Our angel: The Egyptian spy who deceived Israel

Until this day, there have been two opposing camps in Israel debating on whether Marwan was a true spy of Israel. The Egyptians chose to remain silent on this issue.

 

It s been two years since Uri Bar-Joseph, a professor at Haifa University, published The Angel. I picked it up to complete my spy book collection and started reading with great interest until, a few pages into the book, the author mentioned the name of Ashraf Marwan s younger son as “Hani.”

 

It might be a fact-checking error or typo (though it was mentioned four times in the book), but it gives the reader an idea of the kind of effort placed by the author to dig out facts of such a controversial and delicate matter.

 

If the author couldn t figure out that Ashraf Marwan s younger son is actually “Ahmed,” not Hani, a living, well-known, and successful businessman in Egypt, then how does the author expect the reader to trust his accuracy on covert operations that happened 50 years ago involving secretive intelligence officers?

 

Moreover, the amount of more serious errors in the book could only be explained as a deliberate misrepresentation of facts, making one wonder how it made it through the publication process, let alone became the basis for a movie—and, by misrepresentation of facts, I do not mean ideas or statements that could be open to different interpretations; but rather listing Israeli and Egyptian references that simply do not mention what he claims they do in the book.

 

For example, in Chapter 13, the author wrote, “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…”

 

However, in the actual Agranat Commission of Inquiry Interim Report (April 1974), it is mentioned, “The enemy thus succeeded in misleading the IDF and taking them by surprise under the guise of an exercise supposedly taking place in Egypt.”

 

The author failed to mention all major findings in the report, as they would simply totally discredit everything in his book. This report has been noted in nearly every other paragraph; though, in fact, in the Agranat Report, it shows the Egyptians outsmarting the Israelis. Besides clearly mentioning the Egyptians misleading Israel, the report attributes Israel s failure to the one fact that Israeli generals refused to accept the possibility of Egypt launching a war without having air superiority, and without a simultaneous attack with Syria. This was known as “The Concept” or “kontzeptzia”, which was constantly fed to the Israelis and confirmed by Marwan s classified documents (showing Egypt s failures to gain air superiority with the Soviet s help) passed over to the them for years before the war.

 

This Concept, especially its first point, was so well planted in the minds of the Israelis that even after receiving information – delivered to them by Marwan himself – showing some improvement in Egyptian air defense systems, did not change their view on Egypt s capability to launch war.

 

In the author s own words, “This mistake would haunt Israeli intelligence analysts who, having developed their kontzeptzia largely on the basis of information Marwan had given them, refused to revise their thinking even when Marwan began painting a very different picture.”

 

As for the few days leading up to war, the author wrote, “Marwan travelled to Libya on October 2 to inform its leader of Egypt s intention to go to war soon. On October 4th Marwan travelled to Paris, and from there he contacted his Mossad handler and mentioned codeword  Chemicals , which specifically means Egypt will attack.”

 

The author also mentioned that the other agreed-upon codeword was “potassium,” which meant the attack would be immediate. However, Marwan never stated this word during the call.

 

“Iodine” was the code word for a less immediate warning. Marwan then followed up with a request to meet the head of Mossad himself, the following day in London. Is it not obvious that Marwan wanted to warn of war but not create a real sense of urgency for a whole two days before the attack?

 

The effect was exactly that. Dubi, Marwan s handler, did not feel the matter was urgent, and arranged for the meeting to be held with Zvi Zamir, the head of Mossad, the next day in London: October 6, 12 midnight, Cairo time (Marwan actually showed up at 1:30am).

 

After 90 direct testimonies and 188 written testimonies, the Agranat Commission described Marwan s intel, delivered on the eve of the 6th of the October War, as “ambiguous.”

 

To keep Marwan s image as an Israeli spy intact, the author blamed Dubi for not asking Marwan “to name a specific chemical element.” The author also finds justification for Marwan for not being precise about the exact attack time. In Chapter 10, he mentioned that Zamir did ask about the exact attack time, and “he didn t consider it such a pressing question.”

 

According to the Agranat Commission Report, this was some of the most important intel that contributed to the success of Egyptian troops in the first few hours of the war.

 

The opening of the war by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973, at approximately 14.00 hours, took the Israel Defence Forces by such surprise in that, until the early morning hours of that day, the IDF s Supreme Command and the political leadership did not evaluate that total war was about to commence. On the morning of that day, when it was already clear to them that the war would break out, the Supreme Command mistakenly assumed that it would break out only at 18.00 hours.

 

Responsibility for these mistaken evaluations should be placed primarily on the Director of Military Intelligence, and on his Principal Assistant in charge of the Intelligence Branch s Research Department, which was the only body in the country engaged in intelligence research.

 

They failed, by providing the IDF with totally insufficient warning: It was only about 4.30 am on Yom Kippur that the DMI, on the fresh intelligence that he had received, notified that the enemy would open war at 18.00 hours on both fronts. This brief warning did not allow for the mobilization of the reserves in an orderly fashion, and involved the hasty mobilization of the land forces, contrary to the regular timetables and mobilization procedures. The additional error of four hours, between 18.00 and 14.00, further reduced the interval between the call-up of the reserves and the opening of fire by the enemy.

 

The author then mentions that Marwan did not know the specific date of Egypt s attack; rather, he learned of Egypt attacking the next day by pure coincidence from a friend of his, Mohamed Nosseir, who he met in London on October 5th, when Nosseir told him a story about EgyptAir rerouting all carriers in Paris and London to Tripoli.

 

Only then did Marwan realize there would be war.

 

He went into his bedroom, made some phone calls, and came out to Nosseir, saying war would be launched the following day.

 

Applying the first rule of intelligence (i.e., need to know), Marwan should not have known about the exact date of war, as it would be an unnecessary threat to war plans if Marwan s cover was blown during his mission for any reason. It seemed awkward that Marwan, whether a spy for or against the Israelis, would confirm to his friend the day the war would be launched.

 

Going back to Nosseir s TV interview, the author s source, it turned out that he never mentioned Marwan coming out of the room, confirming that the war would commence the next day.

 

The author, again, misquoted his own references. As for the phone calls, it could be that Marwan actually warned the Egyptians that the news about rerouting the planes had come out, and could uncover war plans.

 

Indeed, he might have been receiving further instructions for his meeting that same night. During the TV interview to which the author refers, Nosseir never mentioned Ashraf making phone calls inside his bedroom.

 

As the author decided to include and analyze irrelevant chit-chats, and include such information as facts related to intelligence operations, in the real interview Nosseir mentioned that he passed by Marwan at noon, and that Marwan asked him for Kamal Adham s plane to return to Cairo “immediately”.

 

This part was not mentioned in the book, as it would mean Marwan was willing to cancel his meeting with the head of Mossad, which was scheduled for 10 pm.

 

The first meeting between Marwan and the Mossad after the war erupted was held in Paris on around October 18. The author was keen to mention that Marwan was furious during the meeting: “…Zamir had to calm down Marwan, who was highly frustrated by the fact that his warning on the eve of the war had not been immediately heeded by the Israelis.”

 

Interestingly, this scene is reminiscent of another scene involving another Egyptian spy, Ahmed Elhawan (AKA Gomaa Elshawan), who met with the Mossad right after war started. The only difference is that Elshawan s mission ended immediately after the war, and Egyptian intelligence made this operation public in a famous TV show called Tears in Insolent Eyes, which aired in 1980.

 

Episode 13 shows Elshawan extremely frustrated with his Mossad handlers for not being able to make use of all the sensitive information he had been providing them.

 

Even more interestingly, Mohamed Abdel Salam Elmahgoub, one of the icons of Egyptian intelligence in the 1970s, trained both Marwan and Elshawan.

 

If I could just once make a few assumptions, just like the author did in most of the book, the story would go as follows, and it would be all derived from incidents (not necessarily facts) mentioned in the book:

 

Marwan was ordered to give two false alarms about Egypt going to war in the year preceding October of 1973 (which cost the Israelis dearly both financially and diplomatically). He started to “chicken feed” the Israelis (an espionage term meaning a double agent feeding enemy with real information or documents that are of no value or little value in order to establish credibility).

 

This included tipping Israelis about terrorist attacks and passing them classified documents to further consolidate the Concept, like minutes of the meeting between Sadat and Brezhenev in 1971, on which Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, a famous Egyptian journalist, says he received a copy of from his contacts at the Knesset. Sadat decided on a 2 pm attack time.

 

Marwan was not informed (and should not have been informed) of the actual attack time; rather, he was told to inform the Israelis that Egypt would attack at 6 p.m., which could have been the attack time of an earlier plan, as Heikal, again, suggests. But it was used as a cover story to establish Marwan s credibility in the event he came under suspicion after the attack.

 

He was also ordered to leave Cairo four days before the attack, to establish plausible deniability when the attack time changed. Marwan was ordered to delay informing the Israelis of the 6 pm attack time as long as possible, so he requested to meet with the head of Mossad. He was ordered to use “chemicals”, not “potassium” as the code word was, on October 4, so as not to create a real sense of urgency. He then set up a meeting for the end of the day on the 5th and showed up 90 minutes late.

 

Ahron Bregman, the Israeli journalist who was the first to blow Ashraf Marwan s cover in 2002, remarked that ”Marwan was a double agent, whose loyalty to Egypt prevailed at the moment of truth in 1973…”

 

As for how or why Marwan died, I have no information to explain that, but at least we can draw some analysis based on logic and the information available.

 

If there were memos that actually disappeared at the time of his death, then those memos could never mention that he was an Israeli spy and that he implicated himself, his family name, and his wife, sons, and grandchildren, living and owning businesses in Egypt. The only two possibilities left would be to mention that he was an Egyptian spy, or tell other stories and not mention that he was a spy at all. Thus, the Egyptians would have nothing to fear about the memos.

 

There is this extremely naive and widely popular belief that Egyptian intelligence gets rid of its enemies by throwing them off balconies in London. Anyone who wants the masses to believe that an assassination was carried out by the Egyptians would simply throw the victim from a balcony. Making it look like an Egyptian operation, would further make it look like Marwan was a spy for the Israelis, which only benefits the Israelis. Therefore, why would the Egyptians undergo an operation that would ultimately benefit the Israelis?

 

This naive popular belief is, not surprisingly, enforced by the author in the book, as it serves his argument about Marwan s loyalty well. “…but if the Mossad didn t do it, and Marwan s business rivals didn t do it, the only reasonable option is that the Egyptians did it. Only here do we find both the motives that would have led them to kill Ashraf Marwan, and also a clear common thread between his death and similar deaths of others who stood in the way of the Egyptian regime in the past.”

 

In an attempt to further enforce his claim, the author then tried to prove that President Mubarak avoided Marwan, as seeing them together would bring shame to himself and to his family. He said in 2005 that Mubarak was surprised to see Marwan at Nasser s shrine, on the annual anniversary of the October war, “and (Mubarak) ordered his men to escort him (Marwan) out of Egypt immediately”.

 

“The next morning, Marwan was already on a plane back to London. Following this incident, Mubarak issued an order barring Marwan from returning to Egypt.” The author s source is a paragraph from Heikal s book: Mubarak, and His Time, which had to be translated word for word to show that (1) Heikal never mentioned that Mubarak barred Marwan from entering Egypt, and (2), the story itself (of two men whispering to each other) could never be validated.

 

Here, “noticed,” “picked up,” “so imagined from whispers,” and “what allowed them to understand” are the exact translation of Heikal s words—and they are all used in one sentence. Never have I read an equally vague and deceiving sentence with the obviously sole purpose of pushing for a certain scheme, without being personally liable when proven wrong. Yet it is mentioned in the book as a historic fact.

 

Assuming the preceding story is true, then why would Mubarak invite Marwan to attend his son s wedding ceremony (not to be mistaken for the wedding party in Sharm El-Sheikh) in Egypt in April of 2007? A wedding that included fewer than 400 invitees of Mubarak s closest friends and officials? Is 18 months enough to forgive Marwan for being a traitor? Is it enough to forget the shame that could be bestowed upon Mubarak s family and regime if he d been seen with Marwan?

 

Apart from the details of Ashraf Marwan s operation, the book in general promotes the idea that The Angel saved Israel, as the title suggests. “Saved Israel” is the key to blowing over the whole argument the book is based on. The author cannot say, “The Angel that gave us enough warning before the war” because that didn t happen. He also cannot claim that The Angel saved hundreds or thousands of Israeli lives because that didn t happen. He cannot say The Angel that helped keep Egyptians from crossing the canal because that, too, didn t happen. Therefore, the only way to convince the world that Marwan was of value to Israel, is to convince the world that Sadat s intentions were to destroy Israel, which was never the case.

 

It has been well documented that Sadat never planned to occupy Tel Aviv, or annihilate Israel during the October War. Sadat had been seeking peace through negotiations for years after taking over as president, but his efforts all fell on deaf ears. Kissinger, the US administration, and Israel preferred to keep the status quo, which Egypt found to be untenable. Even the Soviet Union preferred to keep the “no war no peace” state. With his land occupied, Sadat had to change this. He planned a war that would eventually lead to peace—not to the destruction of Israel. Not that he didn t want to destroy Israel, but he knew the US would never allow it.

 

Thus, it was unrealistic and clearly achievable to say the least. Furthermore, Sadat had expelled the Soviets from Egypt months before he went to war. In my opinion, it was to have only one broker of peace, i.e., the United States, the one broker closest to Israel, which would never allow its destruction.

 

In his book, Witness on War and Peace, Ahmed Abul Gheit, Egypt s current Arab League secretary general, and a young diplomat working under Hafez Ismael, Sadat s national security advisor at that time, writes about extensive top-secret discussions in Egypt a few months before war broke out, debating how to de-escalate and achieve a cease fire after Egypt attacked. He himself presented a memo to Ismael, in which suggested a surprise attack on Israel, followed by immediate diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire.

 

Reaching this conclusion is highly relevant to Ashraf Marwan s case and the information he conveyed to the Israelis. Sadat s real intentions behind the war, as well as the objectives he had set for it way before it was launched, are key for understanding Marwan s role in achieving them, which he did – brilliantly.

 

Toward the end of the book, the author challenges Egypt to produce records proving that Marwan was working with the Egyptian intelligence. It seems quite strange form the author considering only 40 pages of the 1500 of the main Agranat commission report have been disclosed to the public. I believe Dubi, Marwan s handler, is not yet known to the public. Furthermore, to date, there has been no official statement from the Mossad or the Israeli government confirming Marwan was its agent.

 

The infamous Egyptian spy who lived in Israel, Refaat Elgammal, was not claimed by the Egyptians for many years after he retired and left Israel in 1973 and died in Germany in 1982. President Mubarak s statement in 2007 confirming Marwan s patriotic role was more than enough to clear his name.