THE WORKADAY WORLD OF LISTENING DEVICES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000503990007-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: April 11, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

a Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503990007-2
11 April 1987
The Workaday world
~f Listening Devices
U.S. Diplomats Are Used to East-Bloc `Bugs'
By Bill McAllister
Washington Post Soft Writer
When two members of Congress
returned from Moscow this week
and suggested that Soviet listening
devices had made the U.S. Embassy
inoperable, Soviet KGB agents
were not the only ones laughing. A
Number of career Foreign Service
officers, intelligence officers and
former ambassadors were, too.
To them, living with "bugs" has
for decades been a well-established
and accepted way of life for diplo-
mats sent into the Soviet bloc and
many other countries.
"You assume a high degree, of
microphones" is the way former
Central Intelligence Agency direc-
tor William E. Colby put it.
s that the United
States close its Soviet operations
are "damn foolish," said former Su-
.preme Court justice Arthur Gold-
berg, who served as an ambassador-
st-large during the Carter admin.
~tration. "You can operate, provid-
Id you take safeguards."
" "The idea that you can't operate
there is just nonsense," said Robert
A. (Bobb) Inma ormer head of
the riafiona Security Agency, dep-
Aty director of central intelligence
And chairman of a panel that studied
6roblems at the Moscow embassy
.ih 1984.
Diplomats assigned to posts
Abroad, including some in countries
`gssumed to be friendly to the Unit-
Id States, say that they long have
operated under the assumption that
';t;+any of their offices were bugged
and that the foreign nationals work-
ing in U.S. missions-FSNs as they
are called-are reporting to their
local governments.
But this, say the diplomats, is
hardly cause to abandon State De-
partment operations in Soviet-bloc
countries.
"What you have to understand is
that a whole range of operations go
on at our embassy that have noth-
ing of a classified nature to them,"
said Greg Guroff, a United States
Information Agency specialist who
has been assigned to the Soviet
Union "off and on for 20 years."
Rep. Daniel A. Mica (D-Fla.),
who said the new U.S. Embassy in
Moscow may have to be demolished
because of the number of listening
devices it contains, acknowleged in
an interview that it may be unre-
alistic to hope to maintain an office
building in the Soviet Union that is
free of bugging devices.
"Most buildings could be pene-
trated," said Mica, head of the
House Foreign Affairs' subcommit-.
tee on international operations. He
said the United States needs a
building in Moscow with "a mini-
mum number of floors" free of bugs.
Bugging devices are hardly new
in Soviet-bloc countries. During the
Eisenhower administration, U.N.
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
displayed a large hand-carved U.S.
Seal-a gift of the Soviet Union-
that had hung in the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow from 1945 to 1952 and
was found to contain listening de-
vices.
A U.S. diplomat assigned to Ro-
mania in the 1960s once sent his
shoes to be repaired. They came
back with a radio transmitter in the
heel, recalled Colby, who added of
the inventor of the miniature de-
vice: "I'd'like to give that man a
medal."
When the United States first rec-
ognized the Soviet Union in 1934,
the first American diplomats posted
in Moscow assumed that the first
Soviets who applied for jobs there
"had come to us with the blessing of
the Soviet authorities," according to
the memoirs of the late Loy W.
Henderson, a career diplomat.
Little has changed, according to
Gerald Lamberty, a State Depart-
ment economics officer and pres-
ident of the American Foreign Ser-
vice Association.
Lamberty, who recently served
in Poland, said diplomats there as-
sumed their drivers had contacts
with the secret police "because they
had access to goods not available to
the general public" and that their
maids were reporting as well.
"Sometimes they would come to
us and ask for papers, just so they
could give something to the secret
police," he said. "So you'd give them
something from The New York
Times."
"There were jokes about so-and-
so is the colonel" of the KGB secret
police, recalled Thompson R. Bu-
chanan, a retired Foreign Service
officer who spent two tours in Mos-
cow and one as the consul general
in Leningrad.
It was not difficult to spot the
senior KGB officer in the embassy,
Buchanan said. "He was the one,
perhaps cleaning the toilets, who
everyone snapped to attention
when he passed by."
Inman said it was well known in
Moscow that "the woman who gave
out the theater tickets and the wo-
man who made airline tickets"
worked for the KGB.
But for reasons of "efficiency" the
embassy decided to keep them on,
he said.
Learning what to say-and not to
say-in bugged premises requires
discipline, all of the diplomats said.
"I operated under the assumption
that everything is overheard-un-
less I am told otherwise," Guroff
said.
"If you want to talk about some-
thing sensitive, you talk in the
streets," Colby said. The reason is
that traffic noises render most lis-
tening devices useless, he said.
Mica said his experience in Mos-
cow suggests that the Soviets may
have surpassed the Americans in
bugging technology-an idea that
James Bamford disputes.
"Both sides make essentially the
same types of listening devices,"
said Bamford, author of the "Puzzle
Palace," a book about the National
Security Agency.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503990007-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503990007-2
None of the diplomats inter-
viewed sought to minimize the po-
tential damage allegedly caused by
the Moscow Marine contingent, but
one former intelligence expert, who
asked not to be named, was philo-
sophical about the Moscow incident
and the outcries for new security
rules.
"Really what we're dealing with
is peaks and valleys," he said.
After every major security
breach in the United States, the
government will attempt to crack
down on security violations, he said.
Over time the controls will grow
lax and finally become sloppy. Then
another breach and another crack-
down. Why?
"That's the American way, peaks
and valleys," the intelligence expert
said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503990007-2