The Man Behind The Rosenbergs

Alexander Feklisov

ISBN 10: 1929631243 / ISBN 13: 9781929631247

Published by Enigma Books, 2004

About this Item

The Cold War produced many celebrated spies, several spectacular traitors and an almost limitless supply of men in raincoats standing beside park benches for reasons they were unwilling to explain. Alexander Feklisov was one of the people who knew what was actually going on?and, rather inconveniently for everyone concerned, eventually decided to write about it. In The Man Behind the Rosenbergs , Feklisov recounts his career as a Soviet intelligence officer in the United States, where he served as the KGB case officer connected with Julius Rosenberg and other members of the Soviet espionage network. Rosenberg, an American electrical engineer and committed communist, helped obtain military and industrial information for the Soviet Union, becoming part of a story that would culminate in one of the most controversial espionage trials of the twentieth century. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed in 1953, leaving behind decades of argument over guilt, evidence, punishment and exactly how much each participant had known. Feklisov offers the perspective of someone operating from the other side of the supposedly impenetrable Iron Curtain. He describes clandestine meetings, coded messages, secret documents and the delicate business of recruiting people who believed they were assisting history rather than merely supplying confidential material to a foreign intelligence service. The account places Julius Rosenberg within a wider network of ideological sympathisers and professional agents, revealing espionage as an occupation combining international danger with an extraordinary amount of administration. The book also explores Feklisov?s dealings with other important Soviet sources, including atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, whose transfer of nuclear information helped Moscow understand what the Americans had constructed at enormous expense behind barbed wire in New Mexico. For the Soviet Union, this was intelligence work of historic value. For the United States, it was the unsettling discovery that even the world?s most secret weapons programme apparently had the informational security of a parish newsletter. Yet this is not simply another retelling of the Rosenberg case. Feklisov went on to play a fascinating role during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when nuclear war came sufficiently close for everyone involved to discover an urgent enthusiasm for informal communication. Serving in Washington under the name Alexander Fomin, he became part of the unofficial channel through which possible terms for ending the confrontation were explored. Humanity survived, although it remains slightly alarming to learn how much depended upon hurried conversations, personal judgement and officials communicating outside the usual machinery of government. Written from Feklisov?s own recollections and inevitably reflecting his loyalties, interpretations and desire to correct the historical record, this memoir provides a rare first-hand view of Soviet intelligence operations in America. Readers are invited to consider the gap between popular espionage?with its ingenious gadgets, glamorous agents and expensive motorcars?and the real thing, which seems largely to have involved nervous meetings, ideological disputes and trying not to be noticed while carrying documents one was emphatically not supposed to possess. This is compelling reading for students of the Rosenberg affair, Soviet espionage, atomic intelligence and Cold War history. It will also appeal to anyone who enjoys true stories in which nearly every character has an alias, every innocent-looking envelope contains something disastrous and the most important person in the room is often the one pretending not to know anybody. This Enigma Books edition is in Good condition. A substantial memoir from the Soviet intelligence officer behind one of America?s most notorious espionage cases?and a useful reminder that when governments assure the public everything is.

Seller Inventory # 7274

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Man Behind The Rosenbergs
• Publisher: Enigma Books
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1929631243
• ISBN 13: 9781929631247
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

• A first-hand account by one of the key players in the Cold War •Provides definitive answers about the Rosenberg case •Reveals sensitive information about the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union ‘Revelatory and sensational!' – New York Times ‘Feklisov's memoir adds signicant new details to the seemingly interminable argument about the espionage activities of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg' – New Republic In 1953, sequestered in New York’s infamous Sing Sing prison, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg became the only American civilians to be executed for spying during the Cold War. Theirs had become a universal cause célèbre, with the sentencing judge, Irving Kaufman, declaring in his summing up:‘. . . who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.’ Alexander Feklisov was the Rosenbergs’handler. A KGB officer from 1939 until 1974, he continued to work for Soviet Intelligence until 1986, and here is his extraordinary memoir. (That the SVR, the current Russian Intelligence agency, was opposed to its publicataion is eloquent testimony to the book's importance.) In 1943, Feklisov began to cultivate and run his own spies. While he was, at one point, managing thirteen agents, none of them surpassed Julius Rosenberg in significance. One story tells of how Rosenberg presented Feklisov with a proximity fuse– a device that exploded automatically when in the vicinity of an aeroplane – in a gift-wrapped box. Feklisov claims the same kind of fuse enabled the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers’s spy plane in 1962. Here, in a fascinating collage of anecdotes and revelations, Feklisov recounts his experiences of spy-handling in New York and, later, England, where he became the contact for another celebrated agent, the nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs. The last section of the book deals with his identity as‘Alexander Fomin’, the KGB Resident in Washington, DC, who acted as intermediary between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev, thus helping to resolve the Cuban missile crisis.

About the Author

Alexander Feklisov, now retired, was a highly successful KGB officer in charge of foreign espionage, specializing in English-speaking countries. He lives in Russia.