Word: profumo
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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...
...Letter. Under friendly questioning until 5 a.m., Profumo denied misconduct with Christine. He agreed to make a sacrosanct "personal statement," assuring the House that he had committed "no impropriety whatsoever" with Miss Keeler. His fellow ministers suggested that he admit at least to being "on friendly terms with her," although it "sounded so awful," as Profumo put it. "We insisted that it must be included," explained Macleod fatuously last week, "because it was part of the truth." Against himself and the four other ministers, Macleod added, "two possible charges can be brought. First, that we were conspiring knaves, and secondly...
They were indeed gullible-but 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...
...Exit. The last phase of the case began after Profumo proclaimed his purity to the House, was warmly patted on the back by the Prime Minister, and with his wife, Actress Valerie Hobson, went off to the races with the Queen Mother, and later attended a Tory ball at Quaglino's, a West End nightclub...
...there were editors and M.P.'s who knew by now that he had lied, and Profumo showed himself both arrogant and stupid in thinking that he could suppress the truth indefinitely by libel suits. (In fact, he sued Paris-Match for libel and collected out of court from Italy's Tempo Illustrato).) Besides, Ward began to talk, and to Labor M.P. George Wigg he unfolded a tale, as Wilson described it in the Commons, that "took the lid off a corner of the London underworld-vice and dope, marijuana, blackmail and counter-blackmail, violence, petty crime." Added Wilson...