The Angel (10 page)

Regardless of whether Sadat's weak image was deliberate, one can understand why men like Sabri, Gomaa, Sami Sharaf, and former vice president Hussein el-Shafei were initially willing to go along with a Sadat presidency. Such an arrangement offered two advantages. First, it would send a signal of continuity and constitutionality of the regime. And second, his political weakness would mean that he could pose little threat to their own status; they
would still be able to depose him when the time was right. He was not an especially popular figure in Egypt and had no independent power base. A common saying in Cairo at the time was that God had given Egypt two catastrophes: taking Nasser away and putting Sadat in his place. During a May Day celebration of 1971 held at a steel factory in the city of Helwan, Sadat gave the keynote address. Thousands of people chanted “Sadat! Sadat!”—while waving posters bearing Nasser's picture.

Sadat's political weakness was also a function of the specific governmental structure that had come together under Nasser. It was the result of having a charismatic and powerful leader who knew how to speak directly to the masses but who still needed mechanisms of authority, oversight, and motivation for the Egyptian people. What emerged was a layer of second-tier leaders, about fifteen in all, who were close to Nasser and became known as the “centers of power” (
markaz al-kaw
i
). Each of them was responsible for an area of operation—diplomacy, defense, infrastructure, party politics. And each built his power not so much on his connection to Nasser or his personal skills but on his ability to build and maintain a long train of loyal followers, known as a
sheelah
, or “comet tail.”

As a result, these leaders often put a far greater emphasis on keeping their followers happy than on faithfully discharging their duties. And so, when Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer fell from grace in the wake of the Six-Day War, some people said that he had invested more in maintaining his military
sheelah
than in preparing for war. Similarly, the true loyalty of the vast networks of intelligence operatives run by Interior Minister Shaarawy Gomaa and presidential secretary Sami Sharaf was less to the security of the country and more to the two men in charge. Because Nasser's personal leadership was so dominant throughout Egyptian life, his support among the population unrivaled, there was no fear of
competition between his status and that of the individual power brokers with their comet tails. When Sadat came to power, however, this was no longer the case. His continued rule would depend entirely on his ability to work with, or manipulate, the centers of power.

This was no easy task. In addition to building comet tails, the power brokers also developed their connections with each other. In some cases, such as between Sami Sharaf and the minister of war, Mohamed Fawzi, the connection was based on blood ties. In others, alliances were built on common worldviews or political convenience. The result was a fairly well-oiled leadership machine that had worked alongside Nasser and held most of the power in the country. The most notable of these included Ali Sabri, chairman of the Arab Socialist Union, who continued to hold power even after Nasser dismissed him as vice president and appointed Sadat in his place; and Interior Minister Shaarawy Gomaa. Many people, including in IDF Military Intelligence, saw these two as the natural successors to Nasser and expected that Sadat would swiftly be replaced as president by one of them. The centers of power, however, had someone else in mind. They may have planned on Sadat being quickly replaced, but in the long run, it was Sami Sharaf, Ashraf Marwan's boss, who would end up leading the country. Or so they believed.

Anwar Sadat never built himself a power center or comet tail. Not only did it go against his leadership style, which relied heavily on a small number of loyal aides, but the posts he filled were also mostly ceremonial, making it hard to build a following when he had so little to give his followers. Thus in the first few months of his presidency, he cooperated with the centers of power, even though he knew what they planned to do to him. At the same time, however, he took popular steps like releasing political prisoners and improving the overall standard of living in Egypt.

These steps improved Sadat's position and gave him, within a few months, confidence in his ability to stand his ground in the face of the centers of power. In their view, Sadat was no Nasser, but at best a primus inter pares
—
and a temporary one at that. Sadat, however, began making decisions on his own, and tensions with the leadership rose. This was especially the case concerning efforts to get the Sinai back from Israel. Believing that Egypt had no way of retaking it by force, in February 1971 Sadat proposed an interim settlement in which the IDF would pull back from the Suez Canal just enough to allow Egypt to reopen it to maritime traffic. The proposal angered Ali Sabri, who believed that the only solution to the Israeli occupation was war; Sabri pinned his hopes on the Soviets to help Egypt overcome its military inferiority. Many of the leaders either supported his position or at least voiced their concern about Sadat's acting on his own.
⁴

The tension between Sadat and the centers of power reached its climax in the second week of May 1971. In the drama that unfolded, Ashraf Marwan played a central role. In Sadat's telling, Marwan was the one who handed him the winning card, enabling him to vanquish his opponents once and for all.

ONE OF SADAT'S
weaknesses was the fact that his adversaries, especially Sami Sharaf and Shaarawy Gomaa, controlled the intelligence agencies; they had tapped his phone lines and infiltrated his closest circles. Knowing this, Sadat looked for ways to circumvent the normal means of communication—a task made especially difficult by his lack of a comet tail of his own. He was forced to rely on his own family. When he wanted to verify a warning he had received from Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, editor of
Al-Ahram
and one of Nasser's closest friends, about a plot to assassinate him, he sent his thirteen-year-old daughter Noha to Heikal's apartment with a request that he meet Sadat in the president's home. Similarly,
on May 13, when he sensed that the moment of truth in the power struggle was drawing near, he sent his older daughter Lubna in her private car to Alexandria, where she met the mayor of the city, Mamdouh Salem. Salem was a former officer in the Interrogation Corps, a police unit charged with, among other things, protecting the person of the nation's leaders. Lubna's message was brief and clear: “The president wishes to see you immediately. Tell no one.” Salem rushed to Cairo. Sadat asked him whether he was willing to assume the position of minister of the interior. Salem accepted the offer and was quietly installed to replace Shaarawy Gomaa.

IMMEDIATELY UPON BEING
sworn in, Salem took the commander of internal security forces in Alexandria and appointed him to be Egypt's new chief of interrogations. Sadat gave Salem a list of all the people he identified as conspirators against the president. They were all to be arrested.

Even before Salem was sworn in, while Sadat sat in his office waiting for him to arrive from Alexandria, the president decided to test the loyalty of Gen. El-Leithy Nassif, commander of the Presidential Guard, who had been personally appointed by Nasser and whose job it was to keep Sadat safe. The general and his guard, however, were under the command of Sami Sharaf, and Nassif owed his direct allegiance to the presidential secretary. But the day before, in what in retrospect was a major blunder on Sharaf's part, he had given Nassif the unusual directive that in all circumstances, he must remember to honor the chain of command as part of his professional duty. The result was that when Sadat now asked Nassif about his personal loyalty to the president and his willingness and ability to imprison government officials conspiring against him, Nassif understood what was happening and swore his total loyalty to the president. Sadat made him swear not to tell anyone of their conversation. Nassif swore, and kept his oath.

Himself a seasoned conspirator, Sadat now felt that everything was in place to make his move. The timing was decided, in no small measure, by Ashraf Marwan, who was still working under Sami Sharaf in the President's Palace.

Though all sources agree that Marwan played a central role in helping Sadat overcome his opponents and establish his rule over Egypt in May 1971, there are disagreements as to what, exactly, he did. Sadat's memoirs,
In Search of Identity
, which are strewn with basic factual errors, say that Marwan came to him at 10:57 p.m. on May 13, bringing the letters of resignation of the chairman of the popular council, the war minister, the presidential secretary, and members of the Supreme Executive Council. The purpose of their collective resignation, Sadat believed, was to create a constitutional crisis that would force the president himself to resign. Instead, Sadat wrote, “I accepted their resignations.”
⁵

Sadat's wife, Jehan, who also wrote a memoir,
A Woman of Egypt
, in which she claimed for herself an important role in guiding her husband in general and upending the conspiracy in particular, gives a more dramatic and detailed account. In her telling, she and the president were watching the ten o'clock news in their home when they heard a knock on the door. It was Ashraf Marwan, who, in addition to his family connection to Nasser and his role in the President's Office, was also a personal friend. He handed them the letters of resignation and added, uncomfortably, that a public announcement would be made in just a few minutes, during the news broadcast they were watching. Sadat shook his head in disbelief. Then, indeed, the anchorman reported on the mass resignations. Marwan continued standing there uncomfortably, and when Jehan asked him why he hadn't given them more notice, he answered that Sami Sharaf hadn't let him leave the office. Jehan understood from this that Marwan, whose loyalty to Sadat she had never doubted, had genuinely been unable to get around Sharaf's
orders—before adding that “I no longer knew what to believe.” Perhaps she said this because, according to one of the conspirators, Marwan was given the order to deliver the letters at 8:00 p.m.
⁶
At this moment, according to Jehan, Marwan's role ended and El-Leithy Nassif's role began. Sadat ordered Nassif to jail everyone on the list immediately.

Sadat and his wife both describe Marwan as having mostly played the role of messenger. From their accounts it is unclear whether he came to them on Sharaf's orders, in order to create the impression of bureaucratic propriety in delivering the mass resignations aimed at destroying the regime; or at Marwan's own initiative, as an ally to Sadat in the President's Office who brought them the letters, albeit belatedly, which they were not supposed to know about until after the announcement. Other sources, however, describe Marwan not only as having decided on his own to deliver the letters but having risked his life to get his hands on incriminating evidence against Sadat's opponents and then bring it to the president—handing Sadat the tools he needed to destroy his enemies.

Nasser, apparently, kept two secret safes in his house. In the larger one he held cash that was used to pay for top-secret projects. In the smaller one he kept ultrasensitive documents about the intelligence and security agencies. After Nasser's death, his widow, Tahia, gave the keys to the safes to Sami Sharaf. On May 13, Sharaf sent his personal secretary, Muhammad Said, to take the documents from the smaller safe to a different hiding place. According to two accounts, Marwan heard about it and tracked Said down. He saw him leaving Nasser's house with the documents in hand and then starting to drive off. Marwan pulled up, took out his gun, and started shooting. Said stopped the car, and Marwan took the documents and brought them to Sadat.
⁷
They included founding documents of the Socialist Union Party, which was the central base of power of the conspirators, personal papers of Sami
Sharaf and other opposition leaders, and bank account information where, presumably, they kept their bribe money. According to one account, certain documents also showed that Sami Sharaf and Ashraf Marwan had been bad-mouthing Sadat—and Marwan took the time to destroy them before bringing the rest to the president.
⁸
A different account contradicts this, however, saying that Marwan brought Sadat everything that Said had taken.

In yet another version of the events, the CIA played a central role in preventing the coup, discovering the conspiracy through their wiretapping of some of the conspirators, and also via Vladimir Sakharov, an officer in the local KGB office who was secretly working for the Americans. The deputy director of the CIA's Cairo station, Thomas Twetten, who would later become the agency's director of operations, passed the incriminating evidence to Marwan, who gave it to Sadat that evening.
⁹
A similar account has the Mossad passing information to James Angleton, head of counterintelligence in the CIA and key Israel liaison, about an intended coup that included Sadat's assassination at the hands of pro-Soviet elements in Egypt. The information was passed to Twetten in Cairo, who gave it to Marwan, who warned Sadat.
¹⁰

As against all these accounts, there is also Sami Sharaf's own description of the events. He claims that on the evening of May 13, he gave Marwan the order to take the letters of resignation to Sadat. Nasser's son-in-law refused and offered his own resignation instead. Sharaf refused the resignation and insisted that he remain in his post until someone more loyal could be found to replace him. When Marwan, having no choice, agreed to do the job, Sharaf told Said to give Marwan three leather suitcases full of documents relating to people connected to Nasser, not including government ministers, members of the Supreme Executive Council, or members of the president's family.
¹¹

What everyone seems to agree on is that immediately after the
arrests of Egypt's key power brokers the next day, Sadat rewarded Marwan for his faithful service.