Roger Hollis in 1956 and remaining in that post until his retirement in 1965. After Kim Philby's flight from Beirut to Moscow in 1963, rumours began to circulate that Hollis had alerted him to his impending arrest. Hollis was criticised for not alerting John Profumo, the War Secretary in Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, that he might have become entangled with a Soviet spy ring through his friendship with Stephen Ward, and his affair with showgirl Christine Keeler, who was introduced by Ward to Profumo. Soviet Naval Attache Eugene Ivanov was also involved with Keeler at this time, in the early
Yevgeny Ivanov (spy) to try to convince him to shift his allegiance to the United Kingdom. Ivanov was at a pool party at the Cliveden estate when Christine Keeler met John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War. Keeler's subsequent affair with Profumo went on at a time when she was also having sex with Ivanov. This was at a time when Cold War tensions were already heightened, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ward and Ivanov are said to have asked Keeler to quiz Profumo as to when American nuclear missiles would be taken to then-West Germany. When the Profumo affair