The Angel

by Uri Bar-Joseph

  Chapter 6

  SADAT’S EMISSARY FOR SPECIAL AFFAIRS

  Anwar Sadat’s decision to appoint Marwan as his personal liaison for a very specific, crucial assignment—namely, handling relations with Libya and Saudi Arabia—fit well with Sadat’s overall approach to managing the country’s affairs. While he had at his disposal all the traditional tools of rule, such as the army, foreign ministry, and intelligence agencies, he rarely relied on them in crafting his policies. He had little patience for rambling policy papers or long meetings aimed at striking a compromise among competing ministries plying contradictory policies. His most important decisions usually followed a period of seclusion. He would cut himself off from advisers and reports, sit alone, and find the answer. The result was that instead of taking measured steps and walking a fine line, Sadat preferred bold, often risky moves. This was his methodology when he offered an agreement for a partial Israeli withdrawal from the Suez Canal in February 1971; when he had his opponents arrested rather than trying to cut a deal with them three months later; when he went to war in October 1973 against a clearly superior enemy; or when, in November 1977, he went to Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset without first reaching clear understandings with Israel or the United States about the peace negotiations that were about to begin. Every one of these decisions could have ended his political career. Sadat, however, was blessed not only with excellent political intuitions, but—at least until 1981—no small amount of luck as well.

  Sadat’s tendency to cut through bureaucracy rather than work with it made his use of exceptionally loyal assistants crucial for his ability to function. In this sense, Ashraf Marwan fit Sadat like a glove. He was part of no hierarchy and had no other loyalties. Sadat believed that Marwan would remain true to him personally, not just as head of state, but also because Sadat was the man who had elevated him. Marwan brought with him his boundless ambition, cleverness, networking skills, charm, and above all the incandescent glow that came with being a member of the Nasser family.

  From Marwan’s perspective, it was his ambition, youth, and lack of a power base in the Egyptian establishment, alongside his lust for money and love of intrigue, that turned his life into an ongoing drama. In the decade between his rise in 1971 and his political downfall and departure from Egypt in 1981, he held a number of senior positions, made many personal enemies, engulfed himself in scandals, faced public accusations—usually to no effect—of various forms of corruption, enmeshed himself with the most intimate aspects of the Sadat family, and amassed a sizable fortune that, according to critics, reached £400 million in 1981.

  WHAT REALLY ENABLED Marwan to forge fruitful ties between the Egyptian president, on the one hand, and the Saudi royals and Libyan revolutionaries, on the other, were his relationships with two people in particular: Kamal Adham and Abdessalam Jalloud.

  Kamal Adham was born in 1929, the son of an Albanian father and a Turkish mother, scion of one branch of Saudi royals. Adham’s family moved to Saudi Arabia when he was just a year old. His half sister, Iffat, became the beloved wife of Crown Prince Faisal. In 1961, Faisal, who was already the regime’s strongman, appointed Kamal to negotiate with a Japanese consortium called the Arab Oil Company on the rights to produce oil in the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In return Adham, who had won Faisal’s confidence, received 2 percent of the sales of any oil the company produced. The Saudi oil minister at the time, Abdullah al-Tariki, correctly estimated that the value of that appointment was in the billions of dollars, and he informed Faisal of his opposition to it. In response, the prince fired Al-Tariki. Adham was soon a billionaire and became known in Middle Eastern business circles as “Mr. Two Percent.”

  In 1964, following the death of King Saud and the ascent of Faisal, Adham was officially appointed adviser to the new king. Among his other duties, Adham created the Mukhabarat al a-amah, the kingdom’s central intelligence agency, and led it for many years. The decision to create it arose from the need to find an effective solution to the problem of Nasserite infiltration into the Arabian Peninsula, which had worsened because of the Yemenite civil war, in which Egypt had taken the opposite side from the Saudis. An additional responsibility of the agency was to raise the profile of Saudi Arabia around the world, especially in the United States. This would be achieved mainly through bribery.

  According to the Saudi way of doing things, stopping Nasserite agitation in Saudi Arabia meant, among other things, building positive relationships with members of Nasser’s inner circle. For Adham that meant befriending Jehan Sadat, wife of the man who at the time was chairman of the Egyptian National Assembly. According to journalist Bob Woodward, in 1970 Sadat received a regular stipend from the Saudis, with the implication that the various business projects conducted between Jehan and Kamal were little more than cover for the bribes. Given Kamal’s close ties with the CIA, the Americans clearly were aware of the relationship; whether they were also behind some of the bribes remains unclear.

  The connection between Adham and Jehan Sadat became especially important after Nasser’s death. Saudi-Egyptian relations had substantially improved after the Six-Day War and Egypt’s withdrawal from Yemen, and the Saudis had begun giving Egypt significant economic aid as compensation for the loss of income from the Suez Canal, Sinai oil fields, and tourism. Once Anwar Sadat took power, those relations strengthened even more. Faisal picked Kamal Adham to be his personal liaison to the new Egyptian president. Adham secretly visited Cairo with the aim of sounding out Sadat on new understandings between the two countries. He expressed the Saudis’ concern about Soviet influence on the region and emphasized that the Soviet presence in Egypt was forcing the Americans to support Israel much more than they wanted to. Sadat answered that he needed the Soviet units on Egyptian soil so long as there was the risk of war. But he stressed that if the Americans were to pressure Israel to find a solution to the Sinai problem, even just a partial accord, he would gladly send the Soviets home. These words made their way to Washington, where they were leaked to the press by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, one of the Senate’s leading opponents of the Soviet Union. The leak embarrassed the Kremlin and did little to improve ties between Moscow and Sadat. But the dialogue that had begun between Sadat and Adham became the central channel of communication between the United States and Egypt, which had severed diplomatic ties during the Six-Day War. Through this channel, Adham relayed messages between the two sides, including assurances from National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger that if Egypt were to end its strategic alliance with the Soviets and send the advisers home, the United States would help it get the Sinai back.1

  The tight connection between Adham and Sadat bore fruit in the darker aspects of Egyptian-American relations, as well. According to Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, when Sadat came to power the intelligence agencies told him about a secret operation called Dr. Birdie (doktor asfour). In this operation, which according to Heikal was known to no more than ten people in Egypt and was carried out during 1967 or early 1968, listening devices were planted in the American interests section in Cairo, which had been housed in the Spanish embassy after relations were cut. The operation had been approved by Nasser himself, and he had received regular surveillance reports. Soon after taking power, Sadat told Adham about the devices. Heikal, who learned of the conversation from Sadat himself, and who had influence on the program, was shocked that the new president would tell a known CIA informant about so incredibly sensitive an operation. Whatever Sadat’s motives were, the result of his conversation with Heikal was swift: The operation was stopped and the devices turned off.2

  Ashraf Marwan and Kamal Adham had been close even before Sadat picked Marwan to handle relations with Saudi Arabia. The introduction had been made by mutual friends, including Jehan Sadat, as well as Sheikh Abdullah al-Sabah and his wife, Souad. According to one source, it was Adham who had pressured Sadat into picking Marwan to replace Sami Sharaf in May 1971. Sadat quickly found himself having to strictly limit Marwan�
��s role. Practically, however, by leaving him in charge of relations with the Saudis in general and King Faisal in particular, he had turned Marwan’s relationship with Adham into the central channel of communication between the two states, circumventing the traditional channels of diplomats and embassies. Whatever advantage this may have given their states’ respective leaders, Marwan and Adham learned very quickly how to turn it to their own personal advantage as well.

  In the Saudi political and business culture of the time, the concept of a conflict of interests had yet to be introduced. On the contrary, taking advantage of your position to build your estate was an accepted, even admired, norm. And it was a norm that suited Marwan’s personality well. Kamal Adham, who proved his aptitude with his famous 2 percent, but also through other deals involving oil, aircraft (mostly through deals with Boeing), and weapons, was a perfect business partner for the shady deals Marwan started making soon after he ascended to power in Sadat’s government.

  Their first joint venture was in real estate. Marwan purchased, in the name of his wife, Mona, a twenty-three-acre plot of land in the Kardassa region, near the pyramids at Giza. He paid 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($60,000). Later he took advantage of his status as adviser to the president in order to raise the value of the land and sold it at a large profit. A few months later, Marwan used that money to buy another, larger piece of land, again in Mona’s name. Again he sold it for a huge gain. This time around, the buyer was Kamal Adham.

  When Marwan’s rivals learned of the deal, they made sure to bring it to public light. A journalist named Jalal al-Din al-Hamamsi accused Marwan of a range of corrupt activities. How was it, Hamamsi asked, that a public servant’s family, no matter how senior, got its hands on that kind of money? How did the land appreciate so dramatically in so short a time? Amid the public outcry, Sadat had no choice but to have his attorney general launch an investigation of the first real estate deal. Marwan answered that he got the money from selling the cars his wife had received as a gift from one of the other Arab governments because she was Nasser’s daughter, and that she was the one who had sold the land. The excuse was accepted—in part because of the public’s abiding loyalty to Nasser’s family—and the case was closed. Calls for an investigation of the second deal went nowhere. Years later, Marwan admitted he had lied about the source of the money but denied taking advantage of his position. “I borrowed money from a friend and we bought the land together,” he said. “We were lucky, and the value multiplied five times in two years.”3 Another time when he was asked how he began to make his money, he said that it was from a real estate deal in Abu Dhabi. What made it succeed, he claimed, were not any special gifts of his own but dumb luck.4

  It may be fair to assume that the “friend” who lent Marwan the money to make the first purchase was Kamal Adham. Whether because he wanted to buy political influence in Sadat’s regime, or out of sincere friendship, he did everything he could to make Marwan wealthy—including buying the land at a high price in the second deal. There is another possibility, however: that the financing for the first purchase came not from Adham but from the Mossad. In that case, Adham merely made it possible for Marwan to parlay it into something much bigger.

  Marwan’s close relations with Kamal Adham offered him not only financial opportunities but also a key to new social circles. The most important of these included graduates of Victoria College in Alexandria, the most elite secular institution of higher learning in the Arab world. Since its founding in 1902, Victoria counted many alumni who went on to power and leadership. As with the elite schools in other countries, students maintained friendships for years, even decades, after graduating. Adham, too, was an alumnus, and his circle included King Hussein of Jordan; Hussein’s prime minister, Zaid al-Rifai; and the brothers Adnan and Essam Khashoggi, sons of the Saudi king’s personal physician, who became global tycoons. He introduced Marwan to his friends, and the young Egyptian took full advantage of the connections for business (as with Adnan Khashoggi) or political advancement (as with Mansour Hassan, the Egyptian information minister who was one of the strongest people in the President’s Office as well as a friend of Jehan Sadat). At other times, it was the Victorians who leveraged their connection with Marwan to advance their projects with the president. In September 1978, for example, King Hussein met with Marwan in London, asking him to pass along a secret message to Sadat saying that he wanted to join the peace conference about to be held at Camp David together with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and US president Jimmy Carter. Despite Hussein’s efforts, which included a phone call to Sadat at Marwan’s encouragement, Sadat refused the king’s request.5

  AND THEN THERE WERE the Libyans. The Libyan issue was especially complex because of the volatility, messianism, and rash behavior of the country’s young leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, who led a military coup in September 1969. Gaddafi was an avowed Nasserite who wanted to put his country on a path to social and economic progress, while at the same time emphasizing its Islamic, anti-imperialist, and pan-Arab qualities. As part of this worldview, he repeatedly tried to bring about the unification of Libya and Egypt—a permanent headache for Sadat. Sadat, however, saw good relations with Libya as an important goal, both because of the latter’s newfound wealth resulting from renegotiated oil deals with the major companies and because it was the major conduit through which the Egyptian air force could purchase fighter planes with enough range to attack Israeli air bases.

  Whereas with the Saudis, Marwan’s contact was a billionaire, a spymaster, and a confidant of the king, with the Libyans his point man was no less exotic: Maj. Abdessalam Jalloud, Gaddafi’s right hand, the prime minister of Libya beginning in 1972. Born at some point in the early 1940s (the year has been cited by various sources as 1940, 1941, 1943, and 1944) into the tiny, impoverished al-Magharba tribe, Jalloud shared with Gaddafi his low socioeconomic origins. Yet unlike other members of his tribe of his age, he acquired a high school education and even set his sights on a career as a doctor. He first met Gaddafi in prison after both were arrested during a 1959 demonstration, and he decided to change the course of his life toward the military, enrolling in the officers’ academy. During his military years, Jalloud immersed himself in the revolutionary literature that was popular at the time—mostly based on the experience of the Egyptian and Cuban revolutions. And yet, as opposed to Gaddafi, who grew up in a kind of pristine, puritanical tribal ethos, Jalloud had a tribal experience that was more open. This combination of his relative openness with his tendency toward revolutionary Arab nationalism rather than Gaddafi’s ascetic fundamentalism made Jalloud far more ready to enjoy the “good life” than his boss was.6

  Even amid the kaleidoscope of colorful characters who populated the young Libyan leadership under Gaddafi, Jalloud stood out. One of his most memorable qualities was a tendency to show eccentric disrespect for representatives of foreign powers. On the morning the king was deposed, for example, the embassies of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France sent emissaries to get briefed on the events of the previous night and to learn what they could about the new regime. Each one waited outside his embassy as a military jeep drove around picking them up, the four of them ending up squeezed into the backseat. Dressed in fatigues next to the driver was a man who introduced himself as “Sergeant Mohammad.” They were driven to the headquarters of radio and television, where Sergeant Mohammad, along with other commanders, briefed them about the situation. The “sergeant,” of course, was none other than Jalloud, the commander of the forces that had taken over all the key government offices in Tripoli the night before.

  Abdessalam Jalloud was also the central figure in the negotiations that opened between the new regime and representatives of the foreign oil companies over the percentage that the new government would take on all exports. These had not changed for nearly ten years, and Jalloud now demanded a dramatic increase. During the negotiations, Jalloud would summon the companies’ representatives to meetings
late at night, hand them his demands or proposals in writing, and send them back to their hotels. Soon after, he would call them at the hotel and demand immediate answers—sometimes threatening that if his demands were not met, the company would be nationalized. Once, Jalloud sauntered into the conference room, wielding an automatic rifle, railing about how Western powers had to sell arms to Libya. In the end, the oil companies acceded to Libya’s demands.7

  To his credit, Jalloud never discriminated between the global powers, on the one hand—whom he despised for what he considered the pillaging of his native soil—and those who were supposed to be Libya’s closest friends and allies, on the other. In March 1973, he came to Egypt for talks about military cooperation between the two countries. Participants included the Egyptian minister of war, Gen. Ahmad Ismail Ali, as well as Ashraf Marwan. During the talks, an argument flared between the young Libyan and the Egyptian minister, a career military man in his late fifties, over the range of a certain ground-to-ground missile. Ismail claimed it was twenty-five miles; Jalloud said it was only two and a half miles. To resolve the dispute, an authoritative reference manual was produced that listed the missile’s specifications. Jalloud was right. But he could not restrain himself, and told Ismail that something as small as a decimal point could have big implications, and it would be better if officers were better at reporting the little details so that the political leadership could make better decisions. The minister was furious at the implicit accusation, coming from the mouth of someone who, less than four years earlier, was still a junior officer. “I fought in three wars,” he retorted, “when you were still a little boy.” Jalloud responded that those wars were all failures, and that the failures resulted from false details that military officers gave their leaders. He then stalked out of the room, causing a crisis in the talks.