The location of the new Soviet embassy was offered to the Soviets at a time when electronic surveillance techniques and the potential for their further development were not fully understood in the West. The Soviet acquisition of Mt. Alto embassy site was not the result of a Soviet conspiracy, but rather it was the consequence of a bad judgment on the part of the United States.
Soon after construction started, concerns were expressed that if the Soviets occupied the new Embassy site, their electronic equipment would be capable of intercepting all communications dealing with national security flowing in and out of Washington, unless encrypted, as well as ordinary business and personal conversations. Soviet The embassy could have been used as a platform to conduct highly sophisticated electronic surveillance of the US government, to facilitate Soviet espionage, and the purchase and theft of US high technology.
Subsequently it was decided to prevent the Soviet Union from occupying new embassy buildings on Mount Alto until the US had acquired a new embassy location in Moscow of substantially equal character. The issue of embassy locations is very complicated, and became even more convoluted after the US discovered Soviet bugging devices in the structure of the new American embassy. The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) both objected to allowing the Soviet Union [and Russia] to use the embassy at Mt. Alto.
