The scandal that rocked England seems quite tame now. In 1963, London tabloids vied with each other for fiery headlines about sex for sale and spies, kinky orgies and people in high places. The scandal was enough to precipitate the fall of the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan. Two young and comely party girls of humble origin--Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies--were at the center of a swirl of sexual hedonism that embraced the well-born, the well-off, and the well-placed. The most prominent, perhaps, among the latter was up-and-coming John Profumo, already minister of state for war and, still in his forties, looking ahead to even higher office.
As word of Profumo's extramarital affair with Keeler spilled into the gossip pages, the minister steadfastly denied the story to his colleagues. He dug himself in deeper by taking to the floor of Parliament for the rarely used procedure of a "personal statement," in which he declared firmly that his relationship with "Miss Keeler" involved "no impropriety whatsoever." He threatened to sue anyone who repeated allegations to the contrary.
Intimate Letter
Soon, however, Profumo's stone wall began to crumble under the impact of Keeler's own account in the public prints of their relationship, buttressed by the evidence of an intimate letter from him that she had kept, which was addressed "Darling." (His dogged explanation that he addressed lots of people that way somehow rang hollow.)
What gave the scandal the fuel it needed to really soar was the implication of an espionage angle. Just as her affair with Profumo was warming, Keeler also had a bit of romance with Yevgeny Ivanov, assistant naval attache of the Soviet embassy in London and presumably a member of the KGB. Her Majesty's government was thus compromised. Might Keeler have gathered British defense secrets on Profumo's pillow, only to repeat them on Ivanov's?
Interestingly, Keeler had been introduced to both men by the same intermediary, Dr. Stephen Ward, an osteopath and semiprofessional portrait artist, who in both lines catered to the rich and famous, in the process carving a niche for himself in high society. When the scandal exploded, Ward was tried on charges of living on the immoral earnings of Keeler and Rice-Davies--that is, pimping. Both women had shared his flat at various times. In his trial, it was brought out that Ward had expressed rather neutralist views about East-West relations and had seemed strongly attached to, even heavily influenced by, Ivanov. Might he have been the Russian's willing collaborator?
It turns out, as best we can tell, that no Soviet espionage actually occurred. Ivanov probably was a spy. And the Soviets would no doubt have loved the opportunity to blackmail Profumo or somehow take advantage of his wandering eye, if they had known about it. But there is no evidence that Keeler was pumping Profumo for state secrets and little plausibility to this hypothesis. She was twenty, uneducated, and possessed of a mind as shallow as her beauty was deep. She would have made a poor questioner. Nor does her relationship with Profumo appear to have consisted much of talk. It is, of course, safe to assume that Ivanov had a professional interest in Ward. Ward's manifest characterological weakness and his admirable network of contacts among the British elite must
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