A gift with a surprise. How pioneers helped Soviet scouts spy on the United States

NSA

Imagine the situation: Soviet schoolchildren give an American ambassador in the USSR a wooden coat of arms of the United States - a decorative decoration on the wall. And inside the gift, a bug is mounted, with the help of which Soviet scouts have been eavesdropping on all conversations in the American residence in Moscow for several years. If it seemed to you that this is a scene from a spy film about the Cold War period, you were mistaken. This story was not invented and actually occurred in the 1940s at the Moscow residence of the American ambassador. About how Soviet inventors, along with pioneers, managed to deceive the flair of American special services and how the truth was opened, says Atlas Obscura.

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