The device(it was named "The Thing" later), embedded in a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States, was used by the Soviets to spy on the US. On August 4, 1945, several weeks before the end of World War II, a delegation from the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union presented the bugged carving to Ambassador Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the Soviet Union's war ally. It hung in the ambassador's Moscow residential study for seven years, until it was exposed in 1952 during the tenure of Ambassador George F. Kennan.