Russians Investigate Ivanovs Role

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30171, 1 July 1963, Page 11

Russians Investigate Ivanovs Role

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

LONDON, June 29

Captain Eugene Ivanov has been under “house arrest” in Moscow since June 21 while Soviet authorities conduct their own investigation of his role in the Profumo scandal, diplomatic sources said today, United Press International reported.

Reports from Moscow said the former London naval attache was being held in a modern villa used for the interrogation of important prisoners. It was regarded as a half-way stage between freedom and formal imprisonment. Ivanov had been suspended from the Communist Party a week before he was taken to the villa, the report said, and given “leave” from the Navy Ministry, where he had been working since his return from London in December.

The sources said Ivanov was being cited as a horrible example by “old school" Soviet diplomats, who maintained that a Soviet representative abroad should have no contacts except official ones. Ivanov's questioning reportedly centres on whether he made a complete report on all his contacts, whether he told the truth in denying an affair with Christine Keeler, and whether he reglly posed as an intermediary during the Cuban crisis, as' claimed by Dr. Stephen Ward.

The Soviet press has

already carried a statement that had Russia wished to communicate with the British Government during the Cuban crisis, it would not have done it through an osteopath and a model. Reports on the Profumo affair in the Russian and satellite press have thus far been brief and restrained. The first mention was a twoline dispatch saying Mr Macmillan had dismissed his War Minister because of a social scandal The next release said "certain circles” in Britain were using a society scandal to create anti-Soviet propaganda.

A more extensive report this week described the declining morals of British aristocracy and repeated the observation of the Labour leader. Mr Harold Wilson, that Miss Keeler was making more money than the Prime Minister.

Diplomatic sources said the Russians appeared to think that the British were overplaying the security risk in the Profumo affair to protect some of their contacts in the Soviet diplomatic service.