MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE 40 MICROPHONES
The U,S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency suffered one of the worst shocks in the history of the two depart» = ments when they tore open the walls in the American embassy in Moscow and discovered 40 microphones, It wasn!t the principle of the thing that shook them =* both departments have heard about microphones and their uses «= but the quantity, Moreover, they had been placed in thé walls when the building was prepared for American occu~ pation some twelve years ago and had never been detected, How can you live that down?
The American cloak-and-dagger men naturally considered it perfectly normal of the Russians to plant microphones. Equally normal, of course, was their periodic search for alien listening devices in’ which they brought to bear their famed experience, ingenuity, American knowshow and electronic gadgets (probably lie detectors). Why did all this prove unavailing?
Well, who would have thought that. the Russians could invent a microphone beyond: the capacity of American know-how to detect for more than a decade? .And immediately after the previous Russian achievement -- a microphone planted in the eagle of a wooden repro~ duction of the Great Seal of the United States, presented as a gift to the ambassador, which hung over his desk from 1945 to 1952 before — it was finally detected!
The newspapers in the U.S, played it up big with pictures of the guilty microphones on the front page, Soviet morals were given indignant exposure, . . while the rest of the world laughed at the way the Russians had fooled the know=it-all Americans,
The Dutch took the occasion to rub it in, They revealed that they had found out some years ago that their embassy was bugged, According to a Netherlands weekly, here's how they did it:
The ambassador took two "magnificent Siamese cats" to Moscow, These friends of man detected right away that all was not normal in the customary mice runs, They arched their backs and "scratched furiously at the wall," They didn!t like the Russian sounds back-
ted from this Marxist hypothesis on the basis of Marxist method, A half century later, Khrushchev went beyond the Lenin thesis on the basis of Leninist method. In each instance these men recognized the historical developments which had transformed an earlier truth into a falsehood and transformed what had been progressive into a force which was putting a brake upon the altered present," [Emphasis added,] (Studies on the Left, p, 23.)
It is sad to see that Luk&cs! former. eulogies of Stalin == which one can assume were: indispensable to Lukd&cs! survival -= have now been replaced by voluntary eulogies of. . . . Khrushchev!
firing in the microphones. . :
The Dutch proved they not only + had. 1 good brains to whom to assign the task of detecting hidden microphones; they showed that they knew how to make the most of their finds, The microphones obviously provided a precious new channel: of: communication with the Russians, : lees
Thus "two diplomats" sat down comfortably, near a hidden. microphone, and complained -- probably to the Siamese cats -- about how slow Russians are at fixing things like the sower running out of the embassy. Result: Sewer fixed "the next morning,'
- Tulip bulbs held up at customs? Sat down again and complained to’ “the eats about Russian ,thoughtlessness, Result: Bulbs delivered "twenty-four hours later,' .
What about the next chapter in this thriller of international espionage and counterespionage? Will the Americans, having learned not to take any wooden eagles, now take a lesson from the Dutch, begin keeping Siamese cats and stop acting. like. vandals toward the. _ art work. in their walls? That. remains bo, be seen. o
- Anyway, our.. condolences to the patient Russians who | are evi. dently reluctant to give.up the idea that there must be at least some times when an American diplomat says something honest,
Directeur-Gérant: Pierre FRANK, =... idditeur).