American tourists visiting the Soviet Union attracted a great deal of attention from KGB counterintelligence. When they ventured beyond Moscow, the Second Directorates of the regional KGBs mobilized all the resources they had at their disposal to keep track of them. This included the work of KGB undercover agents and trusted contacts who interacted with tourists and worked as informers. A typical professional cover for such an agent was that of a tourist guide.
A document recently digitized by the
Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania contains a revealing report
by a KGB agent who worked as a tourist guide in Vilnius and was deployed to
inform on two visiting American tourists.[1] The document includes both
the general tasks given to the agent and the specific activities that the agent
performed.
The codename of the Vilnius tourist guide KGB agent was ASTA. Her real identity remains unknown but she must have been an
important undercover agent because her handler, Lt. Colonel A. Pozemkauskas,
was the head of the Second Department of the Second Directorate
of the Lithuanian KGB. This was the main KGB department in charge of keeping an
eye on Western visitors in Lithuania. The report is dated November 13, 1984.
The place of the meeting is left blank, though it is likely that the meeting took place in one
of the safehouses owned by the Lithuanian KGB in Vilnius.
The document follows the regular structure
of any 1980s KGB report detailing the meeting between the agent and his or her
handler. It begins with the general summary of the agent’s tasks. In this case,
Pozemkauskas tasked ASTA to collect information concerning the reasons of the
tourists’ visit to Lithuania, their interests and status in the country of residence,
and any other valuable information for the ongoing and future KGB operations. Though
left unstated, this also included assessing their potential for being
recruited.
The general summary of tasks was followed
by another section called activities or action items. In this case, the action
items included sending the copy of the document to another KGB officer named Kushner
and to the First Department of the Lithuanian KGB, which was in charge of
foreign intelligence and ran the networks of Lithuanian KGB spies outside the
Soviet Union. As for the future tasks, typically spelled out in the next
section following the action items, nothing was added. Evidently, ASTA’s work as
an agent was assessed as satisfactory.
ASTA reported that two American tourists
whose last names were given as Signorelli and Dickenson visited Vilnius from
November 11 to November 13, 1984. She said that she accompanied them on a
day-long city tour on November 12. They told her that they lived in a city near
Los Angeles, California, and came to Vilnius to visit Signorelli’s relatives.
Signorelli’s grandfather and grandmother were Lithuanian. He was born in
Chicago in the Lithuanian immigrant community but did not speak the Lithuanian
language. According to ASTA, Signorelli had some limited Russian proficiency.
He met with his relatives in Vilnius and received a gift from them. ASTA meticulously
reported that the gift was a handmade coverlet and that Signorelli would be
required to provide the photograph of the gift to the Soviet Customs in order
to take it out of the country.
Dickenson said that he had no family in
Lithuania and was invited on this trip by his friend Signorelli. ASTA reported
that they were both employed as engineers by a space research company in
California. This is probably why they attracted so much interest from the KGB.
However, neither Signorelli nor Dickenson would reveal to her the name of the
company they worked for. Signorelli apparently tried to distract her by saying that
there were many such companies in California. ASTA noted that Signorelli was
more politically oriented in his questions. For instance, he asked why the
Vilnius Cathedral was closed and what language is used in the Lithuanian
educational system. According to ASTA, Dickenson was only interested in how
restaurants were functioning in a socialist system.
ASTA stated that she inquired about the
tourists’ political views. They told her that they voted in the 1984 U.S. presidential
elections before leaving for the Soviet Union. Dickenson admitted that he voted
for Ronald Reagan. Signorelli avoided answering ASTA’s question but claimed
that his choice was neither Ronald Reagan nor Walter Mondale. ASTA tried to
ascertain how Signorelli and Dickenson felt about the potential improvements in
the U.S-Soviet relations. She repeated the official Soviet line that it was
necessary for the U.S. side to accept the Soviet offer to sit down at the
negotiating table. Neither Signorelli nor Dickenson seemed to have been swayed
by her arguments. ASTA noted that Signorelli replied “with a sneer” that
positive relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were the stuff of the
1940s.
ASTA concluded her report by stating that
the Vilnius visit was just one out of several destinations that Signorelli and
Dickenson had visited in the Soviet Union. They also spent time in Tashkent,
Uzbekistan and in Moscow. No doubt the Second Directorates of the KGB in those two cities also positioned their agents on the Americans' path, but the records of their visits remain under the lock and key of the present-day Uzbek and Russian state security services. According to ASTA, Signorelli and Dickenson liked Vilnius more than Moscow
because the people in Vilnius were more “polite” and the buildings more
pleasant and less austere. This no doubt flattered Lithuanian pride and made ASTA’s KGB handler, Lt. Col Pozemkauskas, very happy.
But that was all the Lithuanian KGB counterintelligence
got from the two visiting Americans. They provided no valuable information
whatsoever and ASTA’s attempts at “ideological persuasion” led nowhere. Signorelli
and Dickenson left Vilnius with their belief systems intact. And with a
handmade Lithuanian coverlet for Signorelli’s California home.
[1] “LSSR KGB agento ‘Asta’ pranešimas [The
Report of LSSR KGB Agent ASTA],” Lithuanian Special Archives (LYA), Fond
K-35, ap. 2, b. 302, l. 65-67, http://www.kgbveikla.lt/docs/show/2405/from:538.
