The Profumo file shows that the cabinet secretary and MI5 had serious concerns about Ward’s links with senior political and Whitehall figures in autumn 1961, two years before the scandal was made public. They also confirm that Philby had been invited to dinner at the British embassy in Beirut on the night of his disappearance after he had confessed to being a Soviet spy and that it was decided not to disclose that Cairncross had been a Soviet spy because his brother was chief economic adviser to the government at the time.
The files show that it was believed that “at least 40” ministers or MPs were patients or had met Stephen Ward, the osteopath and “fixer” with strong links to the Soviet embassy who was at the centre of the 1960s Profumo sex and spy scandal. They were kept unregistered and uncatalogued under lock and key in the Cabinet Office until their existence was officially acknowledged for the first time in 2015.
