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THE WENDE MUSEUM’S PRESENTATION ASKS, “WHO’S WATCHING WHOM — AND WHY?”

Published on May 5, 2025

“Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency”
Exhibition on view from October 13, 2024 through October 19, 2025

Wende Museum
10808 Culver Boulvard
Culvery City, California 90230
Telephone: 310-216-1600
www.wendemuseum.org

by Sarah Fensom, brutjournal’s Los Angeles-based West Coast bureau chief

CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA — In 1945, a Soviet youth organization gave the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union a gift — a wooden relief of the Great Seal of the United States.

The ambassador hung the seal in his residence. Seven years later, American intelligence officials discovered that the seal contained an electronic “bug” — a simple yet sophisticated device they dubbed “The Thing” that, over time, had eavesdropped on many confidential conversations that had taken place in the ambassador’s home. Because The Thing had no wires or batteries, it was easy to conceal. It was a passive device, meaning that it was activated only when a strong radio signal of the correct frequency was transmitted to it from outside the ambassador’s residence.

Photos reproduced in the exhibition's catalogue: Top photo: John Rooney/Associated Press. Bottom photo: Declassified FB report.

Its technology stunned American intelligence officials, prompting both the CIA and FBI to have research about the device conducted at labs in the U.S. and in Europe. Not wanting to be outdone, the CIA launched EasyChair, its own covert listening-device development project shortly after discovering The Thing.

The Thing was designed by Leon Theremin, the Soviet Russian inventor who created the eponymous theremin, an early electronic musical instrument. A large theremin is on view in “Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency,” an exhibition that is currently on view at the Wende Museum in Culver City, through October 19. The unusual instrument is displayed next to archival images and information related to the discovery of The Thing. Museum-goers are encouraged to don headphones, play the instrument, and get a sense of how it modulates sound, and, by implication, how its technology might have influenced the design of The Thing.