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BLAKE, BUGS AND THE BERLIN TUNNEL 177<br />

nearby room, broadcasting loud and clear. Despite a painstaking<br />

search, no bug could be found. The general opinion was that<br />

Russian employees within the Embassy had quickly removed<br />

it. Now the hunt was OIl, and the 'sweepers' who searched for<br />

bugs were busy all over Moscow. In January 1952 a microphone<br />

was found in the American Embassy. Then in September<br />

of the same year an American sweeper heard the voice of George<br />

Kennan, the American Ambassador, being transmitted, but no<br />

one could find the offending bug. Painstaking work with a British<br />

detector eventually located it. 28 Its sophistication stunned<br />

Western observers: it was a resonating device that required no<br />

external power supply, and so could remain in operation indefinitely.<br />

Consisting of a metal chamber about ten inches long, it<br />

transmitted when bombarded with microwaves from a nearby<br />

building and was hidden in a wooden model of the Great Seal<br />

of the United States which was on display in Kennan's office<br />

and which had been given to him by the Soviets as a present.<br />

In order to persuade the Soviets to activate the device, Kennan<br />

pretended to dictate a telegram, which enabled the sweepers to<br />

home in on it. Kennan recalls that he felt 'acutely conscious of<br />

the unseen presence'.29<br />

The discovery of this microwave bug triggered alarm in<br />

London. On 9 October 1952 Churchill urged MI5 and SIS to<br />

'take all necessary action', and told A.V. Alexander, his Defence<br />

Secretary, that the episode was 'most important' as it showed<br />

'how far the Soviets have got in this complex sphere'. He ordered<br />

an active programme of research into both defensive security<br />

measures and offensive bugging techniques for Britain's own<br />

use. In the short term, MI5 busied itself protecting certain key<br />

rooms in Whitehall. Meanwhile, Sir Frederick Brundrett, the<br />

Chief Scientific Adviser at the Ministry of Defence, was asked<br />

to coordinate technical investigations into bugging possibilities<br />

for SIS, particularly with new transistor-based devices. Since<br />

the original find of an advanced Soviet bug in Britain's Moscow<br />

Embassy in 1950, three different scientists in Britain had already<br />

'developed miniature devices which would transmit voices in

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