The Angel

by Uri Bar-Joseph

  In any event, it was Mubarak’s speech, more than anything else, that set the tone about how Marwan should be seen in Egypt. Independent journalists and bloggers continued talking about Marwan in a way that contradicted the official line, but all of the spokespeople to whom the journalists turned for official commentary emphasized that Marwan had served Egypt faithfully, adding that since the subject at hand was a sensitive security issue, it was imperative to maintain secrecy. The producers at 60 Minutes who prepared a segment on Marwan tried for many weeks to solicit a response to questions about his having worked for the Mossad, in vain. In early questioning, Egyptian officials just repeated different versions of the double agent theory, saying that Marwan had tricked the Israelis—but they were unwilling to say even that on camera, for reasons of secrecy. In the end, the Egyptian position was presented on camera by Dr. Abdel Moneim Said, the head of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, who claimed that Marwan was a central axis of the Egyptian effort to fool the Israelis, without which the Egyptian army would have had no chance of defeating the IDF. He provided no compelling details to back up his claim, however.31

  Said’s comments, which aired in May 2009, were the closest approximation of an official Egyptian statement about Marwan since Mubarak had declared that he “did not spy for any agency.” More than anything, they reflected the severe discomfort on the part of the Mubarak regime under pressure to say something about Ashraf Marwan. The implication, it seems, is that they themselves did not really know what he had done. If Nasser’s son-in-law was really a double agent who fooled Israel, then it should be one of the most incredible stories of counterespionage in history, proving Egyptian cleverness over that of the Israelis to a fantastic degree. One would think that the Egyptians would see this as an endless source of pride.

  So why were there no Egyptians willing to tell the whole story? Why the secrecy, more than forty years after the war, more than thirty years after Sadat’s death, and close to a decade after Marwan’s death? If the Egyptians were so clever as to have outsmarted even the Mossad, why has this not become a central part of the Egyptian account of the October War, with books and documentaries and all the rest? Why not milk the story for all the national-pride-enhancing and regime-propping value it was worth, just as they did for their military accomplishments in the war, building a whole museum in Cairo to celebrate them? Clearly, they have an interest in providing all the details of the whole affair. Don’t they?

  Apparently not. The Egyptians refuse to provide a compelling, detailed account of the double agent narrative because they cannot. The only shred of evidence they actually have to back up their claim is the fact of Israel’s failure to prepare adequately for the Egyptian attack on October 6, 1973.

  IT HAS BEEN more than four decades since Israel’s official commission of inquiry, the Agranat Commission, published its findings about the Israeli debacle in the Yom Kippur War. In it, the world learned that Israel’s failures in the opening days of the war had nothing to do with Egyptian cleverness and everything to do with Israeli refusal to abandon their outdated kontzeptzia. In the meantime, the Egyptian double agent hypothesis about Ashraf Marwan remains a baseless fantasy. And so it will continue to remain, until and unless someone produces hard evidence to support it—such as, for example, descriptions of when and where Marwan met with his handlers, and what was said at the meetings. If he really was working for Egypt, there has to be some record, somewhere, of how he handled his handlers, how he pulled the wool over the eyes of the Mossad chief. As long as they cannot produce a single document from the Egyptian side of his work, as long as every single statement is little more than a reflexive reaction to Israeli publications or articles that come from Israeli sources, there is no avoiding the conclusion that, despite all their protestations, they still have no idea at all what Ashraf Marwan was doing before and during the war.

  And as long as that is the case, there is no avoiding the conclusion that Ashraf Marwan was no double agent at all, but rather one of the most important spies the world has seen in the last half century.

  Acknowledgments

  The surprise of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the war itself are the most traumatic events in Israel’s history. That the surprise was not complete, however, and that Israel was able to avert a far more grievous outcome, was due to a last-minute warning from the Mossad’s “miraculous” source in Egypt—a dramatic story that started to become publicly known in the early 1990s.

  My personal involvement in this story started in 1998, when I was tasked by the IDF Military Intelligence’s Research Department, where I served as a reserve officer, to conduct a top-secret study into the causes of the 1973 intelligence debacle. Among the documents I had access to was a large file comprising hundreds of intelligence reports collected in the months before the war via all the methods of intelligence—signal, visual, and human. It provided a clear and comprehensive picture of the imminent threat. Among this secret treasure, the reports by the Mossad source, codenamed “Khotel,” were the jewel in the crown.

  While conducting my research at the time, I never asked about his real identity. Everyone I interviewed continued to view it as a supremely guarded secret—as did I. Within five years, however, the secret had been revealed, and Ashraf Marwan’s identity was known. His death in June 2007 removed the main obstacle to an in-depth investigation into his life as a spy. Following a request by the team from CBS’s 60 Minutes to advise them on the production of an episode on Marwan (which aired May 2009), I decided to throw myself more deeply into his story.

  In exploring it, I used my earlier expertise as a student of Israel’s 1973 intelligence failure, which produced a book (The Watchman Fell Asleep, 2005) as well as a number of academic articles. In writing these I developed relationships of trust with a number of people who played key roles in the dramatic events that led to the war. The result was the Hebrew-language publication of The Angel in 2010 and an updated edition in 2011. This was the basis for the current book.

  While investigating Marwan’s story, I enjoyed the support of many. Most important among them were the intelligence officers who were directly involved in his handling. I conducted numerous talks with Zvi Zamir, the Mossad chief in 1973, as well as other intelligence officers who asked that their names be withheld. These interviews constituted the foundations for this book. The names of the interviewees who did not request anonymity appear in the list of sources. I thank them all.

  Others who deserve my gratitude are Professors Shimon Shamir and Yoram Meital, who helped me understand the complexity of Egyptian politics; Khadir Sawaed and Barak Rubinstein, who served as my research assistants; Drs. Ahron Bregman and Nadav Zeevi, who allowed me to use their unpublished materials; Drs. Dima Adamsky and Nehemia Burgin, who were always there when I needed their help; Dr. Hagai Tsoref of the Israeli Archives; and many other friends and family members who provided support throughout the process.

  The origins of the book’s English edition go back to 2009 and to the coffeehouses of San Francisco, where I discussed it again and again with my good friend Michael Lavigne. To a large extent the idea materialized through the translation made by David Hazony, who proved to be not only an excellent translator but also a good partner in turning the manuscript into a book. Peter Bernstein, my agent, was always supportive, committed, effective, and patient. Claire Wachtel, the veteran senior editor at HarperCollins, contributed her vast experience and talent to the making of this book; in the final editing stage, Hannah Wood took charge, bringing it to a safe harbor.

  This English edition corrects a number of mistakes and adds new information to the earlier Hebrew editions. Nevertheless, although I had access to some Israeli archives, the same could not be said for those of the Mossad, which are likely to remain closed to the public for many more years, and I am aware of my limitations in providing the most complete and error-free account of Ashraf Marwan’s service as the best source the Mossad ever had. I believe that the story I am te
lling here is accurate. My hope is that it will prove to be so also in the years to come.

  Notes

  Chapter: Cairo, 1944–1970

  1.Muhammad Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion (Cairo: Madbuli, 2008), pp. 19–20; unknown author, “Al-Souhagh: Birthplace of Ashraf Marwan,” from the website of Mallawi in the Al-Manya Province.

  2.Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion, pp. 19–20.

  3.Anne Alexander, Nasser (London: Haus Publishing, 2005), p. 104; Anthony Nutting, Nasser (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972), p. 306.

  4.Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser: My Husband (Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2013), p. 94.

  5.Opportunist, “The Bright Side of the Moon,” Egyptian Chronicles, June 28, 2007, http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2007/06/opportunist-well-bright-dark-side-of.html.

  6.Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser: My Husband, p. 94.

  7.Amru al-Laithi interview with Mona Abdel Nasser, Ahathraq Egyptian Television, March 10, 2009.

  8.Mohamed Fawzi, Secrets of the Assassination of Ashraf Marwan (Beirut: Al-Watan Lel Nasher, 2007), p. 18.

  9.Kemal Halef al-Tawil, “Ashraf Marwan: The Dilemma Child,” Al-Akhbar al-Lobnaniya, February 7, 2007.

  10.Mohamed Jam’a, I Knew Sadat: Half a Century of Secrets About Sadat and the [Muslim] Brotherhood (Cairo: Al-Maktab al-Masry al-Hadeth, 1999), p. 182.

  11.Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser: My Husband, p. 93.

  12.Amru al-Laithi interview with Mona Abdel Nasser.

  13.Nadav Zeevi, Life of an Agent (unpublished manuscript in Hebrew). The contradiction between the way Mona’s parents accepted Ashraf Marwan and Hoda’s husband is evident in Tahia Nasser’s memoirs. She described in detail Hoda’s engagement process and marriage (Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser: My Husband, pp. 92–93) and summarized in only six lines Mona’s marriage to Ashraf (ibid., p. 94).

  14.Al-Tawil, “Ashraf Marwan: The Dilemma Child.”

  15.Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion, pp. 20–21.

  16.Assam Abdel Fatah, The Agent Babel: The Man Who Shocked the Command of the Mossad (Cairo: Dar el-Katab el-Arabi, 2008), p. 26; Amru el-Laithi interview with Mona Abdel Nasser.

  17.Mohammad Zara, “Reliving a Piece of History,” Egypt Daily News, September 22, 2006.

  18.Selim Nassib, Umm (Tel Aviv: Asia, 1999), p. 159.

  19.Amru al-Laithi interview with Mona Abdel Nasser.

  20.Mohamed Salmawy, Al-Ahram Weekly, July 5–11, 2007.

  21.Said K. Aburish, Nasser: The Last Arab (New York: Thomas Dunn, 2004), p. 234.

  22.Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion, pp. 20–23.

  23.Opportunist, “The Bright Side of the Moon,” Egyptian Chronicles (see n. 5 above).

  24.Al-Tawil, “Ashraf Marwan: The Dilemma Child.”

  25.Nutting, Nasser, p. 306.

  26.Gamal Nkrumah, “Sami Sharaf: Shadows of the Revolution,” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, August 9–15, 2001, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/546/profile.htm; Nutting, Nasser, pp. 306–8.

  27.Assam Abdel Fatah, Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?: The File of Agent Babel (Cairo: El-Eiman, 2007), p. 14; Musa Sabri, Sadat: The Truth and the Legend (Cairo: Al-Maktab al-Masry al-Hadeth, 1985), p. 651.

  28.Abdel Majid Farid interview with the Egyptian television program Ahatraq, broadcast November–December 2008.

  29.Fatah, Agent Babel, pp. 15–18.

  30.Panayiotis J. Vatikiotis, The Modern History of Egypt (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 432.

  31.Souad al-Sabah, Falcon of the Gulf: Abdullah Mubarak al-Sabah (Kuwait: Kadhma, 1995), pp. 259–68.

  32.Ibid., pp. 263–64.

  33.Al-Tawil, “Ashraf Marwan.”

  34.Zeevi, Life of an Agent.

  35.Saad el-Shazly, The Crossing of the Suez: Revised Edition (San Francisco: American Mideast Research, 2003), pp. 184–85.

  36.Scott Shane, “A Spy’s Motivation: For Love of Another Country,” New York Times, April 20, 2008; Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994); Victor Cherkashin and Gregory Feiger, Spy Handler: Memoirs of a KGB Officer: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames (New York: Basic Books, 2005); David Wise, Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992); Dusko Doder, “Of Moles and Men,” Nation, February 18, 2002, pp. 25–32.

  Chapter 2: London, 1970

  1.Unless noted otherwise, this chapter is based on interviews with Zvi Zamir, Meir Meir, Nahik Navot, Freddy Eini, Amos Gilboa, and other sources who requested anonymity, as well as: Zvi Zamir and Efrat Mass, With Open Eyes (Or Yehuda: Zmora-Bitan, 2011), pp. 129–64.

  2.Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter (New York: Touchstone Books, 1992), pp. 183–226.

  3.Meron Medzini, Golda: A Political Biography (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronot, 2008), p. 511.

  4.Thomas Harris, Garbo: The Spy Who Saved D-Day (Richmond, VA: Public Record Office, 2000); Stephan Talty, Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

  5.John le Carré, The Secret Pilgrim (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 9.

  Chapter 3: April 1971

  This chapter is based on interviews with Zvi Zamir, Meir Meir, Nahik Navot, Freddy Eini, Amos Gilboa, and other sources who requested anonymity.

  Chapter 4: May 1971

  1.Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: HarperCollins, 1978), p. 139.

  2.Said K. Aburish, Nasser: The Last Arab, pp. 242, 286; Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser: My Husband, pp. 103–17.

  3.Arieh Shalev, “Intelligence Estimates in Advance of the War,” in National Trauma: The Yom Kippur War After Thirty Years and Another War, ed. Moshe Shemesh and Ze’ev Drori (Sdeh Boker: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2008), pp. 125–83, 106; Arieh Shalev, Failure and Success in the Warning: Intelligence Assessments on the Eve of the Yom Kippur War (Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 2006), p. 167.

  4.Sources for this exchange: Shimon Shamir, Egypt Under Sadat’s Leadership: The Search for a New Orientation (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1978); Vatikiotis, Modern History of Egypt, n. 28 of ch. 1; Sadat, In Search of Identity; Jehan Sadat, A Woman of Egypt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); interview with Prof. Shimon Shamir at Tel Aviv University, December 31, 2009; Nutting, Nasser; Kirk J. Beattie, Egypt During the Sadat Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1980); “The Underrated Heir,” Time, May 17, 1971; “A Preemptive Purge in Cairo,” Time, May 24, 1971.

  5.Sadat, In Search of Identity, p. 170.

  6.Beattie, Egypt During the Sadat Years, p. 291.

  7.Fatah, Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?, p. 21. Fatah’s source is Salah al-Shahed, a senior officer in the President’s Office who had gone to school with Sadat; Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion, n. 1 in ch. 1, p. 184. Tharwat relies, among others, on: Mahmud Jamaa, I Knew Sadat: Fifty Years of Secrets About Sadat and the Muslim Brotherhood (Cairo: al Maktab al Misri, 1999).

  8.Fatah, Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?, n. 14 of ch. 1, p. 21.

  9.Owen L. Sirrs, A History of the Egyptian Intelligence Service: A History of the Mukhabarat, 1910–2009 (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 120.

  10.Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), pp. 261–62.

  11.Fatah, Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?, n. 14 of ch. 1, p. 23.

  12.Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion, n. 1 of ch. 1, p. 184.

  13.Zamir and Mass, With Open Eyes, p. 135.

  14.“Sadat in the Saddle,” Time, May 31, 1971.

  15.Tharwat, Ashraf Marwan: Fact and Illusion, n. 8 of ch. 1.

  Chapter 5: The Dream of Every Spy Agency on Earth

 
1.Interview with Meir Meir.

  2.This affair served as the basis for Michael Frayn’s play Democracy, which premiered at Britain’s Royal National Theatre in September 2003.

  3.Interview with Yonah Bandman.

  4.Interview with Meir Meir.

  5.Interviews with Meir Meir, Yonah Bandman, and Yaakov Rosenfeld, who in 1971 served as an MI expert on the Egyptian army.

  6.Gad Yaacobi, By a Hair’s Breadth: How an Agreement Between Israel and Egypt Was Missed, and the Yom Kippur War Was Not Prevented (Tel Aviv: Edanim, 1989), p. 157.

  7.Interview with Yaakov Rosenfeld.

  8.Yaacobi, By a Hair’s Breadth, p. 157.

  9.Interviews with Freddy Eini and Zvi Zamir.

  10.Shalev, Failure and Success in the Warning, n. 3 of ch. 4, p. 63.

  11.Yitzhak Rabin, Record of Service (Tel Aviv: Maariv, 1978), pp. 345–46.

  12.Military Intelligence document from June 1971; Shalev, Failure and Success in the Warning, n. 3 of ch. 4, p. 63.

  13.It should be said, however, that the roots of the Concept could be found as early as 1968, two years before Marwan offered his services. In a meeting of the IDF General Staff about the possibility of war with Egypt that fall, the chiefs of the Israeli Air Force expressed their opinion that any Egyptian effort to cross the Suez Canal without first neutralizing Israel’s air superiority would necessarily fail. The IDF chief of operations, Maj. Gen. Ezer Weizman, who had been the commander of the IAF, said of such an Egyptian move, “If only they would make such a mistake.” Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), p. 45.

  14.Shazly, Crossing the Suez, p. 128.

  15.See: Ibid., p. 18; Sadat, In Search of Identity, p.178; Mohamed Abdel Ghani el-Gamasy, The October War: Memoirs of Field Marshall El-Gamasy of Egypt (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1993), p. 205; Mohamed Heikal, Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat (New York: Random House, 1983), p. 50.