Inspecting gadgets

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2017 (3419 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you have a strange feeling someone is watching you, you’re probably right.

Even U.S. President Donald Trump had that feeling recently when he made unsubstantiated claims on Twitter that his namesake tower in New York City was wiretapped by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway ratcheted up the paranoia when she suggested the Obama administration could have used kitchen appliances to keep an eye on The Donald.

Here’s what she told The Bergen County Record: “There are many ways to surveil each other now, unfortunately. There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways. And microwaves that turn into cameras, et cetera.”

Before you laugh off the idea of being spied on by your microwave, consider a recent court case wherein a Canadian sex toy company agreed to shell out $3.75 million for secretly collecting customers’ data while they were using (cough) its Internet-connected vibrator.

The “smart vibrators” allowed the company to track how the devices were used, including time and date, vibration intensity, temperature and pattern, court records show.

Microwaves!? Vibrators!? That explains why today we are sharing our top-secret list of the Top Five Bizarre Spy Gadgets You Will Have A Hard Time Believing Actually Existed:

5) The super secret spy gadget: The Shoe Transmitter

The (no longer) secret story: If you’re anything like us, you grew up obsessed with the 1960s TV sitcom Get Smart, wherein Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, as portrayed by the hilarious Don Adams, communicated with his spy colleagues via his beloved “shoe phone.” As hard as this may be to believe, Maxwell Smart’s goofy shoe phone was grounded in the real world of espionage.

Amid the rising tensions of the Cold War, the KGB and the Romanian Secret Service devised a microphone and transmitter that could be concealed in the heel of a shoe. One of the shoes is currently on display at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. “Secretly obtaining an American diplomat’s shoes, the Romanians outfitted them with a hidden microphone and transmitter, thus enabling them to monitor the conversations of the unsuspecting target,” explains the spy museum’s website. In essence, the shoe became a tiny radio station, broadcasting conversations to a receiver located in a nearby secret monitoring station.

“A pair of dress shoes designed to be worn for business purposes — one of which contained the microphone and transmitter in a hollow heel — was planted in the home, hotel room, or office of the subject,” notes Encyclopedia.com. “This was done by someone affiliated with the KGB who had ready access to the subject, such as a maid, valet or co-worker. When the shoes were planted, a pin located in a hollowed-out heel was pulled out. This activated the radio beacon and microphone.” Sadly, thanks to the advent of more sophisticated bugging technologies in the 1970s, the shoe transmitter was phased out. As Max would have said: “Missed it by that much!”

4) The super secret spy gadget: The Lipstick Pistol

The (no longer) secret story: Anyone who grew up fascinated by the high-tech gadgets wielded by super spy James Bond knows that just about anything can be turned into a gun. A gun that doesn’t look like a gun — a cane, a cigarette — is a timeless classic of the spy genre.

Which brings us to the lipstick pistol, a tiny weapon disguised to resemble a tube of lipstick that is on display at Washington’s International Spy Museum, which opened in 2002 and houses the largest collection of espionage-related artifacts ever placed on public display.

“The lipstick pistol, used by KGB operatives during the Cold War, is a 4.5-mm, single-shot weapon,” says the museum’s website. “It delivered the ultimate ‘kiss of death.’” The spy museum’s deadly lipstick holder was reportedly seized in the 1960s at an American border crossing into West Berlin. “It’s a classic,” museum historian Thomas Boghardt told NBC News.

The lipstick pistol was fired by pointing the business end at your target and twisting it about a centimetre. “The link between international espionage and outlandish gadgetry that continues to inspire Mr. Bond and Co. is no accident — assassination devices like the KGB issue Lipstick Pistol are proof of this deadly Cold War ingenuity,” says NewAtlas.com, noting bullets could be fired by almost anything back in the heyday of espionage.

“Lipstick was one of many options for concealing weapons during clandestine operations — torches, pens, tobacco pipes and cigarette packets were also used, but if we had to choose one device NOT to use it would be the KGB’s single-shot Rectal Pistol, which was encased in rubber and hidden exactly where the name suggests. Not something you want to go off prematurely.” Hopefully, before firing that last weapon, they shouted a warning, possibly: “FREEZE! HE’S GOT A BUM!”

3) The super secret spy gadget: The Dog Doo Transmitter

The (no longer) secret story: James Bond’s life on the big screen is packed with adventure, martinis and beautiful women, but in the real world spies have to cope with more than a few crappy moments. Literally.

We base that observation on our No. 3 gadget — a hollowed-out fake dog poop that spy museum historian Thomas Boghardt says was ideal for holding a message so that case officers and sources could communicate without raising suspicion. Sure, there’s nothing suspicious about some guy in a trench coat randomly scooping up stray dog waste.

“Doo tends to be left alone, which is why beacons disguised as tiger excrement were used to mark targets in Vietnam,” Boghardt told NBC. Of course, it’s always possible someone will dispose of the cleverly disguised device. In a 2014 article, Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper noted the doo transmitter — a homing device camouflaged as dog, monkey or tiger feces — was developed around 1970 by U.S. military intelligence for use in Vietnam.

Formally known as the “T-1151 Dog Doo Transmitter,” it was used by the military to monitor shipments, zero in on targets and find soldiers in need of rescue. Reportedly dropped along the Ho Chi Minh Trail by air, the device, often with a peat-moss-crusted shell, also could transmit a signal to help aircraft pinpoint key enemy ground sites. The signals were monitored by a number of agencies, including the CIA.

“At just over four-inches long and three-quarters of an inch in height, this inconspicuous spy tool was small enough to be carried easily,” explains the Gale Encyclopedia of Espionage & Intelligence. “It could send or receive radio messages, usually by Morse Code.” All of which means it’s entirely possible your dog may be eavesdropping on you.

2) The super secret spy gadget: The Martini Olive Bug

The (no longer) secret story: The story of this hard-to-believe spy gadget is really the story of legendary sleuth Hal Lipset, who opened his private detective agency in San Francisco in 1947. For some, he is best remembered as the father of the modern private detective. Lipset died in 1997 at the age of 78 and obituaries at the time hailed him as the man who turned the once seedy gumshoe business into a respectable, lucrative and intellectual profession.

Over a 50-year career, he tracked jewel thieves across Europe, worked on high-profile political cases, including infamous cult leader Jim Jones, and served as chief investigator for the U.S. Senate’s Watergate committee.

For many, however, Lipset will always be remembered as the guy who pioneered the art of electronic surveillance, with his best known bug being concealed in an olive in a very dry martini. In fact, his 1995 biography — written by one of his former investigators, Patricia Holt, who became book editor of the San Francisco Chronicle — is entitled The Bug in the Martini Olive. In its obituary, The New York Times noted Lipset’s 1968 appearance before a U.S. Senate subcommittee focused public opinion on the issue of eavesdropping.

“Never mind that the tiny transmitter inside a fake olive with a microphone instead of pimento and a toothpick as an antenna had a severely limited range, that it would not work at all if there were actual gin and vermouth in the glass and that it was built purely for show,” The Times obit opined. “The olive became the symbol of how easily transmitters were to conceal.”

According to Cracked.com: “The Martini Olive Bug was so darling and appealing that, when Hal tried to move on to other, smaller, more effective technology, reporters and senators alike would steer him again and again back to the martini.” Olive you, Hal.

1) The super secret spy gadget: The Bulgarian Poison Umbrella

The (no longer) secret story: A famous dissident is killed in the middle of London by an assassin wielding a poison umbrella. It could only happen in the movies, right? Wrong!

This is a shocking real-life story, one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Cold War. In September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident writer and constant thorn in the side of Bulgaria’s Communist regime, was waiting for a bus on London’s Waterloo Bridge. At age 49, he had lived in political exile in London since 1969 and was on his way to work at the BBC. As he stood on the bridge, he felt a sudden sharp pain in his thigh. He thought little of it at the time, but three days later Markov was dead.

The unknown killer — a mystery man who ran away — had stabbed him in the back of the leg with an umbrella that was modified to inject poison into its target with the press of the trigger. In Markov’s case, the umbrella contained a metal pellet the size of a pinhead laced with ricin, a poison so deadly that, in its purified form, a few grains the size of table salt can kill an adult human.

His killers have never been found, though in 2013 British papers reported a suspect had emerged: a spy known in Bulgarian files as Agent Piccadilly. Markov was believed assassinated on the orders of the Bulgarian Secret Service. His assassination came on the birthday of the Bulgarian State Council chairman Todor Zhivkov, who had frequently been the target of Markov’s criticism.

A similar poison umbrella equipped with ricin was used in the failed assassination attempt against Bulgarian dissident journalist Vladimir Kostov the same year in the Paris Metro. A replica of the deadly umbrella, produced in Moscow, is displayed in the International Spy Museum’s collection.

Museum historian Thomas Boghardt says that in 1991 a room full of similar poison umbrellas was uncovered in Bulgaria. In 2012, in a case that mirrored Markov’s killing, a German man died of mercury poisoning a year after being jabbed in the buttocks by a poison-laced umbrella. So if you see someone with an umbrella, and it isn’t raining …

If you have any deep thoughts on today’s list, feel free to let us know. Don’t bother with an email… just speak clearly into that potted plant on your desk. Thank you.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca