The Great Seal Bug: How The Soviets Spied The US For 7 Years Via a Children’s Gift

(via Amusing Planet) In 1946, a group of Soviet school children from the Young Pioneer organization presented to the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, William Harriman, a carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States, as a token of appreciation, amity, and solidarity for their alliance in the Second World War, and as promise of continuance of this friendship. The seemingly harmless gift was hung in the study of the ambassador’s Moscow residence, where it stayed for seven years until it was discovered that the innocuous-looking souvenir was more than a mere decoration.