Early CIA Cold War Foreign Intelligence Operations in Lithuania, Part Two ©

L-R, Sirvys, Luksa, Tumpys

Biographical sketches of the first three CIA penetration agents:

Juozas Lukša, (true name), aliases: Juozas Adomaitis, Adam Mickiewicz, and Skrajunas, the underground name assigned in October 1947, when he was about to depart to the west.

Lukša was born on August 10, 1921, in Veiveriai, Lithuania. On March 4, 1941, while an engineering student at the University of Kaunas, he was pledged into the Lithuanian Activist Front, an underground, clandestine anti- Soviet resistance movement. On May 6, 1941, he was arrested by the NKVD, but on June 23, 1941, he was set free by Lithuanian partisans as the Soviets retreated before the German advance. He allegedly was involved in a war-time atrocity in Kaunas on June 27, 1941.

In May 1945, the Lithuanian Partisan Movement was organized to unite all partisan activities in and south of Kaunas. He became Chief of the Documents Section. He was ordered to proceed south of Kaunas to contact independent partisan groups and unite them with the Lithuanian Partisan Movement (LPS). He failed in this mission since it was discovered that MKVD agents had penetrated the LPS. In September 1945, the LPS was reorganized and went underground. 

From January 1946-April 1947, Luksa commanded a partisan group and acted as Chief of Press and Information. In April 1947, he was sent to Poland to establish contact with Lithuanian organizations outside the Iron Curtain. Upon his return, he was appointed Chief Intelligence Officer for the underground in his district. In December 1947, Luksa left Lithuania on a mission through Poland and eventually arrived in Sweden.

Luksa wrote a memoir under the pseudonym Juozas Daumantas, with the original Lithuanian title Partizanai už geležinės uždangos, translated as "Partisans behind the Iron Curtain." It was first published in 1950 in the USA. The book was republished with "Fighters for Freedom, Lithuanian Partisans versus the USSR." 

Luksa was in communication with the CIA by wireless transmission between November 16, 1950, and the last message on December 8, 1950, and secret writing letters between November 1, 1950, and the last one on January 14, 1951. In September 1951, Luksa was betrayed by another CIA penetration agent and killed in an ambush by Lithuanian security forces.

Benediktas Trumpys (Rytis)

Trumpys (Trumpis) was born October 1, 1919, in Radoiliskis, Lithuania. He graduated from Siauliai high school in 1938. Subsequently, he was employed as a bookkeeper, railroad worker, and painter (in Pommern, Germany, from 1944 until Gcrany's capitulation). Until 1946, Trumpis was held in the Lubeck DP Camp. Between 1946 and 1949, he served with the 4204 Labor Service Company. Upon leaving the Labor Service Company, he was to inform his friends that clearance for his immigration to the US had come through, and he was taking free time before reporting to Bremerhaven. 

He was killed by Lithuanian security forces on May 20, 1951, in a bunker in the Altoniškės forest of Zapyškis area

Klemensas Sirvys (Sakalas, “Frank”)

Sirvys was born on February 4,  1926, in Kybartai, Lithuania. Until 1944 he was a high school student in Lithuania. Between 1944 and 1946 he was held in Hanau and Gunzen-Hausen DP camps. From 1946 until his recruitment by OSO, Sirvys served in the 4204 Labor Service Company in Bamberg, Germany. 

He was captured on July 24, 1952, put on trial, and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment and five years of exile. He returned to Lithuania in 1970 and died in 2003 in Kybartai.