The Profumo affair - MI6 murdered Stephen Ward

[David Guyatt]

This can come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the case. But I feel sure it will be denied.

It's also interesting that there are still papers relating to this that remain classified.

The Profumo Affair: 'It was decided that Stephen Ward had to die'

As the musical 'Stephen Ward' opens tonight, a new book makes a strong case that the osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair was murdered

Stephen Ward leaves Marylebone Magistrates' Court in police custody Photo: Getty Images



By Neil Tweedie

8:29PM GMT 02 Dec 2013


There is a poignant photograph of Stephen Ward, eyes closed, head lolling to one side as he is stretchered into an ambulance for his last journey. It is the morning of July 31 1963 and the Establishment can breathe a little easier.

Ward, society osteopath, supplier of sensual pleasure to the upper classes, is in a coma induced by an overdose of sleeping pills. Taken from his temporary refuge, the Chelsea flat of an acquaintance, to St Stephen's Hospital in central London, he hovers between life and death. As he does so, a jury at the Old Bailey convicts him of living off immoral earnings the conclusion of a sensational trial that has witnessed evidence from, among others, his protégées Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, good-time girls he has fashioned into suitable consorts for his influential friends. As far as the world is concerned, Ward, son of a vicar and product of a minor public school, has spared himself the final humiliation of being branded a pimp. Without regaining consciousness, he succumbs to barbiturate poisoning on August 3.

[SUP]The end of the affair: good-time girl Chistine Keeler in 1963 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)[/SUP]

On this final day, outside the hospital, standing with a hungry press, waits Stanley Rytter, a Polish émigré, and his daughter, Yvonne. "Someone came to us and said, 'That's it. He's dead'," she later recalled. "Then we drove away."

The Profumo Affair, which took its name from the Conservative minister John Profumo, one of its key casualties, is the scandal against which all others are measured. Fifty years later, it continues to fascinate, a heady mix of power, class, espionage, hypocrisy and sex.

Tonight, 50 years after his death, Stephen Ward returns to the public stage in Andrew Lloyd Webber's dramatisation of his colourful, tragic career. Titled simply Stephen Ward, the musical, at the Aldwych Theatre, promises to be a highlight of the West End year. Lloyd Webber wants it to be more, however: the springboard for a campaign to have the osteopath's conviction declared a miscarriage of justice. "Ward," he says, "once embraced by his friends in high society, became a pariah as the Establishment made him a scapegoat."
He was backed yesterday by the eminent lawyer Lord Hutchinson, who defended Keeler in a perjury case. He sees the continued refusal to release documents relating to Ward's trial as the Establishment "still looking after itself".
But the wrong done to Ward may have been much worse than being made a scapegoat. Accounts of his end contain the standard ingredients: a man deserted by his erstwhile friends, alone in the early hours as disgrace beckons; a desperate succession of suicide notes written and addressed to recipients; a bottle of pills; the only "decent thing" left to do.
Could there, however, have been another ingredient Stanley Rytter, the man standing outside the hospital that day with his daughter? Rytter was a "deniable", a freelance operative for both MI5 and MI6. Now, for the first time, an intelligence colleague of his has gone on the record to claim that, in a deathbed confession, the Pole admitted that he murdered Ward to ensure his silence.
"It was decided that Ward had to die," says Lee Tracey, a long-time MI6 asset. "Stanley Rytter is the one who killed Ward. I know because he told me. Rytter told me he was paid to kill Ward.
"He convinced Ward that he ought to have a good night's sleep and take some sleeping pills. He let Ward doze off and then woke him again and told him to take his tablets. Another half an hour later or so, he woke Ward again and told him he'd forgotten to take his sleeping pills. So it went on, until Ward had overdosed. It might sound far-fetched, but it's the easiest thing in the world to do. Once the victim is drowsy he will agree to almost anything."
Ward, says Tracey, knew too much. For years, he had cultivated the high and mighty of British society, supplying friends with girls, not for money but for the kudos of moving within such circles. Politicians, aristocrats, even royalty, all attended Ward's gatherings, some of which involved sadomasochism. John Profumo had been introduced to Keeler at Cliveden, home of Lord Astor, who had allowed the osteopath to rent a cottage on his estate. Scandal duly ensued when it emerged that Keeler had been sharing her bed with the Soviet naval attaché in London, Yevgeny Ivanov. Profumo, caught up in allegations that nuclear secrets had been betrayed during pillow-talk, denied having an affair with Keeler, but was then forced to admit the truth and resign.
That the death of Ward was convenient for Britain's social and political elite is beyond doubt. Reputations remained intact that might otherwise have been destroyed in a flurry of disclosures about the sexual adventures of the great and good. The intelligence services, meanwhile, were rid of a potential embarrassment. Ward had been their man, a source of useful information on the peccadilloes of MPs, peers, diplomats and others. But when the Profumo story exploded, MI5, the domestic security service, and MI6, the foreign intelligence service, both involved with Ward, ran for cover.
"One can see why it may repeat may have seemed necessary to remove Stephen Ward from the scene," says the investigative author Anthony Summers. "This was apparently a man with dangerous knowledge and by no means all of it had emerged at his trial. He had inside information of MI5 efforts to manipulate Ivanov and the seamy activities of Establishment figures."
Summers is co-author of The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward, an examination of the Profumo Affair undertaken with the academic Stephen Dorril. The book names Tracey as the source of the Rytter allegation for the first time. Tracey, now in his eighties, was himself tasked by MI6 with keeping an eye on people around Ward. MI6 engaged in many domestic operations between the Fifties and Seventies, often without reference to MI5.
"Ward was spotted by one of MI6's stringers [freelance operatives] in the early Fifties as a possible asset," says Dorril. "He was on nodding terms with influential people . MI6's purpose with Ward is not yet clear, but they thought he might prove useful and helped him with small amounts of money.
"An opportunity to use Ward came in 1961, when he was introduced to Ivanov. While MI6 may have been targeting Ivanov with a 'honeytrap' operation to snare the Russian through sexual compromise things went wrong almost immediately when MI5 appeared on the scene with a similar interest in Ward."
MI6 dropped its operation and MI5 got to work. Ward was happy to pass on information about Ivanov to his handler and MI5 did not regard the osteopath as a security risk.
Rytter was a former employee of Polish intelligence who had escaped to Britain during the war. He sometimes used journalistic cover to mask his activities, and also worked for Peter Rachman, a fellow Pole and the most notorious racketeer landlord in post-war London.
It was Rachman, says Tracey, who recommended Rytter to Ward. The latter was living in "abject fear" at the time of his trial and was persuaded that he should have a minder.
"Bumping people off was not Rytter's forte," says Tracey, who spoke with the dying Rytter in 1984. "He could be boastful. But why does a man who knows he is dying lie about something like that? What has he got to gain?"
Tracey was not alone in believing that Rytter had "assisted" Ward's death. Another associate of Rachman, Serge Paplinski, told the authors: "Stanley was there with Ward on that last night. He always said that Ward was poisoned."
The journalist Tom Mangold was working for the Daily Express in 1963 and knew Ward well. He visited him in Mallord Street and dismisses out of hand the notion that he was murdered, pointing to the numerous suicide notes penned by the osteopath.
However, there is a discordant aspect to the night of the supposed self-administered overdose. Some time after Mangold's departure, Bryan Wharton, a Daily Express photographer, was asked to meet Ward at the osteopath's flat in Bryanston Mews, not Mallord Street in Chelsea, where he was staying. There, Wharton found Ward engaged in writing a letter to Henry Brooke, the home secretary. It was full of names and Wharton managed to get a shot of it. Ward, he said, was "extremely upset" and insistent that Wharton should be at the Home Office at 7.30am the next day to photograph him delivering the missive. There was another man there. Wharton left Ward some time after midnight and delivered his pictures to the Express. They subsequently disappeared.
"The letter itself may have posed a threat," says Summers. "Ward was a tinderbox, a man with nothing to lose, wounded, at bay, and it may be that someone decided to ensure his silence. I don't know, though, how one squares such a notion with the evidence that he did intend to commit suicide. The story ends with a question mark."
John Profumo died in 2006, his reputation rehabilitated by years of charitable work. Stephen Ward was an outcast at the time of his death. A single wreath marked his passing.
"I'd rather get myself," wrote Ward in one of his suicide notes. "I do hope I haven't let people down too much. I tried to do my stuff."
He had "done his stuff" in refraining from naming names during those humiliating days in the dock. But no one was going to thank him.
'The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward' by Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril (Headline, RRP £9.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £9.99 + £1.10 p&p