The Moscow Bughouse

Most old structures have bugs, but these were different. Tipped off by a Red defector, security men in the 50-year-old U.S. Embassy in Moscow broke into the walls of several rooms and found more than 40 microphones planted 8 in. to 10 in. inside the walls. The bugs* were estimated to be twelve years old, going back to the Stalin era, but still eminently operational. Lamented one U.S. official: "Here we've been using the most up-to-date methods to pick up the most sophisticated bugs, and what happens? They had what amounts to an old system of crystal sets buried in the walls."

Listening Bowl. It was not the first discovery of bugs in U.S. embassies behind the Iron Curtain, but one of the few that the U.S. chose to make public. All knowledgeable foreigners in Moscow take it for granted that embassies and hotels are bugged, and U.S. diplomats go through an exhaustive briefing before reporting for Russian duty, including a tour of the State Department's "Chamber of Horrors," which contains a vast display of bugs found behind the Iron Curtain. U.S.

Embassy officials in Moscow hold their really important talks in a specially constructed, supposedly bug-free "tank," or while strolling out in the open.

Even that is not completely safe, because laser beams can pick up a conversation 100 yds. away. With miniature, transistorized equipment, even trees and flower beds have on occasion been bugged, along with practically everything else--bedsprings, toilet bowls, belt buckles. Americans believe that the microphones in their living quarters are turned on only when they receive important visitors, but they cannot be sure. Says one diplomat: "A man and his wife can't even have an argument unless they are willing to let the Russians in on it."

Needled Agent. The Russian spy mania requires battalions of clerks to transcribe, translate and file what has been overheard, as well as "evaluators" to judge its significance. A U.S. official concedes that the Moscow bugs may have picked up "potentially useful fragments," but adds that "getting them sorted out and fitting them together would require a very large investment in time and effort for a potentially small return."

Western diplomats sometimes use Soviet bugs for their own purposes. They may feed them false information or use them to needle a top Russian agent they would like to get rid of, either by suggesting he is on the U.S. payroll or hinting he is having an affair with some Soviet minister's wife. In fact, skeptics wondered last week why such old-fashioned bugs had remained immune so long to modern detection devices. Was it because the U.S. knew the mikes were there and employed them to plant phony data? And why did the U.S. choose this particular moment to announce the discovery? Was it because the Russians had already decided that the information they were getting was false?

Whatever the answer, legend has it that Sir Winston Churchill long ago offered the definitive riposte to those Russian buggers. At Yalta, warned that his room was bound to be wired, he strolled up and down, shouting at the walls: "Baboons! Baboons!"

* The term derives from telegraphers' slang for the Morse code signaling key.

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