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John Profumo, Bobby Baker and JFK


John Simkin

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In the early 1960s the KGB was involved in a “honey trap” operation involving politicians based in London and Washington. This operation was identified by the intelligence agencies in both countries. However, instead of breaking up the operation, the intelligence agencies decided to use this information in order to manipulate these politicians.

In Washington the KGB had infiltrated the LBJ operation at the Quorum Club. This was a private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill that had been established by Bobby Baker. As Baker pointed out in Wheeling and Dealing its "membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connecteds who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations". Baker also held parties at a home that he had purchased for his mistress, Nancy Carole Tyler.

The idea behind this scam was that LBJ could obtain information about these people that he could blackmail into doing as he wanted. LBJ also did a deal with J. Edgar Hoover that involved the sharing of information about these politicians.

Baker used several prostitutes that originally came from communist countries. This included Ellen Rometsch, Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang. Of course, once these politicians became involved with such women, LBJ could apply more pressure by suggesting that they were KGB agents.

In 1961 Bill Thompson, a close friend of John Kennedy, met with Bobby Baker. According to Anthony Summers (Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover) Thompson asked Baker if he would arrange a meeting between Rometsch and Kennedy. Baker later said that: "He (Kennedy) sent back word it was the best time he ever had in his life. That was not the only time. She saw him on other occasions. It went on for a while."

The honey trap operation in London was being run by Stephen Ward. He was also using Ellen Rometsch, Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang in his operation. One of the politicians who got caught in this trap was John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War. Eugene Ivanov, a KGB officer and an naval attaché at the Soviet embassy, also went to these sex parties. Profumo began an affair with one of Ward’s girls called Christine Keeler. The problem for Profumo was that Keeler was also having an affair with Ivanov.

All this was being monitored by MI5 but it decided not to take action against what Ward was up to. However, someone within MI5 decided to leak this information to George Wigg, a Labour MP with very close relationship with the intelligence services.

On 2nd March, 1963, George Wigg made a speech in the House of Commons where he referred to rumours that Profumo was having an affair with Christine Keeler. A few weeks later Profumo made a personal statement where he admitted he knew Keeler but denied there was any impropriety in their relationship. This statement failed to stop newspapers publishing stories suggesting that Profumo had lied about his relationship with Keeler. On 5th June 1963, Profumo admitted that he had misled the House of Commons and resigned from office.

JFK took a keen interest in the Profumo affair. David Kirkparick Bruce, was the US ambassador in London. He was ordered to provide a daily report on the Profumo case.

Hoover now decided it was time to make use of this information. In July 1963 FBI agents questioned Ellen Rometsch about her past. They came to the conclusion that she was probably a Soviet spy. Hoover then leaked information to the journalist, Courtney Evans, that Rometsch worked for Walter Ulbricht, the communist leader of East Germany. When Robert Kennedy was told about this information, he ordered her to be deported.

JFK knew that the matter was not over. We know that after the deportation of Rometsch, JFK employed Grant Stockdale to raise a lot of money to pay off blackmailers. As it happens, Stockdale was a business partner of Bobby Baker.

I think it is possible that this story played a role in the cover-up of the assassination. LBJ and Hoover both knew that JFK had been having a sexual relationship with a KGB spy. Did this influence RFK decision not to publicize his own doubts about the assassination of his brother?

Interestingly, two of the key figures in the story committed suicide, while these events unfolded. Stephen Ward died on 3rd August 1963 before telling the full story of what happened. Recently, Christine Keeler has claimed that Ward ran a Soviet spy ring that involved MI5 chief Roger Hollis and Sir Anthony Blunt.

On 26th November, Grant Stockdale flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. On his return Stockdale told several of his friends that "the world was closing in." On 1st December, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates who later recalled: "He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the assassination." Stockdale died on 2nd December, 1963 when he fell (or was pushed) from his office on the thirteenth story of the Dupont Building in Miami.

You will find out more about this story here:

John Profumo

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRprofumo.htm

Ellen Rometsch

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrometsch.htm

Grant Stockdale

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstockdale.htm

Bobby Baker

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerB.htm

Nancy Carole Tyler

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKtylerN.htm

George Wigg

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRwigg.htm

Maria Novotny

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKnovotny.htm

Suzy Chang

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKchangS.htm

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The FBI website includes this information on Ellen Rometsch:

Ellen Rometsch was the wife of Rolf Rometsch, a West German Military aide assigned to Washington, D.C. Mrs. Rometsch arrived in the U.S. on April 6, 1961. She was investigated on an internal security threat, as it was reported that she came from East Germany. The investigation finally determined that Mrs. Rometsch did not pose an internal security threat. In 1963, Mrs. Rometsch was living in Germany, possibly in Bonn.

http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/rometsch_e.htm

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I have managed to get a copy yesterday of Christine Keeler's autobiography, The Truth at Last: My Story, that was published in 2002. The book was ignored when it was published. I have only read a quarter of the book so far but provides some interesting information on the JFK assassination. In October 1962, Stephen Ward told her that JFK was going to be assassinated. Keeler passed this information onto Lord Denning who carried out a government investigation into the scandal. Keeler said that Denning was not interested in this information and it did not appear in his report that was published on 25th September, 1963.

Keeler does not know where Ward got this information from but suspects it came from the KGB as she is convinced that Ward was a Soviet spy. I have my own theory where this information came from but I will wait until I read the whole book before commenting on this.

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I have managed to get a copy yesterday of Christine Keeler's autobiography, The Truth at Last: My Story, that was published in 2002. The book was ignored when it was published. I have only read a quarter of the book so far but provides some interesting information on the JFK assassination. In October 1962, Stephen Ward told her that JFK was going to be assassinated. Keeler passed this information onto Lord Denning who carried out a government investigation into the scandal. Keeler said that Denning was not interested in this information and it did not appear in his report that was published on 25th September, 1963.

Keeler does not know where Ward got this information from but suspects it came from the KGB as she is convinced that Ward was a Soviet spy. I have my own theory where this information came from but I will wait until I read the whole book before commenting on this.

Although I have only seen excerpts of this book, it has some very good information on the Kennedy Assassination.

This portion is related to the Profumo scandal.

I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but it is important, nevertheless.

From Conspiracy In Camelot pages 210-211

Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny

In 1963, the War Minister of Britain, John Profumo was imbroiled in a sex scandal with Christine Keeler, a call girl, who also happened to be consorting with a Soviet spy; she was under the wing of one Stephen Ward, who had a penchant for introducing powerful men to attractive women. Profumo was forced to resign. On June 28, 1963, The New York Journal-American reported that a man who holds a ‘very high’ elective office — has been injected into Britain’s vice-security scandal. John Kennedy was involved with two call girls in Stephen Ward’s coterie, Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny. Chang, 28 was seen with him several times at New York’s “21” Club. Maria Novotny, a striptease dancer in English nightclubs, moved to New York with Harry Allen Towers and ran an international brothel. She returned to England and was questioned by Scotland Yard in connection with the Profumo case; she testified she had been with Kennedy in 1960 at a New York Hotel. Her second encounter with Kennedy occurred with two other prostitutes on W. 55th Street.

Harry Towers turned out to be a Soviet agent. When Novotny returned to England and testified. Tower’s fled the country and reportedly “emigrated to Czechoslovakia.”

........."Suzy Chang, Maria Novotny, Harry Tower’s connections to Soviet intelligence, and the compromising of the President of the United States are certainly not inconsequential when it comes to plots, counter-plots and international intrigue. Indeed, the FBI sought to question Kennedy about these interludes, but he was assassinated first."

END

Robert......Regarding that last paragraph, the manner in which it is stated, "the FBI sought to question Kennedy" appears to be written in a manner which implies that the FBI had the power to question JFK much like a ordinary suspect in any other spy scandal, I would beg to differ, but, at the same time, I concede that the sexual intrigues and affairs were very much a "fuel to the fire" issue regarding JFK's enemies and was a factor in the assassination itself, but that is strictly my opinion.

Edited by Robert Howard
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I have managed to get a copy yesterday of Christine Keeler's autobiography, The Truth at Last:.... In October 1962, Stephen Ward told her that JFK was going to be assassinated.

This has got to be the best book ever. Good girl Christine.

Smart to go directly to Lord Denning, the highest judicial officer in the land, and tell no one else. I guess it it was all kept between Christine, Denning and the KGB chair.

http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/ChristineKeeler.jpg

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Thomas Corbally was the American businessman who in January 1963 tipped off the then American ambassador (David Bruce) in London about the Profumo affair.

Was there a JFK link to the Profumo affair? The answer may lie in two documents in the Bowtie file. One contains information provided by Roy Cohn, Corbally's lawyer at the time and a friend of the FBI's director J. Edgar Hoover. The other is a 17-page interview with Corbally himself. Both documents have been released under the Freedom of Information Act - with every single word in them blacked out.

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I have just discovered that J. Edgar Hoover used Dorothy Kilgallen via Richard Berlin, to spread the rumour that JFK was involved in the Profumo case. On 23rd June, 1963, Dorothy Kilgallen published an article in the New York Journal-American: "One of the biggest names in American politics - a man who holds a very high elective office - has been injected into Britain's vice-security scandal." This was a reference to the John Profumo and Christine Keeler affair. Kilgallen went on to describe one of the girls as "a beautiful Chinese-American girl now in London." She added that the "highest authorities" had "identified her as Suzy Chang."

The other interesting point is that on one memo about the Profumo case, Hoover has made a handwritten comment: "Roy Cohn has this info". Why? Well he was Thomas Corbally's attorney. It was Corbally who in January 1963 tipped off the then American ambassador (David Bruce) in London about the Profumo affair.

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I want to look first at the role of Christine Keeler in these events.

Keeler was born in Uxbridge on 22nd February, 1942. Her father deserted the family during the Second World War. Her mother, Julie Payne, later lived with Edward Huish and the couple set-up home in a converted railway carriage in Wraysbury. Christine later recalled: "The railway carriage was on wheels and I felt like a character from the American television series about the legendary Wild West train-driver Casey Jones."

Keeler left school without qualifications: "At fifteen, on my birthday, Mum took me to the employment agency and they found me an office typing job. After that, I had another five jobs, one after the other, and I hated them all."

In 1958 she found work as a model in a showroom in London. An affair with a local boy, Jeff Perry, resulted in her getting pregnant. The child was born prematurely and survived just six days. "I was just seventeen, I did not have many illusions left and the ones that did remain were soon to vanish... After the abortion, I began my search for a guardian angel - someone to love and someone to guide me."

Keeler found work as a waitress at a restaurant on Baker Street before finding employment as a showgirl at Murray’s Cabaret Club in Soho. "There was a pervasive atmosphere of sex, with beautiful young girls all over the place, but customers would always say, if asked, that they only came for the floor show and the food and drink... When we weren't onstage, we were allowed to sit out with the audience for a hostess fee of five pounds. That way I was soon making about thirty pounds a week."

Soon after starting this new job at Murray’s Cabaret Club she met Stephen Ward. It was not long before she decided to go and live with him at his flat in Orme Court in Bayswater. "His flat was tiny and on the top floor but there was a lift. There was a bed-sitting room with two single beds pushed close together, and an adjoining bathroom. we would share the bed but only as brother and sister; there were never to be any sexual goings-on between us."

Stephen Ward was an osteopath and one of his patients was Lord Astor. He allowed him the use of a cottage on his Cliveden Estate. War also introduced Keeler to his friends. This included Peter Rachman, the famous slum landlord and the actor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Ward's patients included Colin Coote, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, Roger Hollis, the head of MI5, Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and Geoffrey Nicholson, the Conservative MP.

Ward was also an artist and he had a reputation for producing fine portraits of his friends. This included the Duke of Edinburgh. Afterwards he told Keeler: "Philip's a snob, not like the man he used to be - I used to know him before he was married to Elizabeth". He also sketched Madame Furtseva, the Soviet Minister of Culture. Colin Coote arranged for the drawing to appear in the Daily Telegraph.

During this period Keeler also got to know Mandy Rice-Davies, Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny, who ran sex parties in London. So many senior politicians attended that she began referring to herself as the "government's Chief Whip". As well as British politicians such as John Profumo and Ernest Marples, foreign leaders such as Willy Brandt and Ayub Khan, attended these parties.

On 21st January 1961, Colin Coote invited Stephen Ward to have lunch with Eugene Ivanov, an naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. The following month Ward and Keeler moved to 17 Wimpole Mews in Marylebone. According to Keeler's autobiography, The Truth at Last (2001), Roger Hollis and Anthony Blunt were regular visitors to the flat.

Stephen Ward also got to know Keith Wagstaffe of MI5. On 8th June 1961, the two men went out to dinner before going back to the Wimpole Mews flat. Keeler made the two men coffee: "Stephen was on the couch and Wagstaffe sat on the sofa chair. He wanted to know about Stephen's friendship with Eugene. We knew that MI5 were monitoring embassy personnel so this was quite a normal interview in the circumstances." Wagstaffe asked Ward: "He's never asked you to put him in touch with anyone you know? Or for information of any kind." Ward replied: "No, he hasn't. But if he did, naturally I would get in touch with you straight away. If there's anything I can do I'd be only too pleased to."

Keith Wagstaffe reported back to MI5: "Ward asked me if it was all right for him to continue to see Ivanov. I replied that there was no reason why he should not. He then said if there was any way in which he could help he would be very ready to do so. I thanked him for his offer and asked him to get in touch with me should Ivanov at any time in the future make any propositions to him... Ward was completely open about his association with Ivanov... I do not think that he (Ward) is of security interest."

On 8th July 1961 Keeler met John Profumo, the Minister of War, at a party at Cliveden. Profumo kept in contact with Keeler and they eventually began an affair. At the same time Keeler was sleeping with Eugene Ivanov, a Soviet spy. According to Keeler: "Their (Ward and Hollis) plan was simple. I was to find out, through pillow talk, from Jack Profumo when nuclear warheads were being moved to Germany."

Keeler was also invited to sex parties. In December 1961 Mariella Novotny held a party that became known as the "Feast of Peacocks". According to Christine Keeler, there was "a lavish dinner in which this man wearing only... a black mask with slits for eyes and laces up the back... and a tiny apron - one like the waitresses wore in 1950s tearooms - asked to be whipped if people were not happy with his services."

On 11th July, 1962, Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies arrived in the United States. She later discovered that her movements were being monitored by the FBI. Seven days later she returned to London.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis Ward told Keeler that he believed John F. Kennedy would be assassinated. He told her and Eugene Ivanov: "A man like John Kennedy will not be allowed to stay in such an important position of power in the world, I assure you of that."

On 28th October, 1962, Stephen Ward introduced Keeler to Michael Eddowes, a lawyer who had become a rich businessman who owned Bistro Vino, a chain of restaurants. As Keeler later revealed: "I kept my date with Michael Eddowes but he was far too old for me. He was nearly sixty but her certainly was interested and wanted to set me up in a flat in Regent's Park."

During this period she became involved with two black men, Lucky Gordon and John Edgecombe. The two men became jealous of each other and this resulted in Edgecombe slashing Gordon's face with a knife. On 14th December 1962, Edgecombe, fired a gun at Stephen Ward's Wimpole Mews flat, where Keeler had been visiting with Mandy Rice-Davies.

Two days after the shooting Keeler contacted Michael Eddowes for legal advice about the Edgecombe case. During this meeting she told Eddowes: "Stephen (Ward) asked me to ask Jack Profumo what date the Germans were to get the bomb." However, she later claimed that she knew Ward was joking when he said this. Eddowes then asked Ward about this matter. Keeler later recalled: "Stephen fed him the line he had prepared with Roger Hollis for such an eventuality: it was Eugene (Ivanov) who had asked me to find out about the bomb."

A few days later Keeler met John Lewis, a Labour Party MP and successful businessman at a Christmas party. Keeler later confessed: "I told him about Stephen asking me to get details about the bomb. I told him about Jack. He told George Wigg, the powerful Labour MP with the ear of Harold Wilson. Wigg, who was Jack's opposite number in the Commons, started a Lewis-style dossier; it was the official start of the investigations and questions which would pull away the foundations of the Macmillan government."

Keeler met Earl Fenton, a CIA agent, at a New Year party. The following month Fenton contacted Keeler. According to her account: "Stephen had been telling him lies, feeding him false information and indicating that I was spying for the Russians because of my love for Eugene. The message was to leave the country, say nothing about anything I might have seen or heard." Keeler was also told at this time that Eugene Ivanov had fled back to Moscow.

A FBI document reveals that on 29th January, 1963, Thomas Corbally, an American businessman who was a close friend of Stephen Ward, told Alfred Wells, the secretary to David Bruce, the ambassador, that Christine Keeler was having a sexual relationship with John Profumo and Eugene Ivanov. The document also stated that Harold Macmillan had been informed about this scandal.

On 21st March, George Wigg asked the Home Secretary in a debate on the John Vassall affair in the House of Commons, to deny rumours relating to Christine Keeler and the John Edgecombe case. Richard Crossman then commented that Paris Match magazine intended to publish a full account of Keeler's relationship with John Profumo, the Minister of War, in the government. Barbara Castle also asked questions if Keeler's disappearance had anything to do with Profumo.

The following day Profumo made a statement attacking the Labour Party MPs for making allegations about him under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, and after admitting that he knew Keeler he stated: "I have no connection with her disappearance. I have no idea where she is." He added that there was "no impropriety in their relationship" and that he would not hesitate to issue writs if anything to the contrary was written in the newspapers.

As a result of this statement the newspapers decided not to print anything about John Profumo and Keeler for fear of being sued for libel. However, George Wigg refused to let the matter drop and on 25th May, 1963, once again raised the issue of Keeler, saying this was not an attack on Profumo's private life but a matter of national security.

On 5th June, John Profumo resigned as War Minister. His statement said that he had lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler. The next day the Daily Mirror said: "What the hell is going on in this country? All power corrupts and the Tories have been in power for nearly twelve years."

Some newspapers called for Harold Macmillan to resign as prime minister. This he refused to do but he did ask Lord Denning to investigate the security aspects of the Profumo affair. Some of the prostitutes who worked for Stephen Ward began to sell their stories to the national press. Mandy Rice-Davies told the Daily Sketch that Christine Keeler had sexual relationships with John Profumo and Eugene Ivanov, an naval attaché at the Soviet embassy.

On 7th June, Keeler told the Daily Express of her secret "dates" with Profumo. She also admitted that she had been seeing Eugene Ivanov at the same time, sometimes on the same day, as Profumo. In a television interview Stephen Ward told Desmond Wilcox that he had warned the security services about Keeler's relationship with Profumo.

The following day Ward was arrested and charged with living off immoral earnings between 1961 and 1963. He was refused bail because it was feared that he might try to influence witnesses. Another concern was that he might provide information on the case to the media.

On 14th June, the London solicitor, Michael Eddowes, claimed that Christine Keeler told him that Eugene Ivanov had asked her to get information about nuclear weapons from Profumo. Eddowes added that he had written to Harold Macmillan to ask why no action had been taken on information he had given to Special Branch about this on 29th March. Soon afterwards Keeler told the News of the World that "I'm no spy, I just couldn't ask Jack for secrets."

In a FBI classified memo dated 20th June, 1963, from Alan Belmont to Clyde Tolson referred to the concerns of Defence Secretary Robert McNamara about the John Profumo case. It stated "Mr. McNamara referred to a memorandum from the FBI dated June 14, 1963, advising that Air Force personnel may have had relationships with Christine Keeler." The next section is blacked out but it goes onto say: "McNamara said he felt like he was sitting on a bomb in this matter as he could not tell what would come out of it and he wanted to be sure that every effort was being made to get information from the British particularly as it affected U.S. personnel."

The trial of Stephen Ward began at the Old Bailey on July 1963. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, were both called as witnesses. Ward testified that he had informed MI5 about Keeler's affairs with John Profumo and Eugene Ivanov.

Ronna Ricardo had said that she had sex for money and then gave it to Ward at a preliminary hearing. However, she retracted this information at the trial and claimed that Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert had forced the statement from her by threats against the Ricardo family. According to Philip Knightley: "Ricardo said that Herbert told her that if she did not agree to help them then the police would take action against her family. Her younger sister, on probation and living with her, would be taken into care. They might even make application to take her baby away from her because she had been an unfit mother."

The main evidence against Stephen Ward came from Vickie Barrett. She claimed that Ward had picked her up in Oxford Street and had taken her home to have sex with his friends. Barrett was unable to name any of these men. She added that Ward was paid by these friends and he kept some of the money for her in a little drawer. Christine Keeler claims that she had never seen Barrett before: "She (Barrett) described Stephen handing out horsewhips, canes, contraceptives and coffee and how, having collected her weapons, she had treated the waiting clients. It sounded, and was, nonsense. I had lived with Stephen and never seen any evidence of anything like that... She has never to my knowledge been seen again. I suspect she was spirited out of the country, given a new identity, a new life."

Ward told his defence counsel, David Tudor-Price: "One of my great perils is that at least half a dozen of the (witnesses) are lying and their motives vary from malice to cupidity and fear... In the case of both Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies there is absolutely no doubt that they are committed to stories which are already sold or could be sold to newspapers and that my conviction would free these newspapers to print stories which they would otherwise be quite unable to print (for libel reasons)."

Stephen Ward was very upset by the judge's summing-up that included the following: "If Stephen Ward was telling the truth in the witness box, there are in this city many witnesses of high estate and low who could have come and testified in support of his evidence." Several people present in the court claimed that Judge Archie Pellow Marshall was clearly biased against Ward. France Soir reported: "However impartial he tried to appear, Judge Marshall was betrayed by his voice."

That night Ward wrote to his friend, Noel Howard-Jones: "It is really more than I can stand - the horror, day after day at the court and in the streets. It is not only fear, it is a wish not to let them get me. I would rather get myself. I do hope I have not let people down too much. I tried to do my stuff but after Marshall's summing-up, I've given up all hope." Ward then took an overdose of sleeping tablets. He was in a coma when the jury reached their verdict of guilty of the charge of living on the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies on Wednesday 31st July. Three days later, Ward died in St Stephen's Hospital.

In his book, The Trial of Stephen Ward (1964), Ludovic Kennedy considers the guilty verdict of Ward to be a miscarriage of justice. In An Affair of State (1987), the journalist, Philip Knightley argues: "Witnesses were pressured by the police into giving false evidence. Those who had anything favourable to say were silenced. And when it looked as though Ward might still survive, the Lord Chief Justice shocked the legal profession with an unprecedented intervention to ensure Ward would be found guilty."

At the end of the Ward trial, Newspapers began reporting on the sex parties attended by Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. The Washington Star quoted Rice-Davies as saying "there was a dinner party where a naked man wearing a mask waited on table like a slave." Dorothy Kilgallen wrote an article where she stated: "The authorities searching the apartment of one of the principals in the case came upon a photograph showing a key figure disporting with a bevy of ladies. All were nude except for the gentleman in the picture who was wearing an apron. And this is a man who has been on extremely friendly terms with the very proper Queen and members of her immediate family!"

The News of the World immediately identified the hostess at the dinner party as being Mariella Novotny. Various rumours began to circulate about the name of the man who wore the mask and apron. This included John Profumo and another member of the government, Ernest Marples. Whereas another minister, Lord Hailsham, the leader of the House of Lords at the time, issued a statement saying it was not him.

Novotny refused to comment on her activities and the man in the mask remained unidentified. However, Time Magazine speculated that it was film director, Anthony Asquith, the son of former prime minister, Herbert Asquith.

Christine Keeler pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice and to perjury and was sentenced to nine months in prison. After she was released she used the money from the News of the World to buy a house for £13,000 in Linhope Street in Marylebone.

In her memoirs Keeler claimed that she was in great demand after all the publicity she had received and had sexual relationships with George Peppard, Maximilian Schell, Warren Beatty and Victor Lownes. She eventually married James Levermore but the relationship did not last.

Mariella Novotny was found dead in her bed in February 1983. It was claimed by the police that she had died of a drug overdose. Christine Keeler later wrote: "The Westminster Coroner, Dr Paul Knapman, called it misadventure. Along with People in Moscow, I still think it was murder. A central figure in the strangest days of my life always believed Mariella would be killed by American or British agents, most probably by the CIA."

In 1983 Keeler published an autobiography, Nothing But. At the time she worked in telephone sales in Fulham. Later she worked for a dry-cleaning business in Battersea. In the early 1990s she moved to the south coast and was employed as a dinner lady at Norton School. A second autobiography, The Truth at Last, appeared in 2001.

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In 1987 a book was published entitled "An Affair of State: Profumo Case and the Framing of Stephen Ward". The co-authors were Phillip Knightley and Caroline Kennedy.

_____________________________________________

Now THAT'S interesting, isn't it?

Great thread, John.

--Thomas

Edited by Thomas Graves
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I have just discovered that J. Edgar Hoover used Dorothy Kilgallen via Richard Berlin, to spread the rumour that JFK was involved in the Profumo case. On 23rd June, 1963, Dorothy Kilgallen published an article in the New York Journal-American: "One of the biggest names in American politics - a man who holds a very high elective office - has been injected into Britain's vice-security scandal." This was a reference to the John Profumo and Christine Keeler affair. Kilgallen went on to describe one of the girls as "a beautiful Chinese-American girl now in London." She added that the "highest authorities" had "identified her as Suzy Chang."

The other interesting point is that on one memo about the Profumo case, Hoover has made a handwritten comment: "Roy Cohn has this info". Why? Well he was Thomas Corbally's attorney. It was Corbally who in January 1963 tipped off the then American ambassador (David Bruce) in London about the Profumo affair.

clearpixel.gifhttp://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:PuKWN...;cd=2&gl=us

ache:PuKWNJh8mrEJ:www.paperlessarchives.com/rometsch.html+Carroll+Arms+Hotel+Quorum+Club+Washington+DC&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

The dates of these two docs - October 28 - October 31 meeting, seem to come at critical moments regarding the Cuban backchannel, the maritime attack on Cuba by the Rex and JFK's visit to Democrats in Philadelphia. -BK

Ellen Rometsch

President John Kennedy Administration/Robert Kennedy

FBI Files

478 pages of FBI files covering Ellen Rometsch, archived on CD-ROM. Files date from 1963 to 1987.

Ellen Rometsch was born in Kleinitz Germany, in 1936. After World War II Kleinitz became part of East Germany. In 1955 she immigrated to West Germany. Ellen Rometsch's second husband was Rolf Rometsch, a West German Military aide assigned to Washington, D.C. Mrs. Rometsch arrived in the U.S. on April 6, 1961. She was investigated as an internal security threat, as it was reported that she came from East Germany. The investigation finally determined that Mrs. Rometsch did not pose an internal security threat.

Ellen Rometsch frequented the Quorum Club, a private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill run by Lyndon B. Johnson aide Bobby Baker. In his 1978 book, "Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator," Baker referred to the place as where, "membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connecteds who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations."

According to presidential historian Michael Bechloss, in the summer of 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover went to Robert Kennedy and said, "We have information that not only your brother, the president, but others in Washington have been involved with a woman whom we suspect as a Soviet intelligence agent, someone who is linked to East German intelligence." Bechloss says Robert Kennedy spoke with Senate leaders Everett Dirksen (Republican) and Mike Mansfield (Democrat) and asked them to keep to themselves whatever knowledge they had of this. According to Bechloss, Robert Kennedy also had Rometsch expelled from the United States within a week and flown to West Germany.

The files show a high level of interest in the Ellen Rometsch case. Memos indicate the scope and range of the investigation. Files show that Department of Justice files on Ellen Rometsch were moved to Robert F. Kennedy's personal files. A memo shows that while discussing the Rometsch issue with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover broached the subject of the possibility of President John Kennedy replacing him as FBI director. A July 1963 FBI memo calls for an end to the investigation of the Rometsch case. Memos show that after taking office following the assassination of President Kennedy, President Johnson encouraged further investigation into the Rometsch case. Files show that the FBI at least initially did not make files concerning Rometsch available to Robert Kennedy's replacement as attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach. A memo summarizes a 1965 FBI interview of Robert Kennedy concerning Ellen Rometsch, John F. Kennedy and former publisher of the Washington Post Philip Graham. Files show that the FBI failed to develop any information connecting Rometsch with intelligence activities in the United States. Specific results of the FBI investigation were withheld. The memos however show the dissemination of whatever that information was and the interest of others to see it. A memo indicates that some FBI files on Rometch have been intentionally destroyed by the FBI. Materials show the date and number of pages in the files which are currently heavily redacted or withheld in their entirety, which researchers may want to pursue in the future.

The disc contains a text transcript of all recognizable text embedded into the graphic image of each page of each document, creating a searchable finding aid. Text searches can be done across all files on the disc.

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Not to lower the discourse, which has been thorough, but members who want a wee taste of the atmosphere of the Profumo scandal may wish to see the 1989 film "Scandal," directed by Michael Caton-Jones.

John Hurt gives a convincing embodiment to Stephen Ward's paradoxes. Joanne Whalley-Kilmer and Bridget Fonda look eerily like Christine and Mandy.

Much is left out or soft-pedaled, as this is dramatized historical fiction. Christine's co-involvement with Profumo and Ivanov is portrayed as an accident with tragic consequences. Mariella Novotny only gets a walk-on, played by Britt Ekland. There is, though, the dramatization of a representative of a British intelligence faction inveigling Ward to begin the party-girl operation that ensnares Profumo, and of Ward later abandoned by the same seducer.

The trivia notes on the imdb.com page for "Scandal" say that "Many UK actors are said to have refused roles in this movie because of the subject could cost them knighthoods and other honors," for whatever that info's worth. It dodn't hurt the future Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Profumo.

Among historical entertainments or explorations, there are some films that contain enough satisfying or audacious scenes to offset any unsatisfactory material; this is one of them. (Paul Schrader's "Patty Hearst" also comes to mind - as does "JFK.") Whatever quibbles one might have, these films stand up, so much so that any later films on these subjects might be hobbled by having to self-consciously rehash some of the same scenes, and thus not pull them off as well. So "Scandal" makes the cut.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098260/

Edited by David Andrews
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I have just discovered that J. Edgar Hoover used Dorothy Kilgallen via Richard Berlin, to spread the rumour that JFK was involved in the Profumo case. On 23rd June, 1963, Dorothy Kilgallen published an article in the New York Journal-American: "One of the biggest names in American politics - a man who holds a very high elective office - has been injected into Britain's vice-security scandal." This was a reference to the John Profumo and Christine Keeler affair. Kilgallen went on to describe one of the girls as "a beautiful Chinese-American girl now in London." She added that the "highest authorities" had "identified her as Suzy Chang."

The other interesting point is that on one memo about the Profumo case, Hoover has made a handwritten comment: "Roy Cohn has this info". Why? Well he was Thomas Corbally's attorney. It was Corbally who in January 1963 tipped off the then American ambassador (David Bruce) in London about the Profumo affair.

clearpixel.gifhttp://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:PuKWN...;cd=2&gl=us

ache:PuKWNJh8mrEJ:www.paperlessarchives.com/rometsch.html+Carroll+Arms+Hotel+Quorum+Club+Washington+DC&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

The dates of these two docs - October 28 - October 31 meeting, seem to come at critical moments regarding the Cuban backchannel, the maritime attack on Cuba by the Rex and JFK's visit to Democrats in Philadelphia. -BK

Ellen Rometsch

President John Kennedy Administration/Robert Kennedy

FBI Files

478 pages of FBI files covering Ellen Rometsch, archived on CD-ROM. Files date from 1963 to 1987.

Ellen Rometsch was born in Kleinitz Germany, in 1936. After World War II Kleinitz became part of East Germany. In 1955 she immigrated to West Germany. Ellen Rometsch's second husband was Rolf Rometsch, a West German Military aide assigned to Washington, D.C. Mrs. Rometsch arrived in the U.S. on April 6, 1961. She was investigated as an internal security threat, as it was reported that she came from East Germany. The investigation finally determined that Mrs. Rometsch did not pose an internal security threat.

Ellen Rometsch frequented the Quorum Club, a private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill run by Lyndon B. Johnson aide Bobby Baker. In his 1978 book, "Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator," Baker referred to the place as where, "membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connecteds who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations."

According to presidential historian Michael Bechloss, in the summer of 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover went to Robert Kennedy and said, "We have information that not only your brother, the president, but others in Washington have been involved with a woman whom we suspect as a Soviet intelligence agent, someone who is linked to East German intelligence." Bechloss says Robert Kennedy spoke with Senate leaders Everett Dirksen (Republican) and Mike Mansfield (Democrat) and asked them to keep to themselves whatever knowledge they had of this. According to Bechloss, Robert Kennedy also had Rometsch expelled from the United States within a week and flown to West Germany.

The files show a high level of interest in the Ellen Rometsch case. Memos indicate the scope and range of the investigation. Files show that Department of Justice files on Ellen Rometsch were moved to Robert F. Kennedy's personal files. A memo shows that while discussing the Rometsch issue with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover broached the subject of the possibility of President John Kennedy replacing him as FBI director. A July 1963 FBI memo calls for an end to the investigation of the Rometsch case. Memos show that after taking office following the assassination of President Kennedy, President Johnson encouraged further investigation into the Rometsch case. Files show that the FBI at least initially did not make files concerning Rometsch available to Robert Kennedy's replacement as attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach. A memo summarizes a 1965 FBI interview of Robert Kennedy concerning Ellen Rometsch, John F. Kennedy and former publisher of the Washington Post Philip Graham. Files show that the FBI failed to develop any information connecting Rometsch with intelligence activities in the United States. Specific results of the FBI investigation were withheld. The memos however show the dissemination of whatever that information was and the interest of others to see it. A memo indicates that some FBI files on Rometch have been intentionally destroyed by the FBI. Materials show the date and number of pages in the files which are currently heavily redacted or withheld in their entirety, which researchers may want to pursue in the future.

FROM A BOAT AGAINST THE CURRENT: Aug. 21, 08.

Mike T, A JERSEY GUY.

http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:sujbY...cd=10&gl=us

Thursday, August 21,

This Day in Presidential History (JFK's East German Mistress-Spy)EllenRomesch.jpg

August 21, 1963—Justice Department officials quietly but hastily deported Ellen Rometsch, a 27-year-old brunette from East Germany, in an attempt to prevent disclosure of possibly the most explosive secret of President John F. Kennedy: his sexual involvement with an alleged Communist spy.

I learned about this scandal in two of the more substantial, less gossip-ridden histories of the Kennedy years: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, by Taylor Branch, and The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963, by Michael Beschloss. Branch and Beschloss write vividly but carefully from oral history memoirs and primary sources, with a view of the President that is sober and balanced. In other words, they have produced neither hagiographies nor anti-Camelot screeds, earning credibility in their accounts of this episode.

Who was Ellen Rometsch? Start with the photo accompanying this blog. She looks like a somewhat more exotic version of Elizabeth Taylor, doesn't she? Or, perhaps, one of the President's other dangerous liaisons, Judith Campbell Exner.

Rometsch's sexual loyalties were as shifting as her political ones. As a teenager she had joined the Communist Party Youth Group. In 1955, she flew to West Germany. With one bad marriage already behind her, she soon wed Rolf Rometsch, a sergeant in the West German air force. His assignment to his country's military mission in Washington brought the couple to the U.S.—and, eventually, Ellen to the attention of the American President.

Even a five-year-old son did not slow her down, as she soon became involved in the swirling excitement of the Quorum Club, located in a three-room suite at the Carroll Arms Hotel, just across the street from the new Senate Office Building. This private social club was run by Bobby Baker, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson now coming under suspicion for influence peddling. The terms that were beginning to be applied to her included "party girl," "courtesan," "hostess," and worse.

The Quorum Club's central location made it convenient—in some cases, too readily so—for the Capitol Hill power players and fixers swirling about. "My wife is fond of the steak and sandwiches," claimed Congressman Bill Ayres.

The affair between Rometsch and JFK appears to have started in 1961 and continued for some time. Its days were numbered once FBI agents got wind of it and interrogated the young woman. Her prior East German background might have been enough to convince director J. Edgar Hoover that she was a spy for East Germany's head, Walter Ulbricht. His leak to this effect, to journalist Courtney Evans, convinced Robert Robert that she had to be deported.

JFK's affairs had the frequent thrill of danger, whether with a twenty-year-old intern in the White House press office (Marion Fahnestock), a Hollywood superstar (Marilyn Monroe), an artist who brought him LSD from Timothy Leary (Mary Pinchot Meyer), and a Mafia moll (Judith Campbell Exner). Yet, judging from his actions around this time--including unusually high interest in the Profumo sex scandal convulsing the United Kingdom at this time--none of them had the sheer political TNT potential of the Rometsch affair.

The problem was that it showed no signs of going away—particularly because of 1) ongoing investigations into the affairs of Bobby Baker, and 2) Hoover's in anything that might give him blackmail material over the President. (As if he didn't already have enough: not only knowledge of Rometsch and Exner, but, dating back to the early 1940s, of Inga Arvad, a Danish woman the FBI suspected of being a Nazi spy--and knew was the paramour of dashing young Lt. John F. Kennedy). In late October, reporter Clark Mollenhoff used a leak from Hoover to charge that "some prominent new frontiersmen from the executive level of government" were involved with the "party girl."

Rushing once again to protect his brother's interest, Bobby Kennedy pursued a two-track course: 1) dispatch an aide to Germany to convince the now-separated, now-annoyed Ellen from going public, and 2) persuade Hoover to steer Congress from investigating. In the second case, Hoover actually sat down privately with Senate leaders Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen to convince them that any exposure of this affair would ruin the reputations of senators from both sides of the aisle.You'd think he'd learn from his scrape, but JFK couldn't resist a gibe at the institution in which he sat before becoming President. "Boy, the dirt he (Hoover) has on those senators," he remarked. "You wouldn't believe it."

AND THEN THERE'S JCR:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon192.htm

By Jon Christian Ryter

September 19, 2007

NewsWithViews.com

...In 1962 Baker—still the front man for LBJ's nefarious moneymaking schemes and congressional pimp for powerful Congressmen Senators and even more powerful corporate leaders reportedly linked President John F. Kennedy up with Ellen Romesch, a regular "escort" at the Quorum Club—Baker's private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill. In his own memoirs, Baker noted that Kennedy sent him word later that Romesch was the best he ever had. The affair between Kennedy and Romesch continued for quite some time. J. Edgar Hoover uncovered Kennedy's romance with Romesch—who was married to a West German Air Force sergeant who was assigned to the West German military mission in Washington. Ellen Romesch, who was a member of the Communist Youth from her early teens, was believed by the FBI to be a communist agent. Bobby Kennedy had her quietly deported. As Hoover investigated the Quorum Club, he discovered a litany of famous men lined up at the sexual feeding trough—including not only the President but his brother as well. The three names that were connected to the Kennedys were Romesch, Maria Novtny and Suzy Chang. All of them came from communist countries. Hoover suspected all of them were spies. He fed the story—and Bobby Baker's name—to columnist Drew Pearson who, at the urging of Lyndon Johnson, used the material....

More on the Carroll Arms Hotel Bar – Quorum Club –

From: John F. Kennedy: A Biography, by Michael O'Brian, 2006, p. 711

"Baker not only brilliantly guided the Senate's legislative process, he did personal favors for senators, congressmen, lobbyists, and friends. The favor included providing them with women. He helped found the Quorum Club, a private suite in the Carroll Arms Hotel in Washington patronized by legislators and lobbyists on Capitol Hill. There beautiful Ellen Rometsch served as hostess and high-priced call girl. Bill Thompson, always on the lookout for beautiful women to take to the President, spotted Rometsch and arranged through Baker to bring her to the White House.

"She had good manners and she was very accommodating," Baker said of Rometsch. "I must have had fifty friends who went with her, and not one of them ever complained. She was a real joy to be with.....Kennedy understood, said Baker…On July 3, 1963, Hover informed Robert Kennedy that the FBI believes Rometsch was having illicit relations with highly placed government officials. Ominously, the FBI thought she came from East Germany and had formerly worked for Walte Ulbricht, the Communist dictator of East Germany….arranged to have her and he husband quietly sent back to West German in August 1963….The Rometsch story remained quiet until October 26, 1963, when investigative reporter Clark Mollenhoff published a dispatch in the Des Moines Register revealing that the Senate Rules Committee studying the Bobby Baker scandal was also planning to hear testimony about Ellen Rometsch and her abrupt expulsion from the United States. "The evidence is also likely to include identification of several high executive branch officials as friends and associates of [Rometsch], the part-time model and party girl," Mollenhoff wrote.

Mollenhoff's story horrified President Kennedy. In an exceptionally unusual entry in her diary Evelyn Lincoln wrote on October 28, 1963: "The President came in all excited about the news reports concerning the German women and other prostitutes getting mixed up with government officials, Congressmen, etc. He called Mike Mansfield to come to the office to discuss the playing down of this news report." 63

TIME, Friday, Nov. 8, 1963

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896999-1,00.html

...Among these was a young German woman who was asked to leave the U.S. after FBI agents showed her dossier to other interested authorities. She was Ellen Rometsch, 27, a sometime fashion model and wife of a West German army sergeant who was assigned to his country's military mission in Washington. An ambitious, name-dropping, heavily made-up mother of a five-year-old boy, Elly was a fixture at Washington parties. In September, five weeks after the Rometsches were shipped back to West Germany, her husband Rolf, 25, divorced her on the ground of "conduct contrary to matrimonial rules." Last week, while Elly hid out on her parents' farm near Wuppertal, Rolf spoke ruefully of his Washington experience, said that he "had no idea what was going on behind my back. It's a case of a woman who falls for the temptation of a sweet life her husband can't afford."

The Club. One repository of the sweet life was the Quorum Club, located in a three-room suite at the Carroll Arms Hotel, just across the street from the new Senate Office Building. Elly is remembered as a hostess there.

Bobby Baker was a leading light of the "Q Club." He helped organize it, was a charter member and served on the board of governors. The club, so its charter says, is a place for the pursuit of "literary purposes and promotion of social intercourse." Actually it was open to anyone with a literate bankroll: initiation fee, $100; yearly dues, $50. Among the 197 members are many lobbyists and several governmental figures, including Democratic Senators Frank Church of Idaho, Daniel Brewster of Maryland, J. Howard Edmondson of Oklahoma and Harrison Williams of New Jersey. Among Republican members are two Congressmen, Montana's James Battin and Ohio's William Ayres.

Many members were quick to point out that the club is a handy place to dine ("My wife is fond of the steak and sandwiches," said Bill Ayres) as well as a convenient spot for cocktails. Decorated to the male taste, the club's dimly lit interior sports prints and paintings of women with imposing façades, leather-topped card tables, a well-stocked bar, a piano and, most convenient of all, a buzzer that is wired to the Capitol so that any Senator present can be easily summoned to cast his vote on an impending issue.

The Q Club was a useful spot for meeting influential people in business and politics. Such people, in turn, were useful to Bobby Baker in his breathless pursuit of a buck. It was, by any standard, a successful pursuit, for Baker's net worth rose to something around $2,000,000. That income, presumably, enabled Baker and his wife Dorothy, who has an $11,000-a-year job with a Senate committee, to move recently into a $125,000 house near the home of Bobby's friend and longtime Senate sponsor, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, in Washington's Spring Valley section. ….

…..Obviously, a lot of deep-digging investigating remained to be done before the scandalous skeins of Bobby Baker's high life could be untangled and strung back together in a definitive way. But it was just as certain that the U.S. Senate was doing itself no service by its closed-door, clam-mouthed handling of the case. For the way things were going, instead of only a handful of members suffering embarrassment or worse, the Senate and almost all its members were being subjected to suspicion.

http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/suspect.htm

Roll Call was a free paper supported by advertising. Some of the advertising was paid for, some was run and not paid for, and some was published and eaten. Sid was a bachelor whose sole interest in cooking consisted of making coffee when no one else was around to do it for him. Among the purposes of the paper, therefore, was to feed the editor. Sid traded restaurant ads for free meals. It was a shrewd business move. While plenty of advertisers failed to pay for their ads, none refused to serve him….

Sid also found politics funny and had no objections if one of his writers wanted to suggest that the funny had, on a particular occasion, slipped into the absurd. After all, it was Sid who would take me over to the Carroll Arms Hotel to enjoy Mark Russell, a discovery he shamelessly promoted in the paper.

The Carroll Arms had been a 'railroad hotel,' situated between Union Station and the halls of Congress. Shelby Scates in his book, Maurice Rosenblatt and the Fall of Joseph McCarthy, reported that rooms in the hotel - where McCarthy aides Roy Cohn and David Schine lived on the top floor - went for as little as $10 a night as late as 1961. On the second floor was the notorious Quorum Club, a hangout for favored lobbyists of Senate Secretary and LBJ capo Bobby Baker. And in the bar was piano-playing comedian Russell who later told Scates that In those days there was no satire on television, no irreverence. The barometer was good old Bob Hope."

Francis R. Valeo, Secretary to the Majority 1963-1966

Interview, US Senate Historical Office. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/valeo_interview__07.pdf

The Carroll Arms Hotel Bar standup piano player Mark Russell is still at it:

http://www.markrussell.net/

Mark's playing standup piano at the Omni Shoreham TONIGHT!

December 15 Washington, DC Omni Shoreham Hotel 7 & 9 pm 202-756-5210

After serving his full hitch he found himself in the smoke-filled bars of Washington, DC, singing his funny songs. When he got a job in a Capitol Hill bar he first thing he thought was "I've started at the bottom but I've managed to work my way down."

YULK, YULK, YULK

Mark Russell's answer to the frequently asked question, "Do you have any writers?" is "Oh, yes...I have 535 writers. One hundred in the Senate and 435 in the House of Representatives."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Russell

Edited by William Kelly
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Thank you for all those who have posted interesting information about the case.

In 1963 Keeler told newspapers that Ward’s comments to her to get information from Profumo was a joke. However, in her 2001 autobiography, The Truth at Last, she claims:

Before the beginning of one of the greatest miscarriages of British justice ever (the conviction of Ward for living on immoral earnings), in early July 1963 I had to go to see Lord Denning at the government offices near Leicester Square. Denning had started hearing evidence on 24 June 1963, and interviewed Stephen three times and talked to Jack Profumo twice. He talked to lots of people - from the prime minister to newspaper owners and reporters, to six girls who knew Stephen.

I was not included in that half-dozen. I found myself a major player in the inquiry and had two interviews with Denning. I was allowed to have a legal representative and Walter Lyons went with me to the polished-wood-panelled offices Denning used. Denning was quietly spoken and asked me all the relevant questions, the ones I had expected. Questions like who had been present with Eugene and Stephen and where and when, and if I knew of any missiles. I answered him honestly. Denning had all the - well, all the ones they had given him - police, M15 and CIA reports before him. He also had Sir Godfrey Nicholson's and Lord Arran's statements.

He knew that Stephen was a spy and that I knew too much. During my two sessions with him I told him all about Hollis and Blunt: how Stephen had politely introduced me and how I had said "hello" and nodded when they visited. I told him all about Sir Godfrey's visit and how I had seen Sir Godfrey with Eugene. He asked me very precisely who had met Eugene and about the visitors to Wimpole Mews. He showed me a photograph of Hollis - it wasn't a sharp shot of him - and asked me to identify him. I told Denning this was the man who had visited Stephen. He showed me a photograph of Sir Godfrey and I also identified him. He did not show me a picture of Blunt for, I suspect, they already knew more than they wanted to know about Blunt. Denning was very gentle about it and I told him everything. This was the nice gentleman who was going to look after me. But I was ignored, side-lined - disparaged as a xxxx so that he could claim that there had been no security risk. It was the ultimate whitewash.

I told Denning that Stephen had wanted me dead because I could have betrayed them all. I told him I had been entrapped in Stephen's spy ring and had witnessed his meetings with double agents and Soviet spies. I told him I had taken sensitive material to the Russian Embassy. He ignored my evidence that Stephen Ward was a Russian spy and that one of the top men in British intelligence was a Moscow man.

I was a young girl when I met Stephen Ward and not much more than a teenager when I was interviewed by Lord Denning. Like Stephen, he seemed a father figure.

I told him all about Stephen's spying activities and about high society decadence. Denning chose - as with everything in his flawed report - to ignore me for the national interest. I told him about Stephen saying John Kennedy was "too dangerous" and would have to be "put out of the picture". That Kennedy was the main threat to world peace. A few months later Kennedy was killed in Dallas. I was told to be quiet or else. I was terrified.

Fearful about what secrets Stephen had sent to Moscow Centre, when he produced his report Denning had Eugene being introduced to Cliveden with Arran on 28 October 1962, and to Lord Ednam's home on 26 December 1962. He used dates and places to cover up all that happened and denied all the evidence he had from me and others. He wrote his report to have Mandy take over my life and had her living at Wimpole Mews on 31 October 1962. It was rubbish and it introduced her to people and events she knew nothing about. And Mandy made as much capital as she could from that.

Michael Eddowes, who was also linked to MI5, also reported to Special Branch that Keeler was part of a spy ring being run by Eugene Ivanov. Eddowes was later to write a book suggesting that Oswald was a Soviet agent.

Ward met Eugene Ivanov through Colin Coote, at a lunch held on 21st January 1961. If Ward had been an Soviet agent, it is likely that Coote was also an agent. However, Coote was also closely connected to MI5 and was the editor of the right-wing Daily Telegraph.

During his trial Ward claimed that he had kept MI5 informed about Profumo and Ivanov attendance at these sex parties via an agent called “Woods”. MI5 denied his existence and the jury refused to believe that Ward was involved in an undercover operation.

However, in 1987, the Sunday Times traced “Woods”. His real name was Keith Wagstaffe. MI5 refused permission for Wagstaffe to be named or interviewed by the reporters. However, he did secretly provide information to Tony Summers for his book “Honeytrap”. He said: “Ward might still be alive today (if we had provided information about his work for MI5). We didn’t expect the final outcome, and we were very cut up when we learned he was dead.”

We now know that Ward was part of a honeytrap operation that was an attempt to blackmail Ivanov into spying for MI5. What is less clear is why Jack Profumo was not warned about what was going on. If he had been, the case would never have become public. The possibility remains that the intelligences agencies were trying to entrap these leading politicians. This is what was happening with the Bobby Baker’s Quorum Club. Were the FBI, CIA and MI5 involved in this Baker operation? If so, were they also behind the Ward operation? They were definitely using some of the same girls. In my next post I will provide some information that suggests this was the case.

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