Espionage: The Little Ears

In Oceania two-way "telescreens" monitored every citizen's movements, reminded him every minute of every day: BIG BROTHER is WATCHING YOU. Oceania was the fictional country in George Orwell's 1984, but in real life 1961, the same eerie consciousness of being under intimate, round-the-clock surveillance weighs heavily on every U.S. official who lives and works in a Communist state. Electronic eavesdropping has become so insidious and ubiquitous an art behind the Iron Curtain that there is hardly a single spot where a Western diplomat—or even a vacationer—can talk with utter certainty that Big Brother is not listening. Says one old...