Liverpool-born Alexander Foote became a Soviet spy in Switzerland, transmitting German intelligence before facing betrayal and disillusionment.

In his short life, Liverpool-born Alexander Foote went from being a volunteer in the International Brigade in Spain to becoming an agent of Soviet military intelligence in Switzerland. Pretending to his friends that he was a dim-witted Englishman with private means, Foote became the key telegraphist of the so-called ‘Red Three’ network of radio stations, communicating top secret German intelligence to the USSR from under the noses of the Swiss authorities. The information from Foote’s Morse key originated from sources in Germany and came to Foote via the enigmatic figure of Rudolph Rossler, known as Agent Lucy. Where he obtained the information from is a mystery that has never been solved. During the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet generals came to depend on the information from Foote’s transmitter and those of his comrades.

On his release from a ten-month remand in a Swiss gaol on an espionage charge, Foote absconded to Paris in 1944 before being invited for debriefing in Moscow. When he arrived, he became aware that he was under suspicion of being a British spy and it took all his wit to talk his comrades in Soviet intelligence out of sending him to the gulag: a fate that waited for many of the others in his Swiss network.

Disillusioned with life in the USSR, Foote approached British intelligence while he was on a Soviet mission in Berlin. He made them an offer: if they got him back to Britain he would tell them all he knew about Soviet intelligence, from the inside.

This is his story.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Note on the Images
• Foreword: Trust nobody. Doubt everything. Everybody is lying.
• Chapter One Early life and personal qualities
  • A knock on the door in the middle of the night
  • The boy born in Kirkdale, Liverpool
  • The character of Alexander Foote
  • The politics of Alexander Foote
• Chapter Two Spain
  • Spain and the International Brigade
• Chapter Three London
  • Recruitment to Soviet intelligence
  • The Agnes Zimmerman affair
• Chapter Four Germany
  • Agent Sonya: Superspy
  • The Franz Obermanns affair
  • The arrival of Len Beurton
• Chapter Five Switzerland
  • Sándor Radó (Codename Dora): Resident Director, Geneva
  • Structure of the Rote Drei
  • Codename Lucy
• Chapter Six Lausanne
  • Radio Station Foote, Apartment 45, Chemin de Longeraie 2, Lausanne
  • Foote’s network in Lausanne
  • Political pressure on the Swiss
  • Foote and the financing of the Rote Drei
  • The Rachel Dübendorfer affair
  • Lorenz and Laura
  • Foote’s attempted abduction by the Abwehr
  • Foote and the rounding up of the Radó network
• Chapter Seven Paris
  • Arrival: 7 November 1944
• Chapter Eight Moscow
  • Arrival: 16 January 1945
  • Interrogation One: Moscow
• Chapter Nine Berlin
  • Alone in Berlin: 7 March 1947
• Chapter Ten Hanover – The MI5 files
  • Interrogation One: Saturday morning, 19 July 1947
  • Interrogation Two: Saturday afternoon, 19 July 1947
  • Interrogation Three: Sunday morning, 20 July 1947
  • Interrogation Four: Sunday afternoon, 20 July 1947
  • Interrogation Five: Monday morning, 21 July 1947
• Chapter Eleven London
  • Arrival: 7 August 1947
  • British attitudes to Foote
  • Foote’s prospects
  • Handbook For Spies
  • Responses to Handbook for Spies
  • The reception of Handbook for Spies in Switzerland
• Chapter Twelve Controversies
  • Foote, Agent Sonya and Roger Hollis
  • The background of Roger Hollis
  • Was Foote a double agent for the British?
  • A double agent theory of my own
• Chapter Thirteen Decline and Fall
• Epilogue: And in the end, a personal view
• Bibliography
• Endnotes
• Plates