MI5 Files and the Man in the Mask

Last month the National Archive released 147 files from it’s MI5 records, 19 of which were about either about Stephen Ward or Eugene Ivanov. Really it is 19 packs of documents, and each file contained a hundred or so pages with surprisingly few redactions.

Regarding redactions there is a wonderful document in the pile, where a General has been contacted by the BBC for an interview, the General’s name is redacted in paragraph one and isn’t redacted in paragraph two.

A document in the files does not necessarily make it the full truth, witness statement can of course be wrong but there are lots of interesting titbits that give a little more colour to the events around the scandal, such as the reoccurring stories of Eugene Ivanov getting stopped for dangerous driving and even a surveillance report describing his terrible parking!

21st Nov 1961

There are a number of interviews with people who give full accounts of what they do, only to finish up by saying “But I never met any of the people involved”.

A woman called Dorothy Woolfs contacted the police, with a detailed account of a 20 year affair with Profumo, and that he was the father of her child. I have no idea if this is true or false.

There are a few, quite confusing papers, where MI5 seem to be interviewing the wrong Stephen Ward! MI5 take the time to draw up a full biography for this wrong man who was recently married, wasn’t an osteopath and had no communist sympathies at all. (I wonder if this led to some confusion regards Wards own political views?)

Drugs

There is a conversation where Profumo denies any impropriety with Christine and goes onto to say that he understood she was a drug addict… and yes the conversation was with the suspected KGB mole Roger H. Hollis.

John Lewis, the former Labour MP, gives a similar statement in another interview, and also adds “she has started using a needle, so wont live long”.

This is highly unlikely, as Christine hated needles! She used to actually whimper if a nurse came at her with a syringe - it was very funny.

Sex Parties and the Man in the Mask

There are a lot of of interviews and papers on the sex parties, who was at them, rubber penis’, naked people in streets, loaded guns and people who liked to put their penis through a hole in wood panels and bang the end of it! (It was Hod Dibben, Mariella Navotney husband Apparently )

Lots of witness statements about the “Man in the Mask”, the slave who served guests at the infamous “peacock party”.

He is named by a few as Robert Wills Asquith, a businessman from Yorkshire, and there is even a detailed interview with Mr Asquith in July 1963 by special branch, where he confesses and gives his full account of being the infamous slave in the mask.

I think my mother had arrived at the party after the man in the mask had left which is corroborated by other witness statements here. Stephen had told my mother that the Man in the Mask was… somebody else, and you do wonder if he had just been joking with her, but she went to her grave believing it was…somebody else.

Interview with Robert Asquith

Embassies

Christine told the Police in July 1963, about delivering “legal letters” to the Russian Embassy for Stephen, this doesn’t mean a great deal because Ward and Ivanov had worked together on the Cuban misile crisis, which is also mentioned in the documents.

The Campaign

There are a number of papers that relate to our campaign to overturn my mother’s conviction of perjury in 1963.

Robin Drury, Christine’s manager, who was responsible for giving the police the famous drunken tapes, was interviewed on the 5th July 1963 by special branch. Special branch are damning of Drury, calling him a liar “the truth of his statement is extremely dubious”.

Paul Mann gave a statement and when talking about their sudden trip to Spain around the 8th March 1963, his story varies from Christine’s only in that he says Lucky Gordon is living with Paula and Christine in Park West and Christine says Gordon broke in and wouldn’t leave. I guess both accounts could have some truth.

Mann talks about Christine’s extreme fear “for her life” and goes on to talk about their trip to a nightclub and the escape from Lucky in his car.

In January 1963 Stephen Ward confirms that he had posted Bail for Gordon after having him arrested for, what we would now call, stalking.

Lucky Gordon gives a creepy statement where he is quite open about watching Christine’s flat for 12 hours at a time and talks about all the people coming and going. Gordon felt that Stephen had “set him up” on the night of the 18th April and sent him to Christine deliberately, and Gordon was convinced that Christine was pregnant with his child.

In fact as you read through the documents there are number of themes:

Wherever Gordon is mentioned, it is shorty followed by how dangerous he was and how afraid Christine was of Gordon.

Stephen wasn't trusted by the security services and Stephen on two separate occasions talks to his handler about possible financial opportunities that could arise due to his friendship with Ivanov. To be clear there is no allegation that Stephen was a KGB agent, but I think I understand why a young girl would think he was.

Lastly

On a personal note, Micheal Eddowes keeps referring to Christine’s father, my Grandfather, and that he is in prison for murder! I know this is just not true, but I had never heard that this was a story that Eddowes had thought was true. I wondered if that was a lie my mother had been told to explain why her father was gone when she was a child, and that it would be less embarrassing for a family that the father was in prison for murder than - he had left his wife.

Maybe It was a young Christine who told a little lie about her father, but Eddowes had visited Christine’s mother and after that visit still thought Christine’s father was in prison for murder. So if had mentioned it to my grandmother, she said nothing.

Of course it wasn’t, and Colin Keeler didn't go to prison for murder…It would have been front page news at the time.

I never met Colin Keeler, my grandfather, and my mother didn’t see him again after the court case so I know very little about him. Reading Eddowes comments motivated me to check if the one story he had told my mother was true. He said that he was adopted and had found his mother and she had told him that his father was a “Sioux Indian” she had met on a reservation in Canada. So I decided to do a DNA test and see for myself if there was any truth to that story.