Profumo had long-term relationship with Nazi spy before 60s sex scandal
John Profumo, the Conservative minister who resigned over an infamous 1960s sex scandal, had previously had a long-running relationship with a glamorous Nazi spy who may have tried to blackmail him, newly released MI5 files reveal.
Gisela Winegard, a German-born fashion and photographer’s model, met Profumo in Oxford in 1936 when he was an undergraduate and kept in contact with him for at least 20 years during which time she ran a Nazi secret information service in occupied Paris, had a child with a high-ranking German officer, and was imprisoned for espionage on the liberation of Paris in 1944.
At the height of the 1963 sex scandal when Profumo was forced to resign after misleading the House of Commons about his brief affair with Christine Keeler, MI6 sent MI5 a letter and files detailing the Tory minister’s connection with Winegard (née Gisela Klein).
“Although it is not particularly relevant to the current notorious case, Geoffrey thought you might like to have for your files the attached copy of a report for our representative (redacted) dated 2nd October 1950, which makes mention of an association between Gisela Klein and Profumo which began ca. 1933 and had apparently not ceased at the time of this report,” wrote the MI6 officer Cyril Mackay to MI5’s head of investigations, Arthur Martin.
The security services historian Christopher Andrew, commenting on the release of the files at the national archives, said: “Had the media been aware of the contents of the MI5 file in the current release, the conspiracy theories would have been even more extravagant.”
The Profumo affair was a tabloid mix of sex and spies with Keeler’s brief affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet military intelligence officer in London, sparking widespread speculation about security leaks involving Profumo, the then secretary of state for war. A further ingredient of Profumo’s previous liaison with a woman who became a Nazi spy would have fuelled the frenzy.
The files say that in September 1950, Edward Winegard, Klein’s husband, said that “his wife had left him because he had discovered that she had been receiving endearing letters from John Dennis Profumo. The letters were written on House of Commons notepaper.” Profumo was elected MP for Kettering 1940 to 1945, and for Stratford-upon-Avon from 1950.
Andrew says that Profumo, who had a distinguished war record, may have been unaware of Klein’s wartime involvement with Nazi intelligence.
A 1940 MI5 memorandum says that Profumo met Klein in Oxford. She “was ostensibly studying English, and got to know her well. She was always hard up. Later she became a mannequin and made a large number of useful contacts. Lady Astor is alleged to have expressed the opinion that she was a spy.”
She was described in the memo as “exceedingly clever, witty and companionable”. Earlier reports describe her as being “of striking
appearance” and using “invitations and help from male friends to make ends meet”.
In 1951 Klein, then living in Tangier, applied for a visa to visit Britain accompanied by her American husband, who didn’t need a visa, citing Jack Profumo “MP for South Cattering” as her reference. The visa was refused on the basis of her wartime record. The note adds that the couple had been in trouble with the American authorities in 1947/8 for “having harboured one of the chiefs of a German spy ring”.
The head of British intelligence in Tangier, Morocco, added: “We have good reason to believe Mr and Mrs Winegard have recently engaged in blackmailing activities and now think it is possible their intended visit to the UK may be connected with this affair.”
The security files released on Tuesday also show that for more than 20 years MI5 kept track of the movements of the novelist Sir Kingsley Amis. He seems to have been an unlikely target for MI5 for although his first 1954 novel, Lucky Jim, marked him out as a leading member of the “angry young men” group, in later life he became widely regarded as an irascible, rightwing misogynist.
His MI5 file was opened after a report that as a student at Oxford he was regarded as “a very promising member of the Oxford branch of the Communist party”. During the war while a serving officer in the Royal Corps of Signals, Amis wrote to the editor of the Communist Daily Worker and was “presumed his views had not changed in any way”. His commanding officer was reported as saying that if Amis had tried to put any extreme tendencies into his work or associations “few would take him seriously”.
But as the file shows, in 1957 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Amis wrote a Fabian pamphlet saying he “had had Marxism – in both senses of the word. I have experienced the ailment and so am immune. And I have also utterly rejected it.” His pamphlet led to a rebuke by Prof Arnold Kettle in the Daily Worker.
While Amis remained under observation, the security services did little more than track his changes of address in Britain. In 1958, when the US embassy granted Amis a visa despite his early CP membership, MI5 considered pointing out their error. But they left it alone after deciding that a public protest by Amis would only embarrass them and the Americans.