John Profumo tried to gag the press over his affair with Christine Keeler, unsealed MI5 files show

Sex scandal minister John Profumo tried to get a D-notice to gag the Press over the affair that led to his downfall, newly released files reveal.

He requested a meeting with the head of MI5 and said he was ‘in some trouble’ over his relationship with model Christine Keeler.

Married Tory war minister Profumo and Soviet spy Yevgeny Ivanov were both having sex with Miss Keeler in 1961 when she was 19 after they were introduced to her by mutual friend Stephen Ward.

Profumo later lied to the Commons, claiming there had been no impropriety, but was forced to resign when the truth emerged and the scandal later helped to topple the government.

Security service files, which are released today, reveal his attempt to obtain a D-notice – an official Whitehall instruction to the media not to print information based on national security concerns.

As the scandal threatened to engulf him, he held a meeting with MI5’s director general Sir Roger Hollis in January 1963.

The files show Sir Roger’s deputy Graham Mitchell thought Profumo’s comments at the meeting were made ‘in the hope that there might be security grounds for our taking action with the Press, by D-notice or otherwise, to prevent publication, but that this hope was a vain one’.

Before the tangled web of relationships were widely known, Profumo had been sounded out about a proposal to encourage Ivanov to defect and work for the UK.

But the papers say the minister thought that he ‘ought to keep well away’ from that.

Another man involved with Miss Keeler fired a revolver at osteopath Ward’s home in 1962 while she was there with model Mandy Rice-Davies.

That led to the relationship between Miss Keeler, Profumo, Ivanov and Ward unravelling.

Sir Roger wrote in a memo in January 1963: ‘Mr Profumo asked me to see him last night and told me that he was in some trouble.

‘He then gave me an account of his acquaintanceship with Ward in the course of which he had met Ivanov and Christine.

‘He said that he had visited Ward’s flat…on a number of occasions, generally when there had been parties there, but once or twice he had found Christine there alone. He then referred to the shooting incident…

‘He said he had been warned that the Sunday Pictorial and the News of the World had got a story from Christine in which she alleged an association with him and might also bring in Ivanov’s name saying that he was a Russian spy.’

Sir Roger thanked Profumo for letting him know, but said Ivanov had not been enlisted ‘for our work’.

Shortly after Profumo resigned in June 1963, it was alleged in the Commons that an attempt had been made to issue a D-notice in respect of Ivanov.

Sir Roger said in a memo ‘no consideration’ had been given to it.

Ivanov was called back to Russia after the shooting.

Profumo, who devoted much of his life to charity after the scandal and was made a CBE, died in 2006 and Miss Keeler in 2017.