In 2006, the effect of an exploding bomb was made by Arkady Mamontov’s documentary “Spies” shown on the Russia channel. It stated that the British at one time installed a transmitter in one of the Moscow squares, disguised as a regular stone. We checked whether it really was.

The scandal flared up just a few days after the Russian Federation was tightened Non -Profit Organization Law. Many were then surprised by the sharp twisting of the nuts, but in the evening of January 22, a lot began to clear up. In the program of Arkady Mamontov from the Cycle "Special correspondent" an object was demonstrated, which looked like a regular stone. At the same time, according to the assurances of the creators of the film, it was crammed with advanced electronics of the level of space technology and the cost of tens of millions of pounds.

As told in film, it all started with the fact that in the fall of 2005 Christopher Pierce, the Secretary of the British Embassy in Moscow, placed this stone in one of the Moscow squares. The first, natural version of the operatives was that we are talking about an ordinary cache for the exchange of objects. However, then it turned out that the transmitting device mounted in stone can read the data at a distance and transmit it to the portable computer. That is, in order to transmit or receive information, agents and informants did not need to meet with each other, or even approach the stone. It was enough just to go near the subject at a normal pace.

Immediately after the release of the film, the FSB of Russia said that Moscow was suppressed by four representatives of British intelligence who worked under the diplomatic cover of employees of the British Embassy. The reaction of the British Foreign Ministry was "concern and surprise." And then the country's prime minister Tony Blair said that he learned about the scandal through television, and added: “I'm afraid that you will get only a hackneyed one from me,” we will never comment on the issues related to security. ”

Of course, the whole epic with a “spy stone” caused an ironic reaction of the liberal part of Russian society - up to the point that some carried “suspicious” bricks, stones and a man of snow on Lubyanka. It was not to laugh only to the representatives of the NGOs who fell under a hot hand. Thus, the chairman of the Moscow Helsinki group Lyudmila Alekseeva then said: “This is one of the links of the campaign of evil and shameless slander for human rights defenders, which journalists have now launched the first and second channel. This, definitely, the order of very gloomy forces in our country, aimed at ensuring that the most active human rights organizations could be covered by this law. ” The fact is that the Moscow Helsinki group appeared in the Mamontov film as an object of financing by the British structures stained themselves.

Gradually, the resonance from history came to naught, and far from everyone came the news, which appeared six years later, in January 2012. In the documentary BBC Putin, Russia and the West, the ex-head of the office of Tony Blair Jonathan Powell admittedthat the story of the Spy Stone in Moscow was real. Powell said that the British special services were embarrassed. “They caught us. Obviously, they knew about this for some time and simply kept until a politically profitable moment, ”the Briton said. The news, of course, did not surprise the employees of the special services, but the fact of voluntary recognition caused bewilderment of professionals. “I can’t understand why this happened, because, as far as I know, there was no pressure on the authorities so that they recognize involvement in the stone,” - declared Then the intelligence historian, who escaped to the West, the KGB officer Alexander Vasiliev in an interview with the Voice of America.

Well, it became a worthy end of history Lot, exhibited at the Ebay Internet auction in September 2013. A lot with an initial cost of $ 3 million consisted of Spy Stone, similar to Moscow, hundreds of pages of instructions for the manufacture and commissioning of stone, as well as a disk with the data of a two -year developer’s correspondence - engineer Gregory - with Lockheed Martin. The engineer claimed that its development rejected by the company later became a prototype for the Moscow Miracle of Technology.

Thus, the story of the Spy Stone, despite the plot in the spirit of Hollywood films, turned out to be true.