Background
Alexander Foote was born on April 13, 1905 in Lancashire, United Kingdom.
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Alexander Foote was born on April 13, 1905 in Lancashire, United Kingdom.
The boy left home at the age of 14 with little education and a broad North Country accent.
He spent the next 15 years in Manchester as a corn merchant. Eventually taking over from the manager, Foote kept the business alive during the worst years of the great depression. But in 1935 he found himself looking for another job. Just turned 30, he was a big man, six feet two, well-built, handsome, and quick-witted. Hoping for adventure as well as security he joined the RAF on 21 July 1935. After training as an airframe fitter and reaching the rank of aircraftsman first class he was recruited by Lt Col Claude Dansey’s Z Organization. His training as a double agent for insertion into the Red Army’s intelligence service (GRU) began in the Spanish civil war. The resourceful York- shireman became a sort of aide, factotum, and scrounger for Fred Copeman, British battalion commander in the 15th International Bde. After two years in Spain and having exceeded Dansey’s expectations he was invalided home in Sep 1938 after being operated on for a face wound.
Foote was sent in late 1938 to infiltrate the Soviet espionage net in Switzerland. Attaining the rank of major in the Red Army he became a mainstay of the Lucy ring and one Dansey’s channels for feeding Ultra data to Moscow Center. In June 42 Foote craftily avoided a kidnapping attempt in which Klaus Barbie figured.
Swiss police closed on the Lucy ring and arrested Foote on 20 Nov 1943 while he was receiving a long message from Moscow Center. He blithely told interrogators his radio set was “a cure for insomnia” and refused to admit spying or to reveal Lucy’s sources. It is one thing to catch a spy and quite another thing to convict him in court, and the host nation had embarrassing secrets to protect. Anxious to rid themselves of the problem, and getting nothing of value from Foote, the Swiss agreed to release him if only he would confess to espionage; he did not even have to mention the USSR. So Foote signed a confession that he had been an agent “for one of the United Nations." Writing himself a check on his frozen bank account for 2,000 francs ($465 at the official rate) he was released on 8 Sep 1944 after 10 months in prison.
With the Franco-Swiss border now open and Paris liberated, Foote reported to Moscow Center through the recently reopened Russian embassy. With an eye to the future he said that enough of the Lucy net was intact for it to resume operations. But Rado. who had been smuggled out of Switzerland with his wife, informed Moscow (from the Paris embassy) that his ring was so badly compromised that the Soviets should wait at least two years before trying to pick up the pieces. The two illegals were summoned to Moscow for an explanation of their contradictory reports. (Lcne Rado, also in bad health, was excused.) The men flew out of Paris on 6 Jan 1945 via Cairo, where Rado lost his nerve and bolted. The British complied with Moscow's request to find him, and the little Hungarian spent 10 years in the Lubyanka. (He was rehabilitated by the Hungarian CP and showered with academic honors.)
Debriefed and given a clean bill of health. Foote had regular contact with senior GRU officers and was given training in their latest techniques. He was told to learn Russian in preparation for heading a net targeted against the US. But these and other plans did not work out. so the spy came in from the cold, expecting to have a great future with British intelligence. Crossing into the British sector in Berlin, he surrendered on 2 Aug 1947 to the first RAF police patrol he saw. If Claude “Col Z” Dansey had not died only 10 weeks earlier, the reception might have been different. But he was met with great suspicion, a common fate of double agents. The Swiss meanwhile opened their second trial of Lucy ring on 30 Oct 1947 with most members in absentia. Among the latter. Foote received a sentence of 30 months in prison, a fine of 8,000 francs, and confiscation of his radio set and the rest of the money he had in Switzerland.
Foote had high hopes for his memoirs, Handbook for Spies, but it did not make the money he hoped for. “They mutilated my book," he told the American historian David Dallin in 1953, saying M15 censors cut out the best parts and, without permission, inserted fabrications. It was the time of British security scandals. There is no proof that Foote was involved with Burgess, Maclean, and Kim Philby (of the Cambridge five), but it is likely that “MI5 had somelhing on him, something that put him forever in their power”.
Foote became a clerk in the Ministry of Agricultural and Fisheries, where MI5 could keep in touch. Years of adventure had given him a duodenal ulcer, which required an operation at the end of 1945 in Moscow. The trouble exacerbated by heavy drinking, Foote underw-enl surgery in 1956. The operation was not a success. “This is no damn good,” the big York- shireman said when his only available next of kin, two sisters, were called to the hospital room. A few hours later, early on 1 Aug 1956, the patient calmly lore off his surgical dressings and died. He was 51.
Quotes from others about the person
Journalist, broadcaster and author Malcolm Muggeridge, himself a wartime MI6 officer, "got to know Foote after the war" (pp 207–08) when Foote paid Muggeridge "regular visits" at his flat near Regent's Park, London. Foote at this time was working as a clerk in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, work he found, according to Muggeridge, "very tedious". Muggeridge is firmly of the opinion that the information Foote sent "could only, in fact, have come from Bletchley".
