SECRET
No Foreign Dissem
The head of a famous Soviet wartime spy net now collects geographic intelligence in Budapest.
ALEXANDER RADO
Louis Thomas1
Part I
Highlights of a Remarkable Career
Alexander (Sandor) Rado, Alexander Foote's chief in the Swiss-based "Rote Drei" net that in 1941-43 supplied Moscow with detailed information on German order of battle, now plays a leading role in Soviet Bloc mapping programs and has shown exceptional zeal in collecting geographic intelligence on the West. His activity in intelligence, mapping, and related fields has lasted nearly 50 years and may earn him a place in the pantheon of major intelligence figures of the times.2
Rado was born in Ujpest, Hungary, in 1899 of wealthy Jewish parents. While a student, reportedly a brilliant one, at the Budapest gymnasium he joined a socialist group whose members included Matyas Rakosi and Erno Gero. He became one of the first members of the Hungarian Communist Party when it was formed in November 1918. He took an active part in the Bela Kun uprising, 1918-1919, serving as political commissar in Ferenc Munnich's division. Forced to leave Hungary when the short-lived Communist government was ousted in 1919, he went to Austria and later to Germany.
Geographer in Germany
In the fall of 1919 Rado started academic work at the University of Jena, changing his field of study from law to geography and cartography. Continuing his Communist activities, he was in touch with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, founders of the German Communist movement. Through the influence of German and Hungarian friends he was brought to Moscow at the end of 1919 to work in the Secretariat of the Comintern. He performed well and enjoyed the sponsorship of several leaders, among them Comintern president Zinoviev. At age 20 or 21 he was made director of a Soviet intelligence and )ropaganda office located at Haparanda, Sweden, on the Finnish fronier, and subsequently b2 held a similar position in Vienna. In late 1922 or in 1923 he resumed his studies at the University of Jena, vhere he continued until 1925.
While in Moscow in 1919 Rado had met Helene Jansen, an avid German Communist then working as second or third secretary to Lenin. He himself had at least one talk with Lenin.) In 1923 or 1924 he married her in Moscow and she joined him in Germany while he completed his studies. Thereafter she participated extensively in his intelligence activities. The Soviets regarded them as Soviet citizens,although Rado, holding a valid Hungarian passport, could also claim Hungarian citizenship. He seems to have received financial support from the USSR continuously from 1919 on.
In 1925, upon completing his studies at Jena, Rado was trained n the USSR for service with Soviet military intelligence and then settled in Berlin. He was assigned to a Soviet intelligence network concerned mainly with German politics and industrial development. To establish his cover he worked for the German publishing firm Meyer's Lexicon, and later he was employed as a cartographer preparing air charts for Lufthansa. While with Lufthansa he reportedly studied photogrammetry and traveled several hundred thousand miles throughout the world.
Rado prepared and published in Berlin in 1928 a German-language guide to the USSR and in 1929 an Arbeiteratlas des Imperialismus, the Communist slant of which did not seem to affect his standing with Lufthansa. In the early 1930's he did air chart work in Stockholm for Aerotransport, a Scandinavian Airlines predecessor then affiliated with Lufthansa. This work gave him some access to defense secrets of Sweden and possibly other countries—secrets which, it may be assumed, soon found their way to Moscow.
The Rados made a trip to Moscow in 1931, presumably for briefing and orientation. Upon returning to Germany in 1932, he accepted employment as a geographer for Almanac de Gotha in Berlin, a position he held until 1933. During this period be wrote geographic articles for a number of journals and became a fellow of several geographical societies, including the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain.
Paris Enterprise
In 1933 Rado moved with his family (sons were born in 1925 and 1930) to Paris, where he founded, with Soviet financial backing, a press agency known as Inpress, specializing in maps and geographic data related to current events. Soviet operations against Germany would be more secure if the directing center were outside the target country. Inpress employed some 16 people, including four or five agents using the firm as cover. Communications for the network were handled through couriers whom Rado would meet in France and Spain or later, after the start of the Spanish Civil War, in the Scandinavian countries, especially Finland. Particularly sensitive information was sometimes transmitted through the Soviet embassy in Paris. High-level Soviet officials such as Litvinov and Molotov are reported to have conferred clandestinely with Rado when passing through Paris.
In early 1936 Rado was called to the USSR for consultation. Since Inpress had not become self-sustaining financially, it was decided that the firm should be closed down and Rado moved to another assignment. Rado, however, asked to be released from intelligence work. and the Soviets agreed, on condition that he and his family resettle in the USSR. He returned to Paris to close down Inpress and to discuss the Soviet proposal with his wife.
But before they had decided what to do, Rado is said to have been approached by German officials and asked to undertake a special assignment for them. Mussolini had requested the Germans to recommend an expert to assist Italy in the solution of some geographic and cartographic problems; Rado was to pose as a German officer and take the job. He did so, spending some 8 months on it while his family remained in Paris. His findings were sent to Mussolini, to the Germans, and gratuitously to the Russians. Why German officials of Nazi persuasion should have sought out Rado for the Italian assignment remains a mystery.
Change of Station
Rado's personal contact with the Fascists in Italy, the rise of Nazism in Germany, and the trend of the Spanish Civil War convinced him, it is reported, that he should continue his work for Soviet military intelligence. He was assigned to direct and expand a small Red Army intelligence network operating in Switzerland against Germany. He proceeded to Geneva with his family, including Helene's mother, in late 1936, ostensibly to take a position with the League of Nations International Labor Office, in which there were at that time many Communist sympathizers. After several months of working full time for ILO, he became its part-time consultant and devoted his main energies to his intelligence work and the development of cover for it.
In 1936 or 1937, with Soviet funds and having a Swiss citizen as silent partner, Rado organized Geopress, a news agency specializing as Inpress had in maps and geographic background data. Geopress was more successful than Inpress because of better organization and the increased demand for news maps in the advancing shadows of World War II. As cover for an intelligence operation it proved ideal. Its normal activity—news collection and dissemination—provided justification for contacts with businessmen, officials, diplomats, journalists, and military leaders, some of whom became intelligence sources. It also justified a large volume of telephone and telegraph traffic, extensive postal business, and the maintenance of a courier system.
While building up his Geopress cover Rado also developed his sources, organized communications, and summarized for transmission the reports collected by his growing network. And he even found time to maintain through publications his image as an internationally known geographer. A left-slanted Atlas of Today and Tomorrow, prepared jointly by Rado and Marthe Rajchman, was published in London (1937) by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
War Service
As resident director of the Switzerland network, Rado held the secret Red Army rank of Major General; he was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1943. A description of the apparatus he administered was first made public in 1949 in Alexander Foote's Handbook for Spies, and interest in it has recently been revived by a flurry of speculation and controversy, chiefly among French and German researchers, about how its prime source "Lucy" (Rudolph Rössler) got such prompt access to the secrets of the German high command. Moscow, Foote declares, largely fought the war on Rbssler's messages. But in 1941, when Rossler first made contact with Rado, Moscow was extremely suspicious and advised Rado to have nothing to do with him. Rado, in what must surely rank as the most important decision of his life, nevertheless went ahead and paid Rbssler, insisting that his information was authentic and vital, an evaluation later accepted by Moscow. Foote, de facto number two man in the network and no Rado admirer, calls this one of Rado's few independent acts during the war.
The network had many troubles. Prominent among them were the difficulty of getting funds from Moscow to Switzerland, Moscow's pathological suspicion of the British, rivalry between Red Army intelligence and other Soviet services, the security of personnel inherited from other networks, and a serious personality clash between Rado and Foote. Rado thought Foote misused network funds, was overly cautious and "hard to work with." Foote thought the same of Rado. Nevertheless, they accomplished much with the knowledge and tacit approval of officially neutral Switzerland. German pressure on the Swiss rather than independent Swiss initiative brought about the breakup of the net.
Rado's main participation in the work of his apparatus ended in 1943. Compromised and forced to hide out, he and his wife spent several months at a safe house, while their sons remained with their grandmother in Geneva. Their exit to France was finally arranged by the Nicole organization of Swiss Communists.
Foote believed that Rados did nothing but hide out until their exit. Another version holds that during this period Rado tried to reestablish contact with Moscow through the British embassy, there being no Soviet-Swiss diplomatic contact at the time, and then through the Chinese embassy. Finally, communication via Chungking proving too slow and unreliable, he attempted to get a new transmitter built in Liechtenstein with funds from Swiss businessmen who were to be repaid and rewarded with large orders from the USSR after the war. Although the Liechtenstein transmitter never got into operation, the Swiss financial backers presented their claims when diplomatic relations between Switzerland and the USSR were established in 1946. Soviet diplomats, however, disclaimed any knowledge of Rado and his wartime activities, and the claims were not paid.
In 1944 the Rados contacted friends in the French Resistance and spent five or six months working with the Maquis in southern France, for which they were later awarded the Legion of Honor by the French Government. They did not attempt to report to the Soviets until Paris was liberated in 1944, when they made contact with the Soviet military attaché there. The Nicole organization brought their boys to Paris to rejoin them. Helene's mother remained in Geneva to liquidate the household.
Disgrace
Alexander Foote, only recently freed from a Swiss jail, reached Paris about the same time as the Rados. The two men were interrogated individually by the Soviets regarding the last days of the network. With a more complete and current picture of the situation in Switzerland, Foote's antagonistic opinions evidently prevailed when his account was weighed against Rado's. Both were ordered to report to Moscow for consultation.
Apprehensive about the fate that might await him in the USSR, Rado considered declining Moscow's invitation. It is reported that Helene finally persuaded him to go, arguing that he had done his best with the Switzerland network under difficult conditions and so had nothing to fear from the Soviets. In January 1945, still somewhat dubious, he and Foote left Paris on a Soviet aircraft bound for Moscow via Cairo. After talking at length with Foote, Rado's doubts again got the upper hand and he left the flight in Cairo.
He was soon picked up by the British-directed Egyptian police, who were puzzled and uncertain as to how he should be handled. A censor's information card, passed at the time to OSS representatives in Cairo, sums up what seems to be the story he first told his captors:
24 Feb. 1945
RADO, SANDOR
During the German occupation of Hungary, lived in Geneva where published geographical maps for the Allied Governments until 1943; discovered by the GESTAPO and consequently his relatives in Hungary were murdered/ went with family to Paris in September 1944 and continued his work/summoned to Russia to report on his activities with the Free French Organization and left on 8 Jan. 1945 by special plane for Moscow/suspecting a trap, he got off the plane in Cairo where he remained/received no news from his wife in Paris and suspects that she might have been deported/he was formerly a Fellow of the Geographical Society in London, New York, Paris, Geneva, Rome and Washington, D.C.
OFFICE OF CENSORSHIP, Egypt, 11 April 1945
He had apparently decided that his interests would be best served by painting himself as a victim of persecution and devoted to the Allied cause while holding to a minimum revelations that might increase the ire of Moscow. The result was a mixture of truths, halftruths, lies, and distortions.
After some local maneuvering Rado made a direct effort to defect to the British but was turned down. Also to no avail was his legal resistance to Soviet extradition. He was handed over to the Soviets and flown to Moscow in the summer of 1945. Confined to Lubyanka prison for a year and a half, he was eventually charged with espionage in favor of the West, letting code keys fall into enemy hands, misuse of network funds, and failure to keep his network functioning. He was sentenced without trial to 15 years' imprisonment and stripped of rank and honors.
A hostile attitude on the part of Beria may have figured importantly in the disposition of Rado's case. During the war Beria reportedly sent his son to Switzerland to work in Rado's net in order to keep him out of front-line.- army duty. The son, a playboy type, wasted network funds, jeopardized security, and did no useful work. Rado had him recalled to the USSR, where he was eventually killed serving with the Red Army; and for this his father blamed Rado.
Reports on Rado's period of forced labor in the USSR are few and somewhat contradictory. In early 1947 he was apparently moved from Lubyanka to a coal mine in Siberia. In a short time he became labor manager of the mine and thus was not subjected to hard physical work. He was soon shifted to Kuchino, near Moscow, the site of a geophysical observatory. According to one interpretation, the move to Kuchino was the result of an error; officials reviewing his papers saw that he had transmitted intelligence by radio and so thought him a radio technician. At Kuchino he was put to work on map and chart problems connected with the development of a navigation system and possibly missile guidance. He made noteworthy contributions, apparently, for he soon became a "prisoner with privileges," entitled to a private apartment and access to Western publications. It is conceivable that the "error" which brought him to Kuchino was the result of string-pulling by friends.
In 1946, while still in Lubyanka prison, Rado had been pressured into writing his wife in Paris and suggesting that she and them sons follow him to the USSR. Helene, suspecting that the letter had been written under duress, declined; the Soviets then directly urged her to come. Other letters of Rado's to members of his family were not forwarded to them, and their letters were not delivered to him in the Soviet Union. In 1948 or 1949, Helene, still in Paris, obtained a divorce of convenience in the hope that it would discourage further Soviet attempts to make her return to the USSR.
Rehabilitation and Return
Rado was released from prison in 1954, his sentence being reduced by work credits. The amnesty that followed Stalin's death, along with the intervention of friends and the fall of Beria, may have expedited the release. For perhaps a year he remained in the USSR working, ironing out his citizenship status (the Soviets now consider him a dual citizen), obtaining documentation, and weighing alternative plans for his future. There are a number of contradictions in reports on him during this period. One account says he worked as a geographic expert for the KGB. Another report states that he was a translator and cartographer for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a position he obtained through Professor N. N. Baranskiy, whom he had met while a prisoner.
His negotiations with the Soviets, at any rate, were not smooth. At one point he was offered his choice of professorships in the USSR; at another Soviet officials wanted to send him to Siberia. It was reportedly only through the intercession of Hungarian Ambassador Ferenc Munnich, an old friend from the Bela Kun period, that the way was finally cleared for Rado to return to Hungary. Khrushchev is said to have sent a telegram to the Hungarian Communist Party vouching for him on the eve of his return.
According to one report, Rado reentered his native land in July 1955; yet his name is listed as a member of the editorial board of the Hungarian journal Geodézia és Kartográfia in its first issue for 1955. Either the reported date is incorrect or he began participating in Hungarian mapping affairs before leaving the USSR. In either case, his appointment to membership on the journal's editorial board was remarkably fast for one who had not spent a day in Hungary since 1919.
A considerable number of Hungarians who had been prisoners in the USSR returned at about the same time as Rado, so that his arrival in Budapest attracted little attention. He found to his surprise that his sister, Elizabeth Klein, was living in Budapest with her son; the Soviets had told him that none of his relatives in Hungary survived the war. At first he worked as cartographic editor of an encyclopedia but soon discovered many old friends in high places who wanted to use his talents and experience. Rakosi and his deputy Gero, whom he had known since 1916, reportedly offered him the position of chief of intelligence and he refused, claiming he did not want to get mixed up in "dirty work."
He worked briefly for the Ministry of Foreign Trade, then returned to his encyclopedia job, and finally, still in 1955, accepted a position as deputy chief of the Allami Földmérési és Térképészeti Hivatal (State Survey and Cartographic Office) with specific duties as head of the Cartographic Department. This continues to be his main official position, except that in the spring of 1967 the previously autonomous AFTH was put under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and its name changed to the Orszagos Földúgyi és Térképészeti Hivatal (National Land and Cartographic Office). Other posts Rado holds or has held include a professorship at the Karl Marx University of Economic Science, numerous editorships, and the chairmanship of many committees and commissions.
Shortly after his return to Hungary and unaware of Helene's divorce, he wrote her in Paris suggesting that she join him but that their sons, French citizens, remain in France; if they entered Hungary they might be treated as Hungarian citizens and denied egress. Helene, ill with cancer, was thus reunited with Rado in 1956. She died in Budapest in 1958.
Rado reportedly took no part in the Hungarian revolt of 1956, but it seems more by luck than by design. At one point in the power struggle the principal figures on both sides, Imre Nagy on the one and two Soviet generals on the other, were old friends of his. He thought he might be able to bring them together to work out a modus vivendi. To this end he attempted to see Nagy but was unable to reach him, and there the matter ended.
After the revolt the Soviets showed a new and favorable interest in Rado. To their appreciation of his mapping and intelligence knowhow had been added the important fact that he did not take part in the uprising or attempt to leave Hungary while it was in progress. It is reported that he was appointed Chairman of the Warsaw Pact Committee on Mapping and Geodesy in 1957. While this specific has not been confirmed, there is much evidence that at about this time his power and prestige increased greatly, that he was accepted by the Soviets as he had not been before, and that he began making short trips to the USSR at approximately six-month intervals.
A U.S. official in touch with Rado and other Hungarian geographers and cartographers in 1959 noted that the younger men coming up in the mapping organizations were being drawn from the Karl Marx University of Economic Science, where Rado taught Communist theory, the geography of the Soviet Union, and economic geography and presumably exercised some screening authority. In 1959 he married a librarian at the University, Erzebet Bokor. Fortyish and the holder of a doctorate, she shares many of his professional interests and has accompanied him on trips to the West.
A source who worked with Rado in the 1950's noted in 1963 that he seemed very well satisfied with his situation. He was better dressed than in the past and had a chauffeur-driven limousine at his disposal.
Rado has written or edited many articles, books, and maps and has received honorary degrees and prizes. Noteworthy among the latter is a 1963 Kossuth Prize, Class III, for "achievements in organizing and raising the scientific standards of civilian cartography in Hungary." A deliberate effort has been made to establish him as an internationally recognized geographer. He has represented Hungary at several international meetings and has made numerous trips to the West, a, sign that he enjoys Soviet confidence. Ii is noteworthy that he has been willing to interpret the Bloc line on such sticky matters as the role of Albania in the Socialist camp, the China-India boundary, and the Oder-Neisse question both at international meetings and in unclassified publications. On several occasions he has been observed in extended conversation with K. A. Salishchev, a key figure in Soviet mapping.
Since 1956 Rado's influence has been projected into an ever-widening circle of activities. He is an administrator and coordinator of mapping programs, a cartographer, a teacher, a scholar, an editor, a propagandist, a diplomat, an intelligence collector, a security officer, and a still-alert old man who derives much enjoyment from his present position of power and the opportunities he now has to carry out his ideas and programs.
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https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...3a05p_0001.htm