being trampled by new technology, and he turned to Lipset as his star witness. Lipset accepted the invitation to testify before the committee, hoping to make the case that the new technology was not scary at all. What Lipset didn’t understand was that his dramatic testimony would have just the opposite effect, showing a startled public just how far bugging technology had come.
Shortly after 10 A.M. on February 18, 1965, Long convened a hearing in the Senate office now known as the Russell Building. Long’s chief counsel had let Lipset into the hearing room early to make a few preparations. Lipset began by introducing himself to the Senate committee, mentioning that he’d served as a captain in the army’s Criminal Investigative Division during World War II and had been awarded the Bronze Star. He held up a series of items from the table in front of him, each of which he said wasin common use by private detectives: a microphone hidden in a package of cigarettes, a wristwatch microphone, and a tie clasp microphone.
Then he held up a martini glass. “It is missing a special ingredient, an olive the senator is holding there,” he said, gesturing toward the chairman. “That is a transmitter unit and the toothpick is the antenna. That is a complete transmitter and will work when covered over with liquid that fills the glass.”
The senators were fascinated. Though more than a few of them were familiar with martinis, they’d never seen an olive like this one.
“How far will it transmit?” asked Long.
“That should be good for a block,” Lipset responded. 11
And, by the way, Lipset told the committee members, he’d bugged their conversations during the hearing. The mike was hidden in a vase of flowers he’d placed on the rostrum where the senators sat.
“When you made your opening remarks we caused that to be recorded by using the transmitter concealed in the rose flowers in front of you,” Lipset said. “And we will play back a little bit of your opening remarks right now.”
Feigning surprise, Long said, “Be sure it is just the remarks I read for the record.”
The implications were tremendous. Thanks to the miracles of science—a mixed blessing—private investigators and corporate snoops could now listen in on a conversation without being in the room, and without needing to run a physical wire onto the premises. Voices could be taped from as far as a block away. Almost any conversation anywhere was recordable.
People in the media, too, were fascinated. The new technology caused a stir. “To think that the martini, to which the harried man turns for solace and comfort, should now turn on him ,” wrote Art Hoppe, the reigning humorist at the San Francisco Chronicle . “A splendid development,” proclaimed the columnist Russell Baker ofthe New York Times . “With his olive, an agent can pick up disloyal comments during the cocktail hour.” 12
Lipset became one inspiration for the character Harry Caul, the paranoid bugger played by Gene Hackman in the 1974 movie The Conversation . * And although Lipset didn’t want Americans to become even more frightened of bugging technology, he couldn’t help seizing an opportunity to make a buck: he accepted the director Francis Ford Coppola’s offer to serve as a consultant on the movie.
I T WAS THANKS to the U.S. government that Lipset had become a spy in the first place. In a pattern that’s still being repeated today, Lipset got his training from the U.S. Army before going into the private sector. During World War II, he was responsible for rooting out criminal behavior by American soldiers on the battlefield and in U.S.-occupied areas of Europe. He told tales of chasing down soldiers who’d killed civilians, looted villages, and committed other crimes. In one case, he investigated a brutal crime in which a twenty-year-old woman leaped from a second-story window to escape from two American soldiers who tried to rape her. The men shot and killed
Shortly after 10 A.M. on February 18, 1965, Long convened a hearing in the Senate office now known as the Russell Building. Long’s chief counsel had let Lipset into the hearing room early to make a few preparations. Lipset began by introducing himself to the Senate committee, mentioning that he’d served as a captain in the army’s Criminal Investigative Division during World War II and had been awarded the Bronze Star. He held up a series of items from the table in front of him, each of which he said wasin common use by private detectives: a microphone hidden in a package of cigarettes, a wristwatch microphone, and a tie clasp microphone.
Then he held up a martini glass. “It is missing a special ingredient, an olive the senator is holding there,” he said, gesturing toward the chairman. “That is a transmitter unit and the toothpick is the antenna. That is a complete transmitter and will work when covered over with liquid that fills the glass.”
The senators were fascinated. Though more than a few of them were familiar with martinis, they’d never seen an olive like this one.
“How far will it transmit?” asked Long.
“That should be good for a block,” Lipset responded. 11
And, by the way, Lipset told the committee members, he’d bugged their conversations during the hearing. The mike was hidden in a vase of flowers he’d placed on the rostrum where the senators sat.
“When you made your opening remarks we caused that to be recorded by using the transmitter concealed in the rose flowers in front of you,” Lipset said. “And we will play back a little bit of your opening remarks right now.”
Feigning surprise, Long said, “Be sure it is just the remarks I read for the record.”
The implications were tremendous. Thanks to the miracles of science—a mixed blessing—private investigators and corporate snoops could now listen in on a conversation without being in the room, and without needing to run a physical wire onto the premises. Voices could be taped from as far as a block away. Almost any conversation anywhere was recordable.
People in the media, too, were fascinated. The new technology caused a stir. “To think that the martini, to which the harried man turns for solace and comfort, should now turn on him ,” wrote Art Hoppe, the reigning humorist at the San Francisco Chronicle . “A splendid development,” proclaimed the columnist Russell Baker ofthe New York Times . “With his olive, an agent can pick up disloyal comments during the cocktail hour.” 12
Lipset became one inspiration for the character Harry Caul, the paranoid bugger played by Gene Hackman in the 1974 movie The Conversation . * And although Lipset didn’t want Americans to become even more frightened of bugging technology, he couldn’t help seizing an opportunity to make a buck: he accepted the director Francis Ford Coppola’s offer to serve as a consultant on the movie.
I T WAS THANKS to the U.S. government that Lipset had become a spy in the first place. In a pattern that’s still being repeated today, Lipset got his training from the U.S. Army before going into the private sector. During World War II, he was responsible for rooting out criminal behavior by American soldiers on the battlefield and in U.S.-occupied areas of Europe. He told tales of chasing down soldiers who’d killed civilians, looted villages, and committed other crimes. In one case, he investigated a brutal crime in which a twenty-year-old woman leaped from a second-story window to escape from two American soldiers who tried to rape her. The men shot and killed
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