In addition to the regular political intelligence gathering that goes on between countries, whatever Moscow lacked in its own technological development it usually pried out of unsuspecting foreign diplomat dupes. Even during the time of the Czars, in early 1830s, the U.S. minister in St. Petersburg James Buchanan complained “we are continually surrounded by spies both of high and low degree. You can scarcely hire a servant who is not a secret agent of the police.” Those were still low-tech methods compared to the USSR’s greatest spy coup.

On this day, May 19, in 1964, in a search of the Spaso house, the residence of U.S. ambassador to Russia, for eavesdropping equipment, a small device was found inside the eagle on the seal of the United States. That same wooden seal carving was given to the U.S. as a gift in 1952, and hung in the office at least part of the time ever since.

George F. Kennan, who served as ambassador to Russia in 1951-52, recalled the event in his memoirs: “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.”