04/11: The Rosenberg's KGB Handler Dies at 93
Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: an okie gardener
An AP story from the New York Daily News.
MOSCOW - Alexander Feklisov, the Soviet-era spy chief who oversaw the espionage work of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and helped mediate the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, has died, a Russian official said Friday. He was 93.
Feklisov died Oct. 26, said Sergei Ivanov, a spokesman for the Foreign Intelligence Service, one of the successor agencies to the KGB. He gave no cause of death.
. . .
Years later, he published an autobiography, "The Man Behind the Rosenbergs," in which he described his work guiding the intelligence-gathering work of the couple. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 after being convicted of supplying the Soviet Union with top-secret information on U.S. efforts to develop the atomic bomb.
Feklisov said Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet sympathizer who handed over secrets on military electronics, but not the atomic bomb. He said Ethel Rosenberg played no part in spying - claims that were consistent with declassified U.S. intercepts of Soviet spy communications.
He was later dispatched to London, where he made contact with Klaus Fuchs, the German-born scientist who worked at the U.S. atom bomb project as well as at Britain's Harwell nuclear research laboratory. Information passed to the Soviets by Fuchs and another spy, David Greenglass, gave the Soviets crucial new information on a new way to ignite an atomic bomb.
In 1950, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years for disclosing nuclear secrets. Full Story.
Contrary to the Liberal Orthodoxy of the 70s-90s, there were rational grounds for the Red Scare of the 1950s. The Soviets were active in spying and other activities in the U.S. McCarthy was still a power-hungry demogogue, but there was a bear on the prowl.
MOSCOW - Alexander Feklisov, the Soviet-era spy chief who oversaw the espionage work of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and helped mediate the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, has died, a Russian official said Friday. He was 93.
Feklisov died Oct. 26, said Sergei Ivanov, a spokesman for the Foreign Intelligence Service, one of the successor agencies to the KGB. He gave no cause of death.
. . .
Years later, he published an autobiography, "The Man Behind the Rosenbergs," in which he described his work guiding the intelligence-gathering work of the couple. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 after being convicted of supplying the Soviet Union with top-secret information on U.S. efforts to develop the atomic bomb.
Feklisov said Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet sympathizer who handed over secrets on military electronics, but not the atomic bomb. He said Ethel Rosenberg played no part in spying - claims that were consistent with declassified U.S. intercepts of Soviet spy communications.
He was later dispatched to London, where he made contact with Klaus Fuchs, the German-born scientist who worked at the U.S. atom bomb project as well as at Britain's Harwell nuclear research laboratory. Information passed to the Soviets by Fuchs and another spy, David Greenglass, gave the Soviets crucial new information on a new way to ignite an atomic bomb.
In 1950, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years for disclosing nuclear secrets. Full Story.
Contrary to the Liberal Orthodoxy of the 70s-90s, there were rational grounds for the Red Scare of the 1950s. The Soviets were active in spying and other activities in the U.S. McCarthy was still a power-hungry demogogue, but there was a bear on the prowl.
