On Oct. 31, 2014, Dennis got a call from Buck: “You speak Russian and you traveled several times to the Soviet Union. I was wondering if you were ever contacted by the FBI or the CIA or debriefed?”
Dennis: “I should have been. The first time I went, it was Israel that sent me because of my knowledge of Hebrew and Russian. They debriefed me because I had met with so many Jewish dissidents.”
“I went back again about ten years later. I had a very scary episode at the border leaving the Soviet Union going to Romania at midnight. I experienced terror. It was the only time in my life I experienced terror. I was sick for months. It did something to my immune system. It was a terrible hour. I was smuggling out Soviet dissident literature. It was in Russian so if it would have been caught, they would have understood it. I hid it in the battery drive of my Nikon camera. They saw the camera. They were fascinated. I was shmoozing with them in Russian, thinking that the more I shmoozed, the less suspicious I would seem. They shmoozed back but then said, ‘We’d like to see your camera.’ When they took the camera, I believed I was doomed. And I had very good reason to believe it. I could easily have been beaten up or beaten to death and the Soviets could have said anything. America was not going to war with the Soviet Union over a 30-year old American. I was certain I would be caught. That’s the stuff they hate the most — anti-Soviet work. They don’t like if you smuggle in dollars, that’s a monetary crime. But a propaganda one, that’s the worst. I remember thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re not going to find it.’ That’s the only thing they took.
“They took it away. They didn’t go through it in front of me. They had it for about an hour… It’s pitch black. Completely silent.”
“As it turns out, they never opened up the battery pack. They just wanted to see a brand new camera.”
“What did I do during that hour? I packed a little case thinking I might be sent away. A toothbrush and soap.”
“I remember thinking, there’s no way I am not doomed. I could not think of a scenario [where I turn out OK]… I panic intelligently. I don’t lose my brain. Where you were going to run on the Soviet – Romanian border. They’d shoot you.”
