Word: macmillan
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...August 1961, according to the Commons debate, Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook warned Profumo that it would be better for the Secretary for War not to be too friendly with Ward; he did not mention, and evidently did not know about, Christine. Nothing of this was reported to Macmillan...
...Tory and Labor politicians, but apparently not the Prime Minister. During the Cuba blowup, Ward was all over the place, suggesting to the Prime Minister's office and to the Foreign Office that his friend Ivanov be used as an intermediary to help settle the crisis. But, said Macmillan, a lot of people were then trying to get into the act "to weaken our resolution." A little later, Wilson himself got a letter from Ward, boasting of his supposed help in settling the Cuba matter, but filed it away as coming from a crank. Before Ivanov was recalled...
...Vigil. In the third and most remarkable phase, Macmillan finally became aware that there was such a thing as a Profumo case. In January 1963, as Macmillan told Commons, police learned from Christine that Ward had asked her to find out from Profumo when the U.S. was to deliver certain nuclear information and warheads to West Germany (she said that she refused to do it). Macmillan was not told of this either. But while he was away in Italy, the general manager of the huge (circ. 6,500,000) News of the World reported the Profumo rumors to Macmillan...
After Christine failed to appear as a witness last March in the trial of a jealous Negro lover who had tried to shoot her, questions were finally raised in Parliament. Macmillan asked for action, admittedly hoping for a statement from Profumo that would quell further rumors in the press through fear of libel. When the House adjourned after midnight, Profumo was awakened, and at 1:30 a.m. came to Chief Tory Whip Martin Redmayne's Commons office with his solicitor. He was confronted by Redmayne, Tory Chairman Iain Macleod, Minister without Portfolio William Deedes, Attorney General Sir John Hobson...
...obviously they wanted to be. Even the most cursory checking would have disclosed that while Christine may have had joie de vivre, she had little discretion. Profumo's interrogators knew by then about a letter he had written to Christine in 1961 beginning "Darling . . ." Profumo explained, as Macmillan put it, that in his circles "it was a term of no great significance. I believe that this might be accepted. I do not live among young people fairly widely." But if it was acceptable to Macmillan, at 69 a little remote from reality, it should not have fooled the others...