Jack Glass saw plenty of action during World War II and plenty more afterward...
His services also were rendered during the Cold War, searching U.S. embassies around the world for the hidden microphones and other surveillance equipment frequently planted by Soviet spies.His specialty was "audio countermeasures," meaning he was responsible for finding hidden listening devices, or "bugs," planted by other governments in U.S. embassies, consulates and other diplomatic buildings overseas.
From 1962 to 1974, Glass was stationed at U.S. embassies in the Middle East, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and South America, serving two to three years at each location. His wife and daughters, Nancy and Jacki, traveled with him, with the children attending schools set up for diplomatic families.
From central headquarters, Glass and other security engineers would travel to U.S. diplomatic posts in surrounding countries.
"We got around pretty good," Glass said, noting that from Beirut, Lebanon, they would travel throughout the Middle East and the entire continent of Africa.
From Budapest, Hungary, they would span Eastern Europe, including Moscow and other cities in the Soviet Union. South America was covered from Buenos Aires, Argentina, while Frankfurt, Germany, was the base of operations for Western Europe.
Eastern Bloc nations, Glass said, were by far the most active.
"We found hidden microphones in all our embassies in Eastern Europe," he said, including Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Bucharest, Romania; Sofia, Bulgaria; Budapest, Hungary; Moscow and other Eastern European capitals.
"We tried to keep the embassies from being bugged," Glass said. "Sometimes we were successful, sometimes not. Whatever we could do, the Soviets could do as good or better, which they did, especially in Moscow."
Glass said hidden devices were usually found through "pick and shovel work" — physically taking apart telephones, office equipment and furniture, and even digging inside the walls, which could be up to 3 feet thick.
Glass once found a wireless transmitter inside a hollowed out piece of firewood in an ambassador's office.
A team of Navy Seabees also was assigned to assist the audio teams, since "anything we tore up we had to rebuild," Glass said. "They also helped us demolish certain things."
The searches were not a matter of paranoia — more than 130 microphones were discovered in the former U.S. embassy in Moscow, Glass said.
"It was renovated by the Russians and every office in the building was bugged," he said. "Some had been there so long the microphones didn't work."
Construction on a new embassy began in 1979 but was suspended several years later.
According to congressional documents, U.S. personnel discovered in 1984 that an unsecured shipment of typewriters for the Moscow Embassy had been bugged and had been transmitting intelligence data for years.
"In August 1985," the U.S. State Department said, "work was suspended on the partially completed (building) due to a security compromise of such consequence that there was serious doubt that the building, if completed, could be used for the purpose intended." (more)
