How The Inventor Of The Theremin Helped The Soviets Spy On The U.S. For 7 Years
By John Oncea, Editor
In 1952, U.S. officials uncovered a Soviet bug hidden in a wooden seal at the Moscow embassy, sparking a Cold War spy race and a dramatic UN showdown.
Raise your hand if you know who Lev Sergeyevich Termen was.
Need a hint? He was born in 1896 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Need another? He was an engineer and a physicist. No? How about this: he is better known as Leon Theremin.
Yes, Termen is best known as the inventor of the theremin, one of the world’s first mass-produced electronic musical instruments. We’ve written about him before, noting he accidentally invented his eponymous device while aiming to find a way to use radio waves to measure some properties of gas.
Termen found his apparatus emitted a strange warbling tone which he could shape by moving his hands around the equipment. A trained cellist, he recognized the potential of his discovery and created an entirely new instrument, making musical history in the process.
Termen, sometimes referred to as the Russian Edison, accomplished a lot in his 97 years. He married twice, raised two children (one of whom, Natasha, is a leading figure in the world of electronic music today), worked as an electrical engineer, played with the New York Philharmonic in 1928, and invented the only instrument in existence played without any physical contact.
Oh, one more thing.
According to Thereminvox, “In 1938, he was kidnapped by the NKVD (that would later become the KGB), taken clandestinely back to the USSR, sentenced for ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ and isolated in a labor camp in Magadan, Siberia. After a few years, he was assigned to work in a secret research laboratory, where he ‘collaborated’ in the creation of the ‘buran,’ or the ‘bug.’”
In addition to the buran, an active eavesdropping system that used infrared beams to detect vibrations in window glass caused by sound waves, Termen invented something in the mid-1940s that the U.S. intelligence community called “The Thing,” also known as the Great Seal bug.
The OG Trojan Horse
Sometime in the 12th or 13th century BCE, the Trojan War may or may not have taken place. The war is said to have started after Paris of Troy abducted Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta.
Or, according to Homer’s Iliad, it was fought because Paris – the son of Priam and King of the Trojans – judged Aphrodite to be the most beautiful goddess, for which he was gifted Helen, the beautiful sister-in-law of Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae. Determined to get Helen back and punish the Trojans, Agamemnon and his brother marched a mighty army against Troy and eventually succeeded in bringing its people to their knees.
The city of Troy existed in what is now the city of Kisarlik, Turkey, and archaeological excavations there have found evidence of destruction layers from the Bronze Age, generally supporting the idea of a conflict around that time.
No evidence, however, has been found supporting the existence of a Trojan horse, an alleged huge, hollow wooden horse constructed by the Greeks to gain entrance into Troy.
According to Britannica, “The horse was built by Epeius, an expert carpenter and pugilist. The Greeks, pretending to desert the war, sailed to the nearby island of Tenedos, leaving behind Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena (goddess of war) that would make Troy impregnable.”
The Trojans brought the horse inside the city gates and, later that night, Greek warriors emerged from it, opened the city gates to let in the returned Greek army, and the sacking of Troy commenced, ending the 10-year-long war. Since then, “Trojan horse has come to refer to subversion introduced from the outside,” writes Britannica.
Today, Trojan horse attacks are commonly thought of as attacks that use deception, disguise, unauthorized access, and harmful intent. “Beginning in the late 20th century,” Britannica writes, “the name ‘Trojan horse’ was applied to deceptively benign computer codes that seem like legitimate applications but are written to damage or disrupt a computer’s programming or to steal personal information.”
While the jury remains out as to whether or not the Greek army’s Trojan horse was real, there are factual occurrences of Trojan horse-like incidents scattered throughout history. These include:
- Battle of Hastings (1066): William the Conqueror pretended to flee, luring the English troops into a pursuit. This left the English vulnerable, allowing William’s forces to regroup and counterattack effectively.
- The Spanish Armada (1588): During the Anglo-Spanish War, the English used a deceptive strategy by spreading misinformation about the location and strength of their naval forces. The Spanish Armada, underestimating the English capabilities, became vulnerable to surprise attacks, which contributed to its defeat.
- The Gunpowder Plot (1605): A group of English Catholics plotted to assassinate King James I and members of Parliament by placing barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament.
- Operation Bodyguard (World War II): This was a deception strategy employed by the Allies before the D-Day invasion. The Allies created a fake army (the First United States Army Group) and used misleading information to convince the Germans that the invasion would occur at Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy. This misdirection helped ensure the success of the actual invasion.
- The Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964): While not a traditional military deception, the U.S. government used the alleged attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify increased military involvement in Vietnam. The manipulation of information surrounding these incidents can be seen as a strategic deception.
- The Trojan Horse in the Vietnam War: The Viet Cong used various tactics to infiltrate enemy lines, including disguising themselves as civilians or friendly forces. They would then launch surprise attacks or gather intelligence.
The list also includes fake charities, “free” trials, “too-good-to-be-true” deals, and, of course, Termen’s The Thing, a gift given to the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union by children that was used as a bug for seven years.
What Was The Thing?
The Thing also was known as the Great Seal bug and was concealed inside a wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States that was presented to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman as a goodwill gesture by the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer organization in the mid-1940s.*
According to Rare Historical Photos, it “consisted of a tiny capacitive membrane connected to a small quarter-wavelength antenna; it had no power supply or active electronic components. The device, a passive cavity resonator, became active only when a radio signal of the correct frequency was sent to the device from an external transmitter. This is referred to in NSA parlance as ‘illuminating’ a passive device.”
The Thing consisted of a 9-inch-long monopole antenna, which used a straight rod led through an insulating bushing into a cavity, where it was terminated with a round disc that formed one plate of a capacitor. The cavity was a high-Q round silver-plated copper can, with its front side closed by a very thin and fragile conductive membrane.
In the middle of the cavity was a mushroom-shaped, flat-faced tuning post, with an adjustable top to set the distance between the membrane and the post. The post had machined grooves and radial lines on its face, likely to provide channels for airflow to reduce pneumatic damping of the membrane.
The antenna was capacitively coupled to the post via its disc-shaped end. The entire unit, including the antenna, weighed 1.1 ounces. The length of the antenna and the cavity dimensions were designed to produce a higher harmonic of the illuminating frequency in the rebroadcast signal.
The original device was placed with the can under the beak of the eagle on the Great Seal given to Harriman; accounts vary on whether holes were drilled into the beak to allow sound waves to reach the membrane. Some sources say the wood behind the beak was undrilled but thin enough to pass sound, or that the hollow space acted like a soundboard, concentrating sound from the room onto the microphone.
Its design made the listening device difficult to detect because it was very small, lacked a power supply or active electronic components, and did not radiate any signal unless remotely irradiated. These design features, along with the device’s overall simplicity, made it highly reliable and capable of an unlimited operational life.
* The date is often quoted as July 4, 1945, but also as August 4, 1945. One source even suggests that the gift may have been presented during WWII, as early as February 9, 1945, during the Yalta conference. Other sources place the gifting taking place on various dates in 1946.
Discovery And Fall Out
According to Atlas Obscura, “The gift, a gesture of friendship to the USSR’s World War II ally, was hung in the ambassador’s official residence at Spaso House in Moscow. It stayed there on a wall in the study for seven years until, through accident and a ruse, the State Department discovered that the seal was more than a mere decoration.”
The State Department began to suspect the Soviets had planted a novel listening device in the early 1950s, when British and American military radio operators monitoring Soviet traffic unexpectedly picked up what sounded like their own diplomats’ voices. The timing coincided with the Soviet-led refurbishment of Spaso House in 1952, in preparation for U.S. Ambassador George Kennan’s arrival – an ideal chance to hide bugs. Multiple security sweeps turned up nothing.
“The air of innocence presented by the walls of the old building was so bland and bright,” Kennan later wrote, “as to suggest either that there had been a complete change of practice on the part of our Soviet hosts … or that our methods of detection were out of date.”
Assuming the latter, the State Department sent security technicians John Ford and Joseph “the Rug Merchant” Bezjian to Moscow in September 1952. Bezjian suspected the Soviets removed their devices before sweeps and replanted them afterward. To prevent that, he posed as Kennan’s houseguest, arriving with his gear smuggled in advance. Days were spent casually mingling with staff; nights were for discreet searches. Still, nothing. Ford and Bezjian decided to bait the eavesdroppers.
One evening, Kennan sat in his study with his secretary, dictating what appeared to be a classified dispatch, an old, declassified document, while Ford and Bezjian roamed the house with detection instruments. As Kennan “droned on,” Bezjian picked up his voice on a receiver and traced the signal toward the study. Whispering for Kennan to “keep on, keep on,” he fetched Ford, and the two homed in on the wall behind the large wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States.
Bezjian removed the seal, grabbed a mason’s hammer, and – much to Kennan’s shock – began smashing into the brick wall. When the signal abruptly cut out, he realized the source wasn’t the wall but the seal itself. He smashed the carving, uncovering a small, pencil-sized device inside.
“I, continuing to mumble my dispatch, remained a fascinated but passive spectator,” Kennan wrote. “In a few moments … the technician extracted from the shattered depths of the seal a small device.” Kennan recalled feeling “acutely conscious of the unseen presence … of our attentive monitor. It seemed that one could almost hear his breathing.”
That night, Bezjian slept with the bug under his pillow so Soviet agents couldn’t retrieve it. The next day, it was sent to Washington, where U.S. intelligence studied and replicated it, igniting a Cold War race to improve both bugs and countermeasures.
For years, The Thing hung in the busy Spaso House study, overhearing conversations from visiting dignitaries, including General Eisenhower and members of Congress. A former Soviet monitor later admitted it had yielded “specific and very important information” that helped shape Soviet political strategy in the tense early Cold War.
But the wooden eagle’s secret would eventually backfire. On May 1, 1960, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane. At the United Nations later that month, they accused the U.S. of spying and sought a resolution condemning the flights. After enduring days of Soviet denunciations, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., struck back, producing the replica seal and its hidden device before the Security Council and press. The dramatic display helped defeat the Soviet resolution 7–2.
As unsettling as the discovery of The Thing was, Kennan later found humor in it. When he first moved into Spaso House, he practiced Russian by reading aloud in the bug-infested study, often using Voice of America scripts filled with “vigorous and eloquent polemics against Soviet policies.”
“I have often wondered what the effect was on my unseen monitors,” Kennan mused, “when they heard these perfectly phrased anti-Soviet diatribes issuing in purest Russian from … my study, in the depths of the night. Who … did they think was with me? Or did they conclude I was trying to make fun of them?”