A masterpiece of Russian espionage

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

… Several fiery red cars with sirens flew into the courtyard of the US Embassy; fire brigades briskly rushed into the building, simultaneously straightening the sleeves of the cannons. And then they stopped in confusion - the way up was blocked by the American Marines. To a furious shout: “Get out of the way! Everything will burn there, #% $ # !!! " followed by a tough answer in broken Russian: “Let it all burn out. In the name of the President of the United States, unauthorized access is prohibited."

An attempt to force a breakthrough into the American embassy failed. The most "tasty" premises - the offices of military intelligence officers, cryptographers, analysts, State Department employees, as well as the most important room - the ambassador's office, were still inaccessible to Soviet intelligence.

There are no such fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take (I. Stalin)

This fantastic story began at the end of 1943, when Stalin was informed about the creation in the USSR of a unique eavesdropping device - a microwave resonator designed by Lev Termen.

The "perpetual motion machine" did not need batteries and operated in a completely passive mode - no magnetic fields, no power supplies of its own - nothing that could unmask the device. Placed inside an object, the "tadpole" was powered by microwave radiation from a distant source - the microwave generator itself could be located anywhere within a radius of hundreds of meters. Under the influence of the human voice, the nature of the oscillations of the resonating antenna changed - all that remained was to receive the signal reflected by the "bug", record it on a magnetic tape and decipher it, restoring the original speech.

The spy system, codenamed "Zlatoust", consisted of three elements: a pulse generator, a resonator ("bug") and a receiver of reflected signals, placed in the form of an isosceles triangle. The generator and receiver could be located outside the listening object, but the main problem was the installation of a "bug" in the office of the American ambassador.

The fire trick failed. As practice has shown, the Americans had everything OK with security. Access to the secret premises of the Embassy was strictly limited. None of the Soviet citizens and members of official delegations were allowed close to the upper floors of the building.

It was then that the Trojan horse idea was born.

A rich collection of souvenirs made of wood, leather and ivory was urgently delivered to the waiting room of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria: a shield of a Scythian warrior made of black alder, two-meter mammoth tusks, an Ericsson telephone set inlaid with ivory - a gift from the Swedish king Nicholas II, a luxurious basket for papers, made entirely of elephant leg pre-knee …

Alas, none of the rare exhibits impressed the technical specialists of the NKVD - to install the Zlatoust, a very special souvenir was required, made taking into account the technical characteristics of the listening device itself. A souvenir that could not leave indifferent the American ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman. An exceptional rarity that it would be impossible for someone to donate or "forget" in the back room of the Embassy.

How Harriman was outsmarted

… The orchestra burst out and the choir of pioneers began to sing:

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose poad stripes and pight stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? …

Oh tell me, do you see in the first rays of the sun

That in the midst of battle we were in the evening lightning?

In blue with a scattering of stars, our striped flag

Red-white fire from the barricades will again appear …

A solemn line at the Artek camp, red ties tied and a line of young, sonorous voices singing the anthem of the United States in English - the American ambassador burst into tears. Moved by the warm welcome, Harriman handed the pioneer organization a check for $ 10,000. The British ambassador who was present at the line also handed over to the pioneers a check for 5 thousand pounds sterling. At the same moment, accompanied by the solemn sounds of music, four pioneers brought in a lacquered wooden shield with the US coat of arms carved on it.

To thunderous applause, the director of Artek handed over to "our American friends" a certificate for a rare coat of arms signed by the All-Union headman Kalinin: sandalwood, boxwood, sequoia, elephant palm, Persian parrot, mahogany and ebony, black alder - the most rare wood species and skillful hands of Soviet craftsmen … The gift turned out to be great.

- I can't take my eyes off this miracle! Where should I hang it? - a rare case when Harriman said aloud what he really thought.

“Hang it over your head,” Stalin’s personal translator, Comrade Berezhkov, subtly hinted to Harriman. “The British ambassador will burn with envy.

Trojan Passions or Operation Confessions

The successful operation to introduce Zlatoust into the American Embassy was preceded by a long and serious preparation: a specially organized event - the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Artek camp, where the American and British diplomatic missions were invited in order to "express gratitude from Soviet children for their help in the fight against fascism" - a ceremony, from visiting which it was impossible to refuse. Thorough preparation - pioneer choir, lineup, orchestra, perfect cleanliness and order, special security measures, disguised as pioneer leaders, two battalions of NKVD fighters. And, finally, the gift itself with the "surprise" - a unique work of art in the form of the US coat of arms (Great Seal) with a "Theremin resonator" mounted inside.

Operation Confession has begun!

As the analysis of the signals from the "bug" showed, the coat of arms with "Zlatoust" took its proper place - on the wall, right in the office of the head of the American diplomatic mission. It was here that the most frank conversations and extraordinary meetings were held - the Soviet leadership learned about the decisions made by the ambassador before the President of the United States himself.

On the upper floors of houses on the opposite side of the street, in front of the American Embassy, two secret apartments of the NKVD appeared - a generator and a receiver of reflected signals were installed there. The espionage system worked like clockwork: the Yankees spoke, Soviet intelligence officers took notes. In the mornings, wet linen was hung on the balconies of the apartments, the "housewives" from the NKVD diligently shook out the rugs, literally throwing dust in the eyes of the American counterintelligence.

For seven years, the Russian bug "undermined" it worked in the interests of Russian intelligence. During this time, "Zlatoust" survived four ambassadors - each time the new inhabitants of the cabinet tried to change all the furniture and interiors, only the wonderful coat of arms invariably remained in the same place.

The Yankees learned about the existence of a "bug" in the building of the Embassy only in 1952 - according to the official version, radio technicians accidentally discovered on the air the frequency on which "Zlatoust" was operating. An urgent inspection of the premises of the Embassy was carried out, the entire office of the head of the diplomatic mission was "shaken upside down" - and they found …

At first, the Americans did not understand what kind of device was hidden inside the shield with the coat of arms. Metal wire 9 inches long, a hollow resonator chamber, an elastic membrane … no batteries, radio components or any "nanotechnology". Error? Was the real bug hidden somewhere else ?!

The British scientist Peter Wright helped the Americans to understand the principles of Zlatoust's operation - acquaintance with the Theremin microwave resonator shocked the Western intelligence services, the experts themselves admitted that if it were not for the case - the "eternal bug" could still "undermine" the symbol of American statehood in the Embassy USA Moscow.

The Americans did not dare to disclose to the media the shocking fact about the discovery of the bug that he had worked in the office of the Head of the US diplomatic mission for more than seven years. Hard-hitting information became public only in 1960 - the Yankees used Zlatoust as a counterargument in the course of an international scandal involving the downed American intelligence officer U-2.

After comprehensive studies of the "secret" coat of arms, our Western friends tried to copy "Chrysostom" - the CIA initiated the "Comfortable Chair" program, but failed to achieve an acceptable quality of the reflected signal. The British were more fortunate - created under the secret government program "Satyr", the resonator beetle was able to transmit a signal at a distance of up to 30 yards. A pitiful semblance of the Soviet system. The secret of the Russian "Zlatoust" turned out to be too tough for the West.

One of the most successful Soviet intelligence operations during the Cold War alarmed the Americans in earnest. "Zlatoust" was just the beginning of a campaign to wiretap the "enemy camp" - much later, during the reconstruction of the US Embassy on Novinsky Boulevard in 1987, the Americans discovered that their apartments were literally teeming with all kinds of "bugs" and eavesdropping devices. But an even more shocking incident occurred on December 5, 1991 - on that day, the chairman of the Inter-Republican Security Service (IBS, successor to the KGB), Vadim Bakatin, at an official meeting handed over 70 pages with schemes for planting "bugs" in the buildings of the US embassy complex in Moscow to American Ambassador Robert Strauss. Eyewitnesses claim that at that moment the American was simply speechless - the first person of the state security service surrendered his weapon to the enemy! Finally, I was surprised by the volume of all kinds of "bookmarks" - Soviet intelligence officers had been listening to the entire building up and down for years.

As for the "Chrysostom" bug, nowadays the coat of arms with the super-bug mounted in it occupies a worthy place in the exposition of the CIA museum in Langley, Virginia.

Forgotten genius of electronic music. A few words about the creator of Zlatoust

The unique bug-resonator is the merit of the Soviet scientist and inventor Lev Sergeevich Termen (1896-1993). A musician by training, he began his career with the creation of previously unseen electric musical instruments. Deep knowledge of music and electrical engineering allowed the young inventor to patent the “theremin” in 1928 - an extraordinary musical instrument, the game on which consists in changing the position of the musician's hands relative to the instrument's antennas. Hand movements change the capacity of the theremin's oscillatory circuit and affect the frequency. The vertical antenna is responsible for the tone of the sound. The U-shaped antenna controls the volume.

Laureate of the Stalin Prize in 1947 for the creation of eavesdropping devices - L. Termen received his award not only for his work on the ingenious "Zlatoust". In addition to the passive resonator beetle for the American embassy, he created another technical masterpiece - the Buran remote infrared eavesdropping system, which reads the vibration of glass in the windows of the listening room using a reflected infrared signal.