Great Britain: The Lost Leader

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The Warning. The long debate served to fix government responsibility, or the lack of it, and illustrated the odd nature of the British security system, compounded of shrewdness, inefficiency, and an often misguided sense of sportsmanship that goes to extraordinary lengths in protecting members of the club. The case, as it emerged from the debate, falls into four phases.

First, there was the Christine-Profumo affair itself, which, according to Profumo, lasted only a few months, from July to December 1961, but by other evidence possibly lasted longer. During those same months, Christine also entertained Russian Assistant Naval Attaché Evgeny Ivanov, who had been pals for some time with her mentor, Dr. Stephen Ward. M15, British intelligence, apparently discovered only half of what Wilson scathingly called "this dingy quadrilateral." In August 1961, according to the Commons debate, Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook warned Profumo that it would be better for the Secretary for War not to be too friendly with Ward; he did not mention, and evidently did not know about, Christine. Nothing of this was reported to Macmillan.

In the second phase, which covers most of 1962, rumors of the affair kept reaching the newspapers, Tory and Labor politicians, but apparently not the Prime Minister. During the Cuba blowup, Ward was all over the place, suggesting to the Prime Minister's office and to the Foreign Office that his friend Ivanov be used as an intermediary to help settle the crisis. But, said Macmillan, a lot of people were then trying to get into the act "to weaken our resolution." A little later, Wilson himself got a letter from Ward, boasting of his supposed help in settling the Cuba matter, but filed it away as coming from a crank. Before Ivanov was recalled to Moscow* in January 1963, he aroused suspicion in other ways. A bridge player who took a hand in some very high-level games, he lost steadily, as much as $140 a night. "I do not believe the Soviet embassy's petty cash would stand such losses every night," said one Labor M.P. caustically, "unless they got something for it."

The Vigil. In the third and most remarkable phase, Macmillan finally became aware that there was such a thing as a Profumo case. In January 1963, as Macmillan told Commons, police learned from Christine that Ward had asked her to find out from Profumo when the U.S. was to deliver certain nuclear information and warheads to West Germany (she said that she refused to do it). Macmillan was not told of this either. But while he was away in Italy, the general manager of the huge (circ. 6,500,000) News of the World reported the Profumo rumors to Macmillan's principal private secretary. Confronted with the story, Profumo denied everything to several officials; the relationship had been innocent, he said, and anyway had ended long before. Why didn't the Prime Minister question Profumo himself at any time? Macmillan's lame answer: he assumed that Profumo would speak more freely to others, and furthermore such an interrogation would have made "social relations" between himself and Profumo highly embarrassing. And why didn't anyone attempt to interrogate Christine herself to check out Profumo's denial? To this, Macmillan had no answer at all.