In 1946, Soviet school children presented a two foot wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Ambassador Averell Harriman.

In 1952, the Soviet gave U.S. representatives a carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States. It hung prominently for years, at least part of the time in the ambassador's study, before a tiny microphone was found in the eagle. George Kennan's memoirs describe the event. In a theme now familiar, Kennan relates that Spaso House had been redecorated under Soviet supervision, without the presence of any American supervisors, giving them opportunity 'to perfect their wiring of the house.' 'The ordinary, standard devices for the prevention of electronic eavesdropping revealed nothing at all,' but technicians decided to check again, in case our prevention methods were out of date.'Quivering with excitement, the technician extracted from the shattered depths of the seal a small device, not much larger than a pencil . . . capable of being activated by some sort of electronic ray from outside the building.

When not activated, it was almost impossible to prevent. . . . It represented, for that day, a fantastically advanced bit of applied electronics.'In displaying this equipment to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. charged that more than 100 similar devices had been recovered in U.S. missions and residences in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. Jacob Beam, U.S. ambassador from 1969 to 1973, wrote that the 'ever-present pressures' or residing in the U.S.S.R. included 'physical surveillance, and constant bugging of conversations by various types of concealed devices.'Such Soviet monitoring techniques have been regularly discovered and occasionally publicized during the postwar period. Incidents revealed during the 1980's alone are alarming in their scope and seriousness. In 1982, we verified indications that the new embassy building had been penetrated. In 1984, we found that an unsecured shipment of typewriters for the Moscow Embassy had been bugged and had been transmitting intelligence data for years. In 1985, newspapers revealed that the Soviets were using invisible 'spydust' to facilitate tracking and monitoring of US diplomats. In December 1986, Clayton Lonetree's confession revealed that the Soviets had recruited espionage agents among Marine Guards at the embassy. Recently, we found microphones that had been operating in the Leningrad consulate for many years.Although Moscow had developed over centuries a reputation for severe counterintelligence risks, and although the postwar period was replete with examples of this, U.S. State Department and embassy personnel continued to act like babes in the KBG woods.