freeeric
British intelligence believed the Soviet Union tried to use a London osteopath embroiled in a Cold War sex and spy scandal as an intermediary during the Cuban missile crisis, previously secret papers revealed on Tuesday. But it and other files reveal a raft of details about the Profumo affair and its central players, including confirmation that Moscow tried to use Ward as a backchannel during the Cuban missile crisis which brought the US and Soviets to the brink of nuclear war.
The scandal rocked the British government when war minister John Profumo quit in disgrace after lying to parliament over an affair with society girl Christine Keeler.
She had also had sex with Eugene Ivanov, a Soviet intelligence officer and assistant naval attache in London.
Both men were introduced to her by Stephen Ward, a high-society osteopath with Conservative MPs among his patients whom MI5 concluded was a Soviet “collaborator”.
In its 15-page interim report filed two years after the scandal first erupted, MI5 found there was “no direct or circumstantial evidence” that it was “a Soviet-inspired disruption game”.
But it and other files reveal a raft of details about the Profumo affair and its central players, including confirmation that Moscow tried to use Ward as a backchannel during the Cuban missile crisis which brought the US and Soviets to the brink of nuclear war.
“During the Cuba crisis in October 1962 the Russians used the Ivanov/Ward channel not only in attempts to obtain unofficial reactions from Her Majesty’s Government,” the report stated.
It added Moscow used the pair — who first met a lunch hosted by the Daily Telegraph’s editor — to persuade Britain “to bring pressure on the United States government and if possible weaken the resolution of the West”.
