middle of the ambassador's study? The 'thing', as it would go on to be called,
was devised by Russian inventor Leon Theremin. If that name sounds familiar it's probably because
you're a huge nerd and either own or have played with the musical instrument known as the theremin.
Created in the 1920s while Theremin, the person not the musical instrument, was working for the
Soviet military, the theremin- this time yes, the instrument, not the human- works by generating
electromagnetic fields around two antennas. One antenna, straight and vertical, controls pitch,
the second antenna, positioned horizontally and looped, controls the volume. By manipulating the
electromagnetic fields with their hands, a skilled operator can create beautiful musical harmonies.
Shockingly, Theremin- now the person again, not the instrument- had not in fact been hired by
the Soviet military to create whimsical musical instruments, but rather to design radios and
other electronic communications and listening devices. Eventually, Theremin was thrown into
a gulag as part of Stalin's grand strategy of murdering every brilliant scientist, engineer,
or military officer the Soviet Union had to offer. Then the 1940s came, and the Germans began being
awfully rude neighbors who insisted on visiting Mother Russia and overstaying their welcome.
Realizing that perhaps the best way to be a powerful nation was to not
in fact imprison everyone smarter than you, the Soviets let Theremin and thousands of other
engineers and scientists out of their prison camps. Theremin was quickly apologized to by
the Soviet authorities who kindly offered him a choice of a job developing eavesdropping devices
or taking an early retirement fifty feet below the surface of the Volga river.
Theremin would go on to create what would be the world's most sophisticated listening device,
something truly decades ahead of its time. The Great Seal gifted to ambassador Harriman,
was much like a Russian nesting doll, with a hidden cavity inside the wooden seal itself.
The cavity worked to catch and trap sound waves, and a small quarter-wavelength antenna would
act as a microphone. The most brilliant bit however was the fact that the device ran on
absolutely no electricity- the 'thing' had no batteries, wires, or even a transmitter.
There was no electromagnetic activity that would be easily found by US spies looking for bugs.
In fact, without outside interference, the device was completely inert.
The truly brilliant bit was how the thing would allow Soviet spies to listen on
Ambassador Harriman's every conversation. The thing only worked when a radio signal
of a very specific frequency was transmitted to it from nearby. Sound waves from inside
the ambassador's office would pass through the wooden case and strike the interior membrane,
causing it to vibrate. This vibration caused the electric charge of the antenna to vary,
which would modulate the radio waves being broadcast towards it before re-transmitting
them. Then, KGB agents on the receiving end could demodulate the signal and listen in
with startling clarity to the conversations going on inside the ambassador's office.
Because it had no moving or powered parts, the thing could potentially sit in place forever,
which eliminated the need for KGB agents to covertly enter the apartment and change out
batteries on their planted bug, potentially exposing themselves in the process. The device
could also be operated at great distance, with KGB spies sitting in a van a block away, completely
undetected by the ambassador or any of his staff. To this day it's not known what intelligence the
Soviets were able to glean from the thing. As a 'non-active' listening device, its range would
have been extremely limited- the thing could only clearly pick up conversations that happened near
it. Luckily for the Soviets, the ambassador had placed the thing in the place that made most sense
inside his home- his private study where he would have handled many sensitive details of his work.
With regular sweeps for bugs, it's likely the American ambassador felt very secure inside
his own home, and the thing was likely an intelligence gold mine for the KGB.
The thing would happily operate undetected for six years before people started to
realize something strange was going on. The British were the first to become
suspicious while doing their own bit of espionage. In 1951, a British agent was
monitoring radio communications from the Soviet Air Force inside the British embassy. Suddenly,
he began to overhear an American and British voice carrying on a conversation
on an open radio channel- unknowingly the British had happened to tune in to the right frequency
as nearby KGB agents beamed radiowaves into the US ambassador's home in order to activate the thing.
The radio operator immediately recognized the voice as belonging to the British Air Attache'.
A year later, an American radio operator - also snooping in on Soviet military
chatter - happened to pick up a conversation with voices that sounded distinctly American.
Triangulating the signal revealed it to be coming from the direction of the Ambassador's home.
Immediately the US launched several sweeps for bugs,
but because the thing would only transmit when illuminated by a specific range of frequencies,
and emitted no electromagnetic energy otherwise, nothing was discovered. A few months later,
a new set of sweeps was undertaken, with the Americans aware that the KGB often
liked to plant bugs and then remove them, only to replant them again when the heat died down.
The US State Department dispatched some of its best minds to Moscow, confident that not only
was the US ambassador's home bugged, but so was both the British and Canadian embassy buildings.
Using a signal generator that allowed them to broadcast various radio frequencies and
listen for a return, the State Department team stumbled upon the thing, which they
realized to their horror had laid undetected in the Ambassador's study for almost a decade.
With the thing discovered, the last thing the US wanted was for the Soviets to remove it before
they had a chance to analyze its technology. Thus that night the incoming ambassador George
F. Kennan slept with the thing securely under his pillow, flying it back to Washington the next day.
The device was analyzed by both the Americans and their British allies, with the British eventually
improving upon the technology in order to create their own breakthrough listening devices codenamed
SATYR. These devices, which would be used by the British, American, Canadian,
and Australian militaries, had a much greater operating distance than the thing, and far greater
acoustic sensitivity. The improved SATYR devices built on existing Soviet tech to make bugs that
could be operated from greater distance and could better listen in on their targets.
The US never confronted the Soviet Union about the thing, until May 1960. After four days of
meetings by the UN Security Council to discuss the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane
inside the Soviet Union, the US brought out the thing for the security council members to inspect.
In a global game of fingerpointing with nuclear implications, the US justified its overflights
of the Soviet Union by pointing out that the Soviets had also been spying on the US.
For seven years the US had been outfoxed by the Soviets, resulting in an intelligence
coup for the Soviet Union. But in the 70s, the US had more than its revenge.
In summer of 1972, the United States nuclear submarine Halibut
silently slunk within just miles of one of the Soviet Union's most important naval bases in
the Sea of Okhotsk. There, under 400 feet of water, ran vital communication cables that
linked straight back to the Kremlin. As the Halibut approached the cables,
it released an anchor that would keep it floating directly above the cables. Then,
divers emerged from the belly of the submarine, carrying wiretapping equipment that looped CIA
operatives inside the Halibut directly into the most secret of Soviet naval communications.
The Halibut would sit in position for days, dutifully recording Soviet communications onto
hard tapes, which would then be shipped back to the US for analysis. From this
incredible wiretapping, the US recorded everything from Soviet nuclear strategy,
to Soviet fleet deployments, to even conversations between Soviet admirals and their mistresses.
For their part, the Soviet military didn't even dream that such an operation against
them could be possible. For one, the cables were only several inches in diameter, leaving
the US with over 600,000 square miles to search for a bunch of cables as thick as your wrist.
Then there was the trouble of accessing the cables so close to hordes of Soviet warships and military
installations- the Soviets had no idea how truly stealthy US subs had become. Lastly, the Soviets
did not realize that the US had developed deep diving techniques that allowed human divers to
operate at an incredible depth of 400 feet. But the Halibut managed to overcome these
challenges, and despite having taken place 50 years ago today, the methods employed to tap into
the Soviet communication cables and decipher their conversations remains secret. The wiretapping
operation proved to be an intelligence gold mine for the US, and is widely believed to have
directly led to the end of the Cold War itself. Unfortunately, an American traitor would go on
to reveal the wiretapping secrets to the Soviets in 1980, when he sold the information for $5,000.
Now go watch CIA vs KGB, or click this other video instead!