How reporter who rocked British Establishment by exposing Profumo affair was a secret Communist: Official files also reveal he spilled UK secrets to same Czech spy who ran Labour grandee Geoffrey Robinson

The journalist who broke the Profumo scandal was a Communist Party member and an informant for the Czech secret police, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Peter Earle was the chief crime reporter for the News of the World when he revealed that showgirl Christine Keeler had simultaneous affairs with both Secretary of State for War John Profumo and Soviet naval attache Yevgeny Ivanov.

The controversy triggered the collapse of Harold Macmillan’s Tory government and the introduction of Harold Wilson’s first Labour administration in 1964.

Now, an extraordinary collection of Cold War intelligence files held in Prague’s secret police archive cast a new light on Mr Earle, who died in 1997 aged 71.

Documents unearthed by the MoS show that he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1947 and retained his membership for at least 20 years.

They also reveal that from at least 1966 to 1968, Mr Earle was a secret informant, codenamed ‘LON’, of Czechoslovakia’s brutal StB (Statni bezpecnost) spy agency.

He supplied information on politicians’ sexual predilections and details about the Profumo-linked femme fatale hostess Mariella Novotny, according to the files.

Mr Earle had regular meetings with his handler Karel Pravec, codenamed Comrade Pelnar, who was based in Czechoslovakia’s London embassy.

 Peter Earle , the News of the World hack who broke the Profumo scandal, was a Communist Party member and an informant for the Czech secret police

The files show Major Pravec, then aged 35, first met Mr Earle at an embassy cocktail party in April 1966, before arranging a lunch meeting at Rules in Covent Garden, London’s oldest restaurant.

The files indicate they struck up a rapport, prompting Major Pravec to ‘recruit as an asset and extract information from him’.

By their third meeting in June, Major Pravec was asking the reporter to gather information, including intelligence on Harold Wilson’s trip to America, as well as details of meetings in Parliament.

He later supplied details of the gambling habits of politicians after a request from Major Pravec, which Mr Earle ‘promised to satisfy’.

He also reported to his handler that an arrest warrant had been issued for a ‘gay man’ in Lisbon who allegedly ‘provided underage cadets and girls, among other things, to MPs Driberg, Lipton (only girls) and one Conservative MP’.

It was at a meeting in Soho in March 1967 that Mr Earle spoke of his political affiliations and, according to the files, described how ‘he himself is secretly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and has been since 1947’.

Immediately suspicious of the claims, the Czech agent asked his superiors to check out Mr Earle and a report came back confirming his party membership. But the StB’s HQ report also cautioned Major Pravec to be wary in case Mr Earle’s aim was to ‘unmask you as a spy’.

They also provided comments on how Major Pravec should approach another top target, former MP and paymaster general Geoffrey Robinson, then a Labour researcher.

The Mail on Sunday revealed in 2019 how Czech intelligence files alleged that Mr Robinson passed on more than 80 pieces of information to Communist agents at the height of the Cold War – a claim he strenuously denies.

Mr Earle spent the last 25 years of his career at the News of the World and in 1978 also revealed the poison umbrella assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov on Waterloo Bridge.

Described as an eccentric ‘who consumed 60 cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch each day’, he died of cancer in April 1997 and was survived by his four children.

Tom Mangold, a former BBC Panorama reporter who last year produced a BBC documentary on the Profumo affair, said: ‘I am surprised to hear Peter was still a Communist in the 1960, but my own feeling is that he was about as political as a dead log – I don’t think it was big for him.

‘It’s 1947 a very odd time to join the Communist Party and be a Communist, it’s a time when Moscow was beginning to show its teeth.

‘I don’t think that was a big issue in the story but of course at the time we tried to make it a big issue because to have spies, Communists, CIA, MI5, MI6, and Christine Keeler – it was a dream.

‘That being said, the Czechs kept a close eye on all this and they must have been very good at picking up items that could be used for blackmail later on. The StB thing, we all knew they had the brief to run Fleet Street on behalf of the KGB.’

Last night, Mr Earle’s eldest daughter, Valerie Carrier, a retired primary school headteacher, 67, from Sydenham, South-East London, said: ‘It had to have been a front – he was always a true-blue Tory.

‘If he saw anyone from the Labour Party on the TV, he would go crazy. To say he would do anything against his country would be untrue.

‘He always kept his family life and his work life separate, but he was a patriot and a royalist.

‘Any secret life he may have had was to protect king and country.’

Three double brandies, fifteen furtive meetings in London’s finest restaurants – and a showgirl who had a fling with JFK

Standing alone with a cocktail, his face obscured by cigarette smoke, Peter Earle cut an intriguing figure. 

That at least is what Czech spymaster Major Karel Pravec thought as he glided across the room with his hand outstretched. Mr Earle was someone he had to meet.

It was April 26, 1966. The occasion: a party at the Czech Embassy in one of the Italianate-style mansions of Kensington Palace Gardens in London.

To Pravec, what distinguished 41-year-old Earle from the other invited journalists was that he had broken the story of the Profumo affair three years earlier, a scandal that had not only toppled War Minister John Profumo but wounded the Establishment, led to the fall of Harold Macmillan’s Tory Government and helped hasten the end of British notions of deference towards authority.

All this was noted with fascination in Communist Czechoslovakia. Now, Earle was mingling with its agents at a party. 

What type of man would inflict such damage upon his own country? What were his motivations?

With or without Earle’s input, the biggest political scandal of the century would have broken sooner rather than later. 

Peter Earle was the chief crime reporter for the News of the World when he revealed that showgirl Christine Keeler had simultaneous affairs with both Secretary of State for War John Profumo and Soviet naval attache Yevgeny Ivanov

But as Pravec would later discover, the News of the World’s top investigator was hiding something that would cast the affair in an intriguing light: he was a secret member of the Communist Party.

Eliciting this admission from his chain-smoking new acquaintance would take months. 

For now, Pravec was content to gently probe and try to determine whether the tall man before him might be someone worth cultivating as an informant.

In a report of their embassy encounter, Pravec observed that Earle, married with four children, was a political realist and ‘quite’ anti-American. 

He did not think much of West Germany and was able to ‘evaluate the shortcomings in the capitalist system’.

The two men also chatted about a shared interest in classical music. 

Pravec noted approvingly that ‘he even knows about Eugen Suchon’ the Slovak composer, and claimed Earle was an ‘aficionado’ of gourmet cuisine and fine wine ‘which he prioritises over hard liquor’.

In reality, it was Pravec who relished the high-life, probably even more than amiable Earle, a 60-cigarette and a bottle of Scotch a day man – a rakish character even by the louche standards of 1960s Fleet Street.

A former colleague of Earle’s recalled that ‘he loudly declaimed his views in a manner that was straight out of the pages of a Dickens novel. 

He was unfailingly courteous to ladies... and his conversation was peppered with phrases such as “I say, my dear fellow”.’

After the cocktail party, Pravec waited nine days before contacting his new acquaintance.

Pravec called from a telephone box, inviting Earle to Rules , a quintessentially British restaurant in Covent Garden and the oldest in London

Not wanting to be overheard – he was well aware the Czech Embassy was routinely bugged – he called from a telephone box, inviting Earle to Rules, a quintessentially British restaurant in Covent Garden and the oldest in London.

Many years later, it would provide the backdrop to a meeting in the 007 film Spectre.

Back in 1966, Czechoslovakia’s StB secret police was increasingly taking on the role of the Russian KGB’s operations in Britain.

Working from its embassy, its spies were often able to garner more sympathy from their British hosts. 

Pravec was a top operative, the man who, according to intelligence files reported on by The Mail on Sunday in 2019, recruited Geoffrey Robinson as an informant in the 1960s.

Czech intelligence files claimed that Robinson, then a Labour researcher but later a Minister under Tony Blair, divulged highly sensitive intelligence including defence secrets over the course of 51 meetings. Robinson has denied these claims.

Pravec’s lunch with Earle at Rules went ‘very smoothly’ and the bill came to £7.15, around £110 in today’s money. 

Afterwards he resolved to ‘continue to recruit as an asset and extract information from him’. The reporter was given the codename ‘LON’.

In all, the two men would meet 15 times and their haunts were the capital’s finest restaurants. On each occasion, Pravec took steps to ensure he wasn’t followed or overheard.

During one meeting at the Pigalle supper and live music club in Piccadilly, Earle was notably more forthcoming, his lips loosened by brandy. 

In his report, Pravec wrote: ‘Earle developed a very good mood, so after lunch he offered to buy me a drink.

‘I declined the offer and explained that he was my guest, and at his request I ordered double cognacs.

‘He quickly guzzled down three of them, and when he noticed, as he was about to leave, that my glass from which I was pretending to sip the drink still had some cognac in it, he asked me for permission to finish it. He did so without hesitation.

‘I was a bit surprised, because he had always stopped at wine and declined hard liquor. He must have got into the mood for conversation and drinking.’

He later promised Earle a bottle of expensive Bisquit brandy.

At a meeting in May at L’Ecu de France in St James’s, Earle began to reveal more of his background, telling his Czech friend of his wartime experiences and his unusual distinction of serving both in the RAF and then the Army Intelligence Corps in India.

But it was the presence of two people, one of them linked to the Profumo scandal, who sat down at a nearby table that was easily the most memorable feature of this rendezvous.

One of them was Mariella Novotny, a 24-year-old showgirl who hosted the infamous ‘man in the mask’ party – an orgy held at a flat in Hyde Park Gate at which swingers were served by a ‘butler’ dressed only in a mask and an apron and with a sign around his neck saying: ‘If my services do not please, whip me.’ 

His identity remains a mystery though he was said to be a Cabinet Minister.

Mariella Novotny, a 24-year-old showgirl who hosted the infamous ‘man in the mask’ party – an orgy held at a flat in Hyde Park Gate

Many of the Profumo scandal’s dramatis personae attended, including Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler, who arrived late as guests of osteopath Stephen Ward.

Sharing lunch with Novotny at L’Ecu that day was another colourful character, wartime double agent Eddie Chapman, whose extraordinary exploits were chronicled by Ben Macintyre in his book, Agent Zigzag.

It was Miss Novotny, the daughter of a Czech soldier born in Yorkshire as Stella Capes, who interested Pravec however. Two years earlier, Earle had interviewed her.

And over lunch he told Pravec all he knew about the femme fatale, dubbed the ‘Government’s chief whip’ owing to her talent for sado-masochism.

‘Earle described her as a very smart and capable individual,’ wrote Pravec, noting she was reportedly an ‘expert in whipping’.

He added: ‘She was a mistress of John F. Kennedy at a time when he was not yet President of the United States.

‘When he became President, she was deported after she had been arrested and found to have been organising a high-level prostitution ring.’

Over the course of 1966 and 1967, Novotny was a frequent topic of conversation between the Czech agent and the News of the World man.

At a meeting in Scott’s restaurant in 1966, a favourite of James Bond writer Ian Fleming, Earle told how Novotny was in negotiations with the paper about publishing her autobiography.

When he explained that the book would detail claims that her family was linked to the Czech president, Pravec became alarmed.

According to the files, he asked Earle to recommend ‘she take out the parts about the President of Czechoslovakia, because the claims have been officially refuted’.

Mr Earle had regular meetings with his handler Karel Pravec codenamed Comrade Pelnar, who was based in Czechoslovakia’s London embassy

Later, the Czech spy was able to report that Earle had tried to pressure Novotny into excising ‘the worst parts’. 

She refused but ‘later threw away’ the book. ‘It seems that her literary ambitions are exhausted for now,’ said Pravec.

In 1983, Novotny was mysteriously found dead in her bed, aged just 41. The circumstances have led to a swirl of conspiracy theories – some advanced by Christine Keeler – that she was murdered by the security services, or else other shadowy figures with an interest in her.

Serving only to stir the pot of intrigue, Earle himself later admitted that details of Novotny’s allegations went unpublished for ‘diplomatic reasons’.

With the matter set aside, Pravec could resume the task of extracting as much information as possible from his source and set Earle a number of tasks for gathering information.

In August 1967, the mysterious death of renowned American Jewish humanitarian Charles Jordan, whose bloated corpse was found in Prague’s Vltava River, caused alarm among Czech intelligence chiefs. Pravec was keen to learn of any details of the American Jewish community’s investigation. Might Earle help?

He briefed the reporter in October 1967 at Marcel Boulestin’s restaurant in Covent Garden. 

As he listened, Earle tucked into a ‘dozen snack plates’, before ordering a ‘lobster’ followed by ‘three cognacs, not counting the other drinks before and during the meal’.

The following month, at another lunch, Earle passed his handler two names. 

They were two prominent members of the American Jewish community, Louis Broido and Sam Haber, who were on a ‘secret mission to investigate the circumstances of the death of Jordan’. 

However the affair was destined to remain one of countless Cold War mysteries.

It was a personal revelation from Earle that most astounded his Czech handlers. 

In March 1967, at the L’Epicure restaurant in Soho, Earle told Pravec of his secret membership of the Communist Party since 1947. 

The restaurant was a favourite of the Duchess of Kent and Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, who said that its beef stroganoff was better than the one they served him in the Kremlin.

Whether Earle and Pravec tried the Russian classic is not recorded but they enjoyed a good lunch.

The reporter claimed that by 1955 he was one of 98 British journalists who were party members. 

However the group ‘folded’ the following year because of the brutal Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising. 

Yet Earle is said to have claimed that he remained one of ‘about six Communists among reporters from national newspapers’.

As for Pravec, he was tracked down by The Mail on Sunday in 2019 to a sleepy suburban street in the American state of New Jersey – a world away from Czechoslovakia of the 1960s

Major Pravec wrote that ‘LON said that no one at Fleet Street was aware of his membership in the British Communist Party’.

Interestingly, one contemporary recalled Earle being a ‘rabid Tory’.

Eventually the Czechs became frustrated with Earle over his failure to carry out further tasks, and contact broke down in early 1968.

Earle died in 1997 aged 71. 

As for Pravec, he was tracked down by The Mail on Sunday in 2019 to a sleepy suburban street in the American state of New Jersey – a world away from Czechoslovakia of the 1960s.

The then 88-year-old was at first stunned into silence. 

Then in a thick, gravelly Czech accent, tinged with a slight American twang, he said: ‘I’m not discussing what happened in the 1960s. This is all a very long time ago and I won’t talk about any of it.’