Career
Feklisov worked out of the Soviet consulate office in New York City from 1940 to 1946. His supervisor was Senior People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs Case officer Anatoli Yatskov (alias Yakovlev). Participant of Feklisov"s duties included recruiting espionage agent prospects from those sympathetic to the Communist Party of the United States and its auxiliary secret apparatus.
Rosenberg was among these recruits.
In the period from 1943 to 1946, Feklisov reported at least 50 meetings with Rosenberg. He stated that Rosenberg provided important top secret information about electronics and helped organize an industrial espionage ring for Moscow, but "didn"t understand anything about the atom bomb." Feklisov stated that Ethel Rosenberg, as a "probationer", did not meet directly with her Soviet agent handler.
In August 1946, Feklisov returned to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. By the late 1940s, he was transferred to the London Rezidentura. Feklisov was transferred back to the United States and became the Washington, District of Columbia Rezident, or Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) Station Chief, from 1960 to 1964.
His cover name at that time was Aleksandr Fomin.
As PGU Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) Rezident, Feklisov (Fomin) proposed what became the basis for resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis: removing missiles from Cuba in exchange for a promise that the United States would not invade the island nation. Alexander Feklisov died on October 26, 2007 in Russia at the age of 93. Feklisov was portrayed by Harris Yulin in the 1974 film The Missiles of October, and by Boris Lee Krutonog in the 2000 film Thirteen Days.