London: British intelligence believed the Soviets tried to use London osteopaths cold war As a mediator during the Cuban missile crisis sex and espionage scandal, the first secret letters were revealed on Tuesday.
recently released MI5 files Include a 1965 report on whether Soviet spies had a “hand” in the controversy known as the Profumo case.
The scandal shook the British government when War Minister John Profumo stepped down in disgrace after lying to Parliament over an affair with society girl Christine Keeler.
She also had sex with a Soviet intelligence officer and assistant naval attache in London, Eugene Ivanov.
both men had introduced her Stephen WardAmong his patients was a high-society osteopath who, MI5 concluded, was a Soviet “colleague” with conservative lawmakers.
In its 15-page interim report, filed two years after the scandal first surfaced, MI5 found that there was “no direct or circumstantial evidence” that it was a “Soviet-inspired disruption game”.
But this and other files reveal details about the Profumo case and its central players, including confirmation that Moscow tried to use Ward as a backchannel during the Cuban missile crisis, which hit the US and the Soviet Union. brought to the brink of nuclear war.
“During the Cuban crisis in October 1962, the Russians used the Ivanov/Ward channel not only to seek an informal response from Her Majesty’s government,” the report said.
It said Moscow used the pair – who first met at a lunch hosted by the editor of the Daily Telegraph – to Britain “to bring pressure on the United States government and, if possible, undermine the resolve of the West”. To celebrate.
Ward died in 1963 at the age of 50 after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, as he was being prosecuted for crimes related to prostitution, which critics claim trumped-up charges after the Profumo revelations. Were.
Historians have reportedly known for a long time that he claimed to have acted as a backchannel for Moscow when Ward made a set of recordings about his activities months before his death.
But he was considered tainted as the police kept him under constant surveillance and he was desperate to clear his name, The Times said in 2020.
Ward’s complicated case received renewed attention at the time after the West End musical flopped about him by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The theater impresario showed secret newspaper documents he had obtained, including a previously unseen 1963 letter that Ward had sent from prison to future Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
In it, he claimed that his work as a mediator was aimed at reducing the nuclear deadlock.
Memories of the 1962 crisis have resurfaced in recent weeks amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and fears it might use a tactical nuclear weapon.
Ward’s letters and his other correspondence, as well as transcripts of police interviews with key characters in the Profumo case, are also in the newly-released digital archives.
In a 1963 statement, Keeler admitted to having sex with Ivanov once and “almost twice” with Profumo, while suggesting that Ward was doing Moscow’s bidding.
“Ward has asked me to get information from Jack (Profumo) about Americans bombing the Germans,” she said, referring to plans to deploy American nuclear weapons in Germany.
“I didn’t get this information because it was ridiculous and could have been made into a joke,” he said.
The files also detail the briefly lavish Moscow lifestyle of John Vassal, one of the KGB’s most notorious British double agents, in another sensational cloak-and-dagger spy scandal of the era.
MI5 records show that Vassal enjoyed a life of cocktails, tennis and skiing during a junior naval attaché at the British Embassy in Moscow from 1954 to 1956.
He began seven years of spying for the Soviet Union, blackmailed after he was set up there and photographed with a gay partner when same-sex relationships were banned back home.
After the vassal returned from Moscow, he continued to spy while serving in the Admiralty, the British government department responsible for the Royal Navy, until 1964.
The archives contain photographs of a cupboard containing a secret compartment in which films containing information copied from Admiralty files were found when the police raided his London flat in 1962.
Other files show a British diplomat describing the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin After his death as someone who had “the quality of greatness”.
Alvéry Gascoigne, who served in Moscow from October 1951, praised the infamous ruler as having “salty realism, cleverness and common sense” in a note to the Foreign Office in March 1953.
recently released MI5 files Include a 1965 report on whether Soviet spies had a “hand” in the controversy known as the Profumo case.
The scandal shook the British government when War Minister John Profumo stepped down in disgrace after lying to Parliament over an affair with society girl Christine Keeler.
She also had sex with a Soviet intelligence officer and assistant naval attache in London, Eugene Ivanov.
both men had introduced her Stephen WardAmong his patients was a high-society osteopath who, MI5 concluded, was a Soviet “colleague” with conservative lawmakers.
In its 15-page interim report, filed two years after the scandal first surfaced, MI5 found that there was “no direct or circumstantial evidence” that it was a “Soviet-inspired disruption game”.
But this and other files reveal details about the Profumo case and its central players, including confirmation that Moscow tried to use Ward as a backchannel during the Cuban missile crisis, which hit the US and the Soviet Union. brought to the brink of nuclear war.
“During the Cuban crisis in October 1962, the Russians used the Ivanov/Ward channel not only to seek an informal response from Her Majesty’s government,” the report said.
It said Moscow used the pair – who first met at a lunch hosted by the editor of the Daily Telegraph – to Britain “to bring pressure on the United States government and, if possible, undermine the resolve of the West”. To celebrate.
Ward died in 1963 at the age of 50 after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, as he was being prosecuted for crimes related to prostitution, which critics claim trumped-up charges after the Profumo revelations. Were.
Historians have reportedly known for a long time that he claimed to have acted as a backchannel for Moscow when Ward made a set of recordings about his activities months before his death.
But he was considered tainted as the police kept him under constant surveillance and he was desperate to clear his name, The Times said in 2020.
Ward’s complicated case received renewed attention at the time after the West End musical flopped about him by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The theater impresario showed secret newspaper documents he had obtained, including a previously unseen 1963 letter that Ward had sent from prison to future Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
In it, he claimed that his work as a mediator was aimed at reducing the nuclear deadlock.
Memories of the 1962 crisis have resurfaced in recent weeks amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and fears it might use a tactical nuclear weapon.
Ward’s letters and his other correspondence, as well as transcripts of police interviews with key characters in the Profumo case, are also in the newly-released digital archives.
In a 1963 statement, Keeler admitted to having sex with Ivanov once and “almost twice” with Profumo, while suggesting that Ward was doing Moscow’s bidding.
“Ward has asked me to get information from Jack (Profumo) about Americans bombing the Germans,” she said, referring to plans to deploy American nuclear weapons in Germany.
“I didn’t get this information because it was ridiculous and could have been made into a joke,” he said.
The files also detail the briefly lavish Moscow lifestyle of John Vassal, one of the KGB’s most notorious British double agents, in another sensational cloak-and-dagger spy scandal of the era.
MI5 records show that Vassal enjoyed a life of cocktails, tennis and skiing during a junior naval attaché at the British Embassy in Moscow from 1954 to 1956.
He began seven years of spying for the Soviet Union, blackmailed after he was set up there and photographed with a gay partner when same-sex relationships were banned back home.
After the vassal returned from Moscow, he continued to spy while serving in the Admiralty, the British government department responsible for the Royal Navy, until 1964.
The archives contain photographs of a cupboard containing a secret compartment in which films containing information copied from Admiralty files were found when the police raided his London flat in 1962.
Other files show a British diplomat describing the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin After his death as someone who had “the quality of greatness”.
Alvéry Gascoigne, who served in Moscow from October 1951, praised the infamous ruler as having “salty realism, cleverness and common sense” in a note to the Foreign Office in March 1953.