Profumo’s secret letters to glamorous German spy
Notorious minister sent ‘striking’ model notes on Commons paper that led to split with her husband
JOHN PROFUMO, the Conservative minister forced from office by a notorious Sixties sex scandal, was for years in correspondence with a glamorous German spy, sending her endearing notes on Commons notepaper, according to newly declassified MI5 records.
The politician met the model, Gisela Winegard, at Oxford in the Thirties before she went on to work for German intelligence in wartime Paris. They kept in touch until at least the Fifties.
Her file, released today at the National Archives in Kew, includes claims by her husband that they had separated because he found compromising letters to her from Profumo.
At the height of the Profumo Affair in 1963, MI6 sent a letter and files to Arthur Martin, the head of MI5 investigations, about Profumo’s contacts with Winegard, whose maiden name was Klein, outlining her exploits.
Cyril Mackay, the MI6 officer, wrote: “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 from our representative [redacted], dated 2nd October 1950, which makes mention of an association between Gisela Klein and Profumo which began [circa] 1933 and had apparently not ceased at the time of this report.”
The identity of the Geoffrey referred to is not known. The letter goes on to discuss a rejected application by Mrs Winegard for a UK visa.
At the time of the application, the later MI6 letter reveals, authorities believed the Winegards had “recently engaged in blackmail activities and now think it possible their intended visit to the UK may be connected with this”.
No mention of the blackmail target is made, but the visa application for a sixweek “pleasure visit” lists “Jack Profumo MP” as a reference.
The declassified files show Mrs Winegard was born in Düsseldorf and first came to Britain in 1935 to study English.
‘She was always hard-up... Lady Astor is alleged to have expressed the opinion that she was a spy’
Reports described her “striking appearance”, saying she was well connected and used “invitations and help from male friends” to make ends meet.
She was forced to leave after breaking her visa conditions by getting a job as a model and in 1938 the Home Office recommended that she not be allowed back in after a tip-off that she was then “on intimate terms with the German military attaché in Paris”.
Later reports outlined her colourful wartime career when she travelled widely in occupied Europe and the Middle East, was the mistress of a high-ranking German officer and ran a “secret information service” under cover of a commercial information bureau.
When the Allies liberated Paris, she was imprisoned for espionage. A US army officer whom she had met on a pre-war visit to America was put in charge of her jail and they eventually married once she was released. After the war, she and her husband attracted the attention of the US intelligence service and were accused of harbouring the fugitive chief of a German spy ring.
While living in Tangier in early 1950, she was sacked from the Voice of America radio station when it was discovered that she had worked for the Nazis during the war and was “100 per cent pro-german”. That same year Mr Winegard said his wife had left him “because he had discovered that she had been receiving endearing letters from John Dennis Profumo. These letters were written on House of Commons notepaper”, but the couple later appeared to reconcile.
The MI5 file shows that Profumo told officials about his German friend in 1941. He said he had “got to know her well” after they met in 1936 and reported: “She was always hard-up. Later she went on to become a mannequin and made a large number of useful contacts. Lady Astor is alleged to have expressed the opinion that she was a spy.”
His political downfall came in 1963 when he was forced to resign amid lurid details of high-society sex parties and claims he had shared a mistress, Christine Keeler, with a Soviet defence attaché. Mr Profumo quit politics and devoted himself to charity work, receiving the CBE before he died in 2006.