The Profumo Affair
Christine Keeler was a 19-year-old model and call girl caught in a love triangle with the British Secretary of State for War and a Soviet spy in 1961.
Christine Keeler was introduced to the 46-year-old Secretary John Profumo at a weekend pool party at a Buckinghamshire mansion in July 1961. The two began seeing each other, although the relationship lasted only a few months. But Christine was also in a romantic relationship at the same time with Yevgeny Ivanov, a married GRU agent operating under diplomatic cover as the assistant Naval Attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London.
Ivanov was being watched closely by MI5, and he quickly earned a reputation as a drunkard, a bad driver, and aggressive with women, both married and single. Despite serving as the assistant Naval Attaché, he showed little apparent interest in performing his official duties. The British government considered lodging a complaint against him with the Soviet embassy, but MI5 wanted to recruit him instead. The Foreign Office also began using Ward’s friendship with Ivanov as a means of back-channel communication with the Kremlin.
