Special Section: Babblers and Bugs

My secret trip to Moscow in 1972 marked my introduction to the use of the “babbler.” This was a cassette tape I had brought with me, which played a bizarre recording of what seemed like several dozen voices talking gibberish simultaneously. If I wanted to confer with my colleagues without being overheard by listening devices, we would gather around the babbler, speaking softly among ourselves. Theoretically anyone listening in would be unable to distinguish the real conversation from the cacophony of recorded voices. Whether it worked or not we could never be sure. The only certainty was that anyone trying to talk through the mind-numbing babble for any length of time would lose his own sanity. Thus we used it sparingly. Usually we spoke elliptically or wrote notes to one another. A colleague and I sometimes took a walk in the garden, even there whispering to each other because Willy Brandt’s security people had warned us that the trees contained listening devices. Our respect for the KGB was such that our secretaries used manual typewriters brought from home lest the “telemetry” of electric machines be read by our solicitous hosts.