Friday, March 10, 2006

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JOHN PROFUMO, RIP

by Srdja Trifkovic

The news of John Profumo's death took me by surprise, not because it is unusual for a man to die at 91 but because it is extraordinary that a major public figure from the era of Macmillan, Khrushchev and Kennedy had been with us for so long. (I remember having similar thoughts at the news of Molotov's death in November 1986.) The affair that has made Profumo's name immortal is the most delicious scandal of the 20th century. His death does not mark "the end of an era"-it is long gone-but it reminds us of our frailty, it warns against hubris and excessive passion, and it illustrates our capacity for redemption.

In 1961 John Profumo appeared to be made of good prime ministerial material. He was a well-liked and respected 46-year-old Secretary of State for War in Britain's Conservative government. His education was conventional for a high Tory: Harrow and Oxford. His war record was impeccable. His wife, film star Valerie Hobson, was lovely and charming. His friends included aristocrats, intellectuals, artists, and some of the most powerful people in Britain.

Among them was Lord Astor, and it was at his Cliveden country residence in Berkshire that Profumo first met Christine Keeler in July 1961. She was a stunningly beautiful girl of 19 who had run away from home three years earlier. After a stint in Soho's strip clubs she met and befriended Stephen Ward, a fashionable West End osteopath whose clientelle included many prominent individuals from Profumo's social tier. Ward did not become her lover-his tastes went the other way-but he loved being surrounded with lovely women of humble origins. "I like pretty girls," Ward explained, because "I am sensitive to the needs and the stresses of modern living." Keeler moved in with him into his Wimpole Mews flat. "We were like brother and sister," Keeler said at Ward's 1963 trial. "My life really used to revolve around Stephen."

A world hitherto unknown to her suddenly opened up. It was the world of affluent and powerful men fond of having a bit on the side. Ward obliged them by staging wild parties at his flat attended by Keeler and other girls, such as her friend from the Soho stripper days, Mandy-Rice-Davis. There are many lurid stories of those parties. Sir Roger Hollis, the head of Britain's MI5 counter-intelligence service at that time, was said to be a frequent visitor to his flat; there was also the "man in the mask," allegedly a high-ranking figure who served guests naked except for a mask, and ate his dinner from a dog bowl.

Ward also took Keeler to his friends' parties, such as the one at Lord Astor's Cliveden where Profumo first met her. According to Keeler, they flirted around the swimming pool and then had some fun trying on suits of armour adorning the mansion. The War Minister was besotted and an affair soon followed. It was brief but passionate, and included Profumo's visits to Ward's flat as well as Keeler's furtive appearances in one of his residences and two offices.

What Profumo did not know is that Keeler was having another affair at that same time, with one Yevgeny Ivanov, Naval Attache at the Soviet Embassy in London. Captain Ivanov was also charming, albeit in a darker, Slavic manner. In addition he was a spy who had entrapped Ward, and received information and documents obtained by him for transmission to the USSR. Ward and Ivanov wanted Keeler to obtain information from Profumo about the plans to deploy American nuclear weapons in West Germany. (Almost 30 years later Ivanov met Keeler in Moscow and apologized for the way he had used her in his attempt to get military secrets.)

The British secret service soon learned of Ivanov's liaison with Keeler, took note of Profumo's affair with her in the course of investigation, and alerted Prime Minister Harold Macmillan through his Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook. Brook warned Profumo on August 9, 1961-the very day East Germany started building the Berlin Wall. With uncharacteristic lack of prudence Profumo went on with the affair until December of that year, and ended it only when Keeler proved reluctant to become his full-time mistress.

Even so there may have been no scandal but for what Ward had described as Christine's "occasional foolhardy adventures in the completely different world of colored men." Shortly after Profumo ended the affair, one Johnnie Edgecombe, Keeler's jealous West Indian lover, fired several shots at the door of Ward's falt. Police arrested him and called Keeler as a principal witness at his trial. She failed to show up, however, and the press soon started speculating that this was because she feared being cross-examined about her own private life and decided-or was told-to protect her prominent friends. Rumor had it that one of those friends was a government minister. Every Fleet Street editor sent his hounds out to find out who it was.

When the story inevitably broke in 1962, Profumo attempted to deny the affair. In March 1963 he made the most fateful move in his life when he told Parliament that "Miss Keeler and I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler." The tabloids did not take him at face value, of course, and a little over two months later a humble Profumo was back to declare "with deep remorse" that he had misled the House because he wanted to protect his wife and family, and that he would resign.

In the meantime Keeler was hiding in Spain, where she was being stalked by an unpleasant former lover called Lucky Gordon. (Incidentally Mr. Gordon had been the cause of Johnnie Edgecombe's jealous rage.) A farcical car chase ensued , "with Keeler at the head of an entourage of reporters pursuing her through Europe. She was on her way back to Britain, after agreeing to sell her story to the Express newspaper."

The most pathetic victim of the affair was Ward. He was charged with "living on the immoral earnings" of Keeler and Rice-Davies-an allegation strenuously denied by Keeler, who said Ward used sex not for money but to gain influence among his peers. Abandoned and shunned by his rich and powerful "friends" he killed himself on the last day of the trial. That trial will be remembered not for Ward or Keeler, but for Mandy Rice-Davies' response to the Crown's question whether she had received money from Lord Astor in return for sex. When she was told the Viscount had denied ever sleeping with her, she replied, 'Well, 'e would, wouldn't 'e?"

Macmillan resigned soon after Profumo, Sir Alec Douglass-Home tried unsuccessfully to keep the sinking Tory ship afloat, and in 1964 Harold Wilson's Labour Party took power. The "swinging sixties" could start in earnest. Britain was never to recover.

For the ensuing three and a half decades Profumo did penance for disgrace with charity work among the poor in London's East End. He never spoke publically about the affair, and he never wrote about it, although allegedly he had received six-figure offers from papers and publishers. He was a fallen gentleman, but a gentleman nevertheless, light years away from the 1990s Oval Office, cigars, and stained dresses.

There had been other, more significant spy scandals: Philby, Burgess and MacLean , Alger Hiss , Oleg Penkovsky and a host others proved to be far more significant in terms of their security implications. Sex scandals have ruined or tarnished many a political career. L'affaire Profumo beats them all with a mix of cloak-and-dagger drama, farce, titillating intrigue and pure tragedy that no Hollywood scriptwriter could have invented.

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