A Quick Question of the Day.

So here is the Spy vs Spy question.  

What does the Soviet gift of a carved wood replica of the "Great Seal of the United States" given to Ambassador Averell Harriman and the Beach Boy song "Good Vibrations" have in common?  

Well do you give up then... They both contain a invention from Leon Theremin.

Quote... Theremin's device was used by the Soviet Union to spy on the United States. The device was embedded in a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States. On August 4, 1945, a delegation from the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union presented the bugged carving to U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally.

It hung in the ambassador's Moscow residential study until it was exposed in 1952 during the tenure of Ambassador George F. Kennan.

The existence of the bug was accidentally discovered by a British radio operator who overheard American conversations on an open radio channel as the Soviets were beaming radio waves at the ambassador's office.

The Department of State found the device in the Great Seal carving after an exhaustive search of the American Embassy, and Peter Wright, a British scientist and later MI5 counterintelligence officer, eventually discovered how it worked.

http://www.counterespionage.com/the-great-seal-bug-part-1.html

Sort of gives new meaning to the words...    

I'm pickin' up good vibrations
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop bop)
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (Good vibrations, oom bop bop)
She's giving me excitations (Excitations, oom bop bop)
Good, good, good, good vibrations (Oom bop bop)
She's giving me excitations (Excitations, oom bop bop)
Good, good, good, good vibrations (Oom bop bop)
She's giving me excitations (Excitations)

When I was posted to Warsaw , Poland in 1989( my first overseas assignment) it was still the communist era although the tail end of it. Naturally the first thing I did when entering my flat was to unscrew the phone receptor looking for a bug. Didn't find one. I checked every single table lamp, light fixture etc. Did not find anything. I even opened the stereo set that had been provided .I was told years later that they did find a bug in that apartment in the TV set!!!!! I went totally paranoid the first few months I was there and I would shout out loud F....k Lenin , Screw Stalin and every ( heartfelt) insult I could think about the Communist pantheon so I figure if they bug my place they will be forced to hear what I think of their system and their idols. The great thing about it was that of course they wouldn't be able to do anything about it without betraying the fact that they had bugged my place in violation of international agreements....

One of my colleagues answered the phone one day at his flat and heard the conversation he and his wife had had in bed a couple of night before. One day he and his wife had complained about their sink being clogged in their apartment. The Morning after, a plumber showed up at their door although they had not called one!!!

Ha, the walls have ears!

frinik... Sort of a scary story and a bit like 1984, except in a real sense though. Overall though it must have been an interesting time to visit Poland or any of the Eastern block countries. Even more so was the fact that Poland was taking the first steps of shaking off the Communist monopoly over the country with the Solidarity movement.

Also at the same time Hungary was internally discussing it's own economic problems coming from the Communist form of government.

Yes, a very interesting time indeed and it is an important time that needs to be more written about.