Ivanov was accompanied to Britain by his wife Maya, daughter of Alexander Gorkin, chairman of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.
A complaint to the Soviet Embassy was considered by the Foreign Office but British Intelligence had hopes of turning the attaché into a double agent.
[4] On the weekend of 8–9 July 1961, Ivanov was at a pool party at the Cliveden estate when Christine Keeler met John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War.
Ward took an overdose of barbiturates on the evening of 30 July 1963, just hours after a damning summing up by the judge at his trial on charges of living off the immoral earnings (i.e. prostitution) of Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies.
Ivanov was recalled to Moscow on 22 January 1963,[6][7] prior to the Profumo affair becoming public knowledge, after the Soviet government had sensed a potential scandal involving MI5.
Upon returning to the Soviet Union, Ivanov seemingly "disappeared" in the eyes of the international community by keeping a very low profile for the next 29 years, while he had actually continued his naval career, being assigned to the Black Sea Fleet, before publishing his memoirs in 1992.