Top 10 Real-Life Spy Gadgets

The Times of London ^ | May 11, 2009 | Jeremy Duns

[nickcarraway]

With the news that MI5 is looking for a Chief Scientific Adviser, spy novelist Jeremy Duns reveals his ten favourite real espionage inventions

1. Poison-tipped umbrella

Probably the most infamous real-life spy gadget is the umbrella used by the Bulgarian secret services – with KGB help – to kill dissident writer and broadcaster Georgi Markov. KGB technicians converted the tip of an ordinary umbrella into a silenced gun that could fire a pellet containing a lethal dose of ricin. On September 7 1978, Markov felt himself being jabbed in the thigh as he walked across Waterloo Bridge. A man behind him apologised and stepped into a taxi. Markov died four days later. No arrests have ever been made.

5. Exploding rats

If exploding briefcases weren’t enough, the SOE boffins created something even more outlandish to battle the Nazis – exploding rats. Developed in 1941, the devices used the skins of real rats, with fuses concealed inside. The idea was to use them to blow up German boilers, but they were quickly discovered and so never put into production.

9. Microphone in an olive

Also in the Sixties, American private detective Hal Lipset became famous when he demonstrated an unusual bugging device at a Senate subcommittee on surveillance: a miniature microphone hidden inside a (fake) olive. Perfect for placement inside a vodka Martini, the toothpick acted as an antenna. The range was short – about thirty feet – but Lipset’s show convinced the Senate to toughen the laws on recording people without their consent.

[JoeProBono]

[JoeProBono]

[cynwoody]

Below is a hand-carved Great Seal of the United States, presented to US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman by Soviet school children in 1946. In 1952, a security check of the Moscow embassy revealed a microphone hidden inside the eagle's beak. Whenever they suspected an important meeting was going on, the KGB would park a van outside and send a microwave beam through the ambassador's office, energizing the mic and allowing them to receive its signals. More here.

[Lmo56]

I’m partial to the shoe phone myself ...

[a fool in paradise]

I think I know what Barney Frank did during the war...

[a fool in paradise]

No jet pack?