How MI5 agent called ‘Cat Burglar’ tried to recruit Soviet spy at the heart of the Profumo affair

He was the Soviet spy whose dalliances with a young woman helped to end the career of a top British politician.

Russian naval attache Yevgeny Ivanov had an affair with Christine Keeler at the same time that she was sleeping with the then war minister John Profumo, prompting a scandal that rocked British politics in the early 1960s. 

But newly-released MI5 files show how Britain’s domestic intelligence service tried to recruit Ivanov before the Profumo affair after hearing how he got drunk at parties and enjoyed ‘propositioning, pinching and dancing with women’. 

Convinced that the official could defect to the West at a time when Britain was embroiled in the Cold War, MI5 sent an agent codenamed Cat Burglar to try to get Ivanov on side. 

The agent tried to manipulate Ivanov by claiming that the Kremlin was going to recall him to Russia over his debauchery. 

The files describe Ivanov as having been ‘aggressively hearty and argumentative’ at a Christmas cocktail party given by a US naval attaché in 1960. 

Noting how he asked for ‘treble whiskies’, it went on to describe his ‘attempted pinching of sensitive portions of the anatomy, at the ladies’. 

The file concluded: ‘If his addiction to alcohol is real and not assumed, then this lack of discipline might make him a possible subject for our own exploitation’. 

After approaching Ivanov at the Columbia Club in Bayswater, Cat Burglar did strike up a relationship with Ivanov that lasted for at least a year, although it is not clear if the spy passed information to Britain before he was recalled to Moscow in January 1963 – as the Profumo affair was about to break. 

Both Ivanov and Keeler knew society osteopath Stephen Ward, who introduced the young woman to Profumo at a pool party. 

Profumo resigned from the government in June 1963 after it emerged he had lied to Parliament by saying rumours of his affair were untrue. 

He was married to actress Valerie Hobson. Ward took his own life after being convicted of living off the immoral earnings from prostitutes. 

The documents concerning Ivanov reveal how he came to Britain in 1960, with an official role as naval attache. At the same time, he was spying for the Soviet Union’s GRU military intelligence service.

He was joined by his wife Mayja and another Russian officer as he gathered information on defence sites around the UK. At one point, all three Russians were injured and hospitalised when their car overturned.

One file details his ‘outrageous’ behaviour when he gatecrashed the MI5 director’s Christmas party.   

It said: ‘He made himself conspicuous by his heartiness, they were practically the last guests to leave and this required some persuasion. Ivanov was asking for treble whiskies.’ 

Another, concerning the party held by the US naval attache, told how ‘Russians were late arriving, having gotten lost on the way, but determined to get there.

‘Two hours later Ivanov was drunk. Propositioning, pinching and dancing with women in his stockinged feet and deliberately treading on their toes.’ 

Ivanov also made attempts to seduce the American attache’s wife while driving and also ‘came very near caressing’ the French attache’s wife.  

Ivanov first met Ward at a lunch at the Garrick Club in January 1961. The pair were both at the infamous pool party at Lord William Astor’s estate in Cliveden, Buckinghamshire. There, Ward introduced Keeler to Profumo.

Ward told the security services how Ivanov had a ‘weakness for pretty women’ and had once drank two bottles of whisky with Keeler. The osteopath had been warned that Ivanov was an intelligence officer.

The new files also show how a source told MI5 that both Profumo and Ivanov ‘arrived on her [Keeler’s] doorstep together’. This led to a ‘heated argument’ between the two men, which Ivanov won. 

Ivanov’s close friendship with Ward led to the osteopath being used by the Foreign Office to pass information to the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 192. 

This was despite the fact that MI5 had warned the Foreign Office against the move. 

Ward always denied having been a ‘Soviet intermediary’ in his dealings with Ivanov. 

After being convicted of living off the immoral earnings of prostitutes, Ward wrote to then-Opposition leader Harold Wilson from prison to plead innocence two months before killing himself, other documents show.

Writing on Brixton Prison notepaper in a letter dated June 1963, Ward complained of untrue claims against him that ‘gravely affect my present position’. 

Ward also rejected the suggestion he had asked for a police inquiry into the Profumo affair to be called off.

He said comments about him in Parliament had been ‘most unfair and prejudicial to my legal position’.

Ward wrote: ‘May I appeal to you earnestly to look into these matters which gravely affect my present position.’

He added: ‘There can be no hope of the truth ever coming out if these and comparable errors are allowed to stand uncorrected.’

An MI5 report dated May 1963, noted that a source who visited Ward thought him to be ‘ill-at-ease’ and possibly ‘not far from a nervous collapse’.

In a conversation with the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Principal Private Secretary, the documents show, Ward told him ‘if you were in my position you would feel as if you were being assassinated at this moment’, adding that the situation was ‘bad’ and that the stories in the newspapers were ‘not quite the truth’.

In 2017, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) said it had found no evidence the prosecution was politically motivated, but that had Ward lived, he could have sought to challenge his conviction at the Court of Appeal on other grounds.

It said there was ‘considerable force’ in the argument that prosecution witness Keeler’s subsequent conviction for perjury and possibly prejudicial media coverage at the time of Ward’s trial could have affected the safety of the conviction.

Ward died in August 1963 from a drug overdose before he could be sentenced. 

The files also show how, after the Profumo scandal broke, MI5 investigated the possibility that ‘the Russian Intelligence Service had a hand in staging the Profumo affair in order to discredit Her Majesty’s government.’

But MI5 concluded that Ivanov’s involvement with Keeler at the same time as Profumo was an accident.  

MI5 also found that Ward was a ‘willing dupe’ of Ivanov, rather than a traitor. 

Another MI5 file concerning the Profumo affair noted that a ‘dangerous drug’ which could be ‘very useful’ for intelligence services to exploit was being used in the social circles of Keeler.

The substance, named Methadrine, may have been known to Russian intelligence officer Eugene Ivanov and osteopath Ward.

The document, dated July 1963, read: ‘Its effects could be very useful to any intelligence services exploiting it.’ 

It was described as normally being used by doctors to tackle heroin addiction, but if misused could become ‘quickly and dangerously addictive’.

The note added: ‘It is also much used by psychoanalysts because it breaks down inhibitions rapidly and completely.’

The tasteless and soluble drug had ‘remarkable’ side effects, the document said, listing them as including rendering a person ‘incapable of resisting orders to do anything while under the influence’.

The note said that Mandy Rice-Davies, a friend of Keeler’s who became one of the well-known names in connection with the Profumo scandal, had been seen by the source of the MI5 information to be under the influence of the drug after an American ‘con man’ crushed as many as six tablets into a glass and gave it to her.

The source described how Rice-Davies experienced all the expected symptoms of the drug, with the note adding that by the time ‘acute schizophrenia’ set in, ‘the subject will do or say anything he or she is ordered to do or say’.

‘Original strength of mind can offer no resistance,’ the note added.

Rice-Davies was famously cross-examined at Ward’s trial, where she made a riposte that became famous. 

After being told that Lord Astor had denied having an affair with her, or even having met the young woman, she replied: ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’

The retort has since been misquoted as ‘Well he would say that, wouldn’t he’, and has entered popular culture. 

Keeler was jailed for perjury in December 1963, several months after Profumo had resigned. 

Keeler gave evidence during the trial of her former partner Lucky Gordon who she claimed had attacked her. He was convicted and jailed for three years.

However, it later turned out she had lied to the court and was sentenced to nine months in prison. She served half of her sentence. The former model died in 2017 aged 75. She had two brief marriages and had two children.  

After resigning from government, Profumo worked as a volunteer at East End poverty charity Toynbee Hall, but refused to ever speak about his affair with Keeler.

He continued to be involved with the charity for the rest of his life and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 1975.

His final appearance was at the memorial service for former Prime Minister Edward Heath in November 2005. He died in March the following year.