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This post is all about the 10 best spy gadgets that have ever been invented.
From a gun made out of a tube of lipstick to a poison umbrella, they are all
here right out of a James Bond movie.
Coat Camera
This little camera, Model F-21 issued by the KGB around 1970, was concealed in a
buttonhole and has a release that the wearer presses from a pocket. Just squeeze
the shutter cable and the fake button opens to capture an image.
Dog Doo Transmitter
Boghardt says this, er, doohickey has a hollowed-out space inside, ideal for
holding a message so that case officers and sources could communicate without
raising suspicion. Doo tends to be left alone, which is why beacons disguised as
tiger excrement were used to mark targets in Vietnam, Boghardt says. One of the
risks is obviously that such a device would be thrown away or discovered by
someone accidentally.
Microdot Camera
In the 1960s, the East German foreign intelligence service HVA issued this tiny
camera, which takes photos of documents and uses a chemical process to shrink
the text down so that a block of text appears no bigger than a period. This way
agents could hide secret messages in plain sight. Boghardt points to an infamous
incident involving microdots: Dusko Popov, a double agent during World War II,
gave microdots to the FBI that mentioned German interest in Pearl Harbor. FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover didn't trust Popov, however, so he never passed the
information to president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Shoe with Heel Transmitter
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Western diplomats in Eastern Europe avoided
buying suits there, preferring to mail order clothing and shoes from the West.
In Romania, the secret service used this to their advantage, working with the
postal service to install a transmitter in shoe heels. Boghardt says that the
recording device was discovered during a routine room sweep that revealed a
signal, but the signal disappeared when all the diplomats left the room.
Enigma Cipher Machine
Messages sent over the wireless in the World War II era could be intercepted so
the Germans used a cryptographic device. On the surface, the Enigma cipher
machine looked like a regular typewriter, but it wasn't. A keyboard was linked
to rotors, powered by an electric current, which transposed every keystroke
several times. Corresponding messages went out in Morse code and required keys,
which changed daily, to decipher -- get it? "De-cipher. " Which is exactly what
the Allies did, cracking a code the Germans thought was unbreakable.
Cipher Disk
It's tempting to think that spy gadgets aren't all that old, but even Caesar
encoded messages using cryptography. This disk dates back to the Civil War, when
it was used by the Confederate side -- CSA stands for Confederate States of
America. It's pretty obvious how the device works: rotate the inner wheel to
displace the letters. M = G, P = J, etc. Simple to crack, right? Not if the
message is written in a language you don't know. Spies were tricky like that.
Bulgarian Umbrella
A Bulgarian secret agent used an umbrella just like this one on a London street
to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978. A standard umbrella was
modified internally to inject poison into its target with the press of the
trigger. In Markov's case, the umbrella contained a ricin pellet, which is next
to impossible to trace. The museum displays a replica, made specially in Moscow
for the collection. Boghardt says that in 1991, a room full of similar deadly
umbrellas was uncovered in Bulgaria.
Pigeon Camera
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a spy satellite! Before the dawn of aerial
photography, pigeons did the job. Flying over enemy territory with a camera on
autoshoot, pigeons could provide crucial information without getting lost along
the way. Beyond photography, the birds also carried messages at times when radio
communication was spotty or down. Pigeons sent through enemy fire up until the
1950s had a 95 percent success rate and were duly decorated with medals of honor
for their service.
Tree Stump Bug
This tree stump bug used solar power to function continuously in a wooded area
near Moscow during the early 1970s. The bug intercepted communications signals
coming from a Soviet air base in the area and them beamed them to a satellite,
which then sent the signals to a site in the United States. Solar power meant
that no risky battery changes were needed. Nevertheless, the KGB discovered this
green bug so the museum's copy is a replica.
Lipstick Pistol
"It's a classic," Boghardt, the International Spy Museum's historian, says of
this 4.5 millimeter single-shot weapon, presumably taken from a KGB agent in the
mid-1960s. While it's unclear whether this dangerous "kiss of death" was ever
used, a cyanide pistol was used for assassination in that era. These covert
weapons are surviving examples of the "active measures" that were taken in this
time period, unlike many of their intended targets.
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