The Angel (18 page)

In the end, Sadat decided he had no choice but to transfer the smitten fellow to the Foreign Ministry, where he embarked on a diplomatic career. The romantic liaison was over. Not so long after, Lubna married someone else—a wealthy businessman from an aristocratic Egyptian family—and her mother was satisfied.
¹⁷

Marwan's victory, however, came with a less gratifying epilogue. In the mid-1970s, after a mountain of complaints about Marwan had piled up on Sadat's desk, the president finally decided to investigate them. To lead the inquiry, he appointed none other than Ahmad al-Masiri. Al-Masiri went to London and conducted a secret investigation. He uncovered documentary evidence pointing to financial irregularities on the part of Nasser's son-in-law. He brought back with him, among other things, documents showing that in 1972 Marwan purchased two million shares of a large London company at a price of £2 per share. This time Marwan had no way of explaining where he had gotten the £4 million, and when Sadat saw the proof, he could no longer turn a blind eye. Al-Masiri's investigation started a process that would end with Marwan's being banished from Sadat's inner circle, and ultimately leaving Egypt entirely.
¹⁸

ALL THAT, HOWEVER,
was still a long way off. In the early 1970s, Marwan was busy building three different careers, and excelling remarkably in all three. In his official, publicly known career, he was confidant and emissary for the president of Egypt, with a focus on Saudi and Libyan relations. He carried out dozens of
international missions, met with Arab leaders in Cairo, and flew to Arab capitals to deliver messages from the president. In June and July 1973, the Arabic press published accounts of his official visit to Riyadh, where he met with Saudi king Faisal; the following month they reported on his meeting with the emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah, to whom he delivered a message from Sadat. Other meetings were kept secret. The best-known of these, after the fact, took place in Saudi Arabia in August 1973, when Marwan accompanied Sadat on a secret summit meeting with King Faisal, in which the Egyptian president informed the Saudi king of his intent to launch a war in the near future.
¹⁹
Marwan also was involved in efforts to acquire weaponry from Arab states in the days before the war. This included not only making sure the Mirages arrived via Libya, but also trying to steward another deal to acquire thirty-two more Mirages via Saudi Arabia, along with British-made Sea King helicopters. This deal, which fell through in the end, was negotiated between Marwan and Faisal, without consulting Egypt's minister of war, army chief of staff, or air force commander.
²⁰

In his second career, Marwan took advantage of the contacts he made to build his personal fortune. Even if the rumors that swirled of his corruption were exaggerated, he definitely became wealthy quickly. His £4 million stock purchase on the London exchange—far beyond anything the Mossad ever paid him—took place in 1972. Whether through his real estate deals or through other shady moves, it is clear that within three years of returning to Cairo with his tail between his legs after taking money from the Al-Sabahs to cover his debts, Ashraf Marwan was wealthy enough to live the high life in London, or anywhere else, without borrowing a penny. His dream of riches had come true.

His third career was as a spy. Here, the main question involves his motivation. His two biggest reasons for turning to Israel in
1970—his need for cash and his resentment toward Nasser—were no longer relevant. He was now rich and famous and carried immense power and status. So why would he keep selling his nation's secrets?

As far as we know, the Mossad never tried to force his hand. Prior to the war, Marwan never asked to stop helping the Israelis. Part of the reason was probably inertia: His work for the Mossad may have now seemed less dangerous, and more lucrative, than he had once expected. This work also, it seems, satisfied his deep need for risk and stimulus—the gambler inside him—that let him feel not only the thrill of danger but also the power of personally moving history and the sense that, unlike everyone around him, he was really on the stronger, more clever side in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This would dovetail well with additional rumors that during this period Marwan began working for other intelligence agencies as well, including the CIA, MI6, and Italian intelligence. If such connections existed at all prior to the Yom Kippur War, they were on a low flame. The fact is that these countries' intelligence about Egypt during the time was far weaker than what Marwan had given Israel. The CIA, for example, passed on to Israel the most detailed information they had from their best sources—including sensitive sources like King Hussein of Jordan. If Marwan had given the CIA anything really important prior to the war, the Americans would have passed it on to Israel. But they didn't, probably because they didn't have it. Howard Blum, who investigated the connection between Marwan and the CIA using sources at the agency, concluded that although Marwan did indeed work for the Americans, it happened much later, mostly during the 1980s.
²¹
The same may have been true with the British and the Italians. One unidentified Italian source claimed that Marwan gave them “a warning of the war a few hours before he met the Mossad officials in London.”
²²
This seems unlikely, however, because—as we will see—Marwan was very busy in London that day.

So despite the rumors, there is little reason to believe that Marwan worked for any foreign intelligence agency other than Israel's prior to the war. But it is also hard to accept that he managed to keep his treachery a complete secret. British intelligence, for example, probably knew about it, since they knew that Dubi worked for the Mossad—which should have been enough for a competent intelligence agency to draw the right conclusions. Indeed, one MI5 officer met with a Mossad official at the time, and after bringing up Marwan's name, he added, “But of course you know him well.” Yet in the absence of any evidence that he actually worked for anyone else, it should be assumed that he did not; and even if he did, he certainly saw the Israelis as his principal client, to whom he gave the very best intelligence. In the months that followed, until the outbreak of war, his contribution to Israeli security would reveal itself, time and again, to be indispensable.

I
n July 1972, after failing repeatedly to secure “weapons of deterrence” from the Soviets, Sadat suddenly announced that the Red Army troops that had been stationed in Egypt since early 1970 were going home. The Soviets had sent them, along with advanced SAM sites and squadrons of Soviet fighters and aircraft, to help Egypt neutralize Israel's air superiority. But they had undermined Egypt's autonomy in crucial decisions about its security. For as long as Soviet units defended Egyptian skies, the Kremlin had veto power over any Egyptian decision of war—a fact that Sadat knew too well. And so, as the prospects of getting the Sinai back through diplomatic means faded, the shackles on Egypt's war options grew more and more painful.

The man who probably took greatest advantage of Sadat's predicament was Henry Kissinger. In his indirect contacts with Egypt—mostly through Saudi channels overseen by Kamal Adham—Kissinger made it clear that the United States did not believe Egypt had a realistic war option, and that as long as the Soviets were on Egyptian soil, the White House would not exert pressure on Israel. As far as Kissinger was concerned, the only war that mattered was the Cold War, and he dangled the Sinai as bait to get the Egyptians to switch to the American side.

And indeed, Egypt had no realistic war option. Without the Scuds that the Soviets refused to supply and the long-range fighter-bombers that the Soviets didn't have, Egypt was completely vulnerable to Israeli aerial attacks, on both the battlefield and home front. And while the Soviet antiaircraft division may have helped, it didn't make it possible for Egypt to launch an attack on its own, since the Soviets would probably veto anything that would risk their own troops engaging with the IDF. So Sadat sent them packing—keeping the missile batteries and planes for Egypt, of course. Despite the crisis in Soviet-Egyptian relations the Kremlin, being now less obliged to participate in Egypt's defense and more concerned about an Egyptian-American rapprochement, eased its arms sales policy. Beginning in late 1972, new weapon systems such as the T-62 tank, SA-6 batteries, and modern water-crossing equipment started flowing to Egypt.

Sadat called Kissinger's bluff—and the Americans failed to deliver. In the ensuing months, nothing new came from the American side, and Sadat realized that the White House had no intention of getting Egypt back the Sinai in exchange for a peace agreement with Israel. He had reached a dead end.

On October 24, 1972, Sadat summoned the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for a special meeting in his residence in Giza. He informed the chiefs of the military that in light of the futility of efforts to convince the Americans to move diplomacy forward, he had decided to launch a war, “using whatever means are at our disposal.” The implications were clear. If until then, the Egyptian war paradigm (and, by extension, the Israeli intelligence
kontzeptzia
) had held that Egypt could not launch a war without getting “weapons of deterrence,” that barrier had now ceased to exist. Egypt would find the way to go to war without these means. Sadat emphasized how crucial the time factor had now become, ordering his military to prepare for the attack as soon as the beginning of 1973—two months hence.

Many of the participants in the meeting voiced forceful objections. Some spoke of the home front's vulnerability to Israeli bombing raids. Others, especially the commanders charged with crossing the Suez Canal, complained about the operational difficulties involved in fending off Israel's superior armor and the enormous earth embankments Israel had positioned along the canal to prevent an Egyptian crossing. The army's chief of staff, Saad el-Shazly, and his chief of operations, Mohamed Abdel Ghani el-Gamasy, urged the president to petition other Arab states for help in the war effort. And the minister of war, General Mohammed Ahmed Sadek, said that the goal of the war should be conquering the entire Sinai Peninsula, and that the Egyptian military was very far from being able to do that.

Sadat was not moved. He repeated that he saw no alternative to war, that an assault must be launched in the coming months, and that the goal would not be the conquest of all of Sinai but rather shattering the status quo and triggering a diplomatic effort that would end in restoring all Egyptian territory. Two days later, he made his resolve as clear as could be: He fired the minister of war, the minister's deputy, and the commander of the navy, replacing them with men less hesitant about war.

In the months that followed, Egypt's military leaders translated Sadat's directives into operational plans. The objective of the war was to challenge Israel's belief that occupying the Sinai would, in itself, provide security for the country, by (a) undermining Israel's economy through a prolonged conflict that would require an extended mobilization of reserves, (b) isolating Israel diplomatically, and (c) changing the balance of power in the region by convincing the Americans to put pressure on Israel to give up the lands it took in 1967, especially the Sinai. Egypt's new war concept meant new territorial objectives as well. Until the summer of 1971, when Sadat appointed Shazly to take over the military just months after the
Corrective Revolution in May of that year, the goal had been to conquer the whole Sinai using a plan known as Granite II; when Shazly took over, more limited plans were developed, known as Operation 41, which sought to conquer land up to the Mitla and Gidi Passes that cut through the mountains of western Sinai—about twenty-five to forty miles east of the Suez Canal. But these plans still needed “weapons of deterrence” to combat Israel's air power. With Sadat's new directive to prepare for war by the start of 1973, it was decided to limit the war aims to what seemed reasonable to believe the Egyptian army was capable of achieving even without the long-range missiles and aircraft.

These new plans were ready by January 1973, as ordered. The new plan, known as Operation High Minarets, aimed both to solve the problem of Egyptian military vulnerability to IAF attacks and to fulfill Sadat's demand for something that would shake up the region and force progress on the diplomatic front. The focus of the plan was the crossing of the Suez Canal—using the very same plan that Marwan had given Israel back in 1971, with five infantry divisions crossing at five points. But as opposed to earlier plans, which saw the crossing as the first phase meant to enable the armored divisions to launch themselves toward the Mitla and Gidi Passes, with Operation High Minarets the crossing of the canal and capture of its eastern bank would be the final goal of the whole war. In this way, Egyptian troops could avoid having to move eastward beyond the antiaircraft umbrella, which extended no more than six miles east of the canal.

Operation High Minarets was kept top secret—and not just from the Israelis. It was crucial to keep the Syrians from knowing just how limited Egypt's actual territorial aims were. For Sadat, the cornerstone of his military strategy was forcing the Israelis to fight on two fronts simultaneously, dividing both their manpower and their attention. For this, however, he would need the Syrians to attack
from the north on the Golan Heights. And because the conquest of the Golan could allow the Syrians to cross the Jordan River and invade northern Israel, while the Suez Canal was very far from the Israeli border, Sadat understood that if Syria were to attack, Israel's principal occupation would be fighting off the onslaught in the north—making it much more likely that Egypt would successfully capture and hold the east bank of the Suez Canal. Yet in order to secure the agreement of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, the Syrians had to believe that Egypt planned on putting everything they had behind a full invasion of the Sinai, not just keeping their troops under the antiaircraft umbrella in the canal zone. If Assad were to find out about Operation High Minarets, the whole plan would be scrapped.

In order to keep Assad in the dark while securing his cooperation in the planned joint attack, Egypt developed a second military plan, completed in April 1973, known as Granite II Improved. In this version, which was shared with the Syrians and formed the basis of all of their discussions with Egypt about the war, the infantry would cross the canal in the first phase, and then the armored divisions would cross into Sinai and head for the passes.
¹

Granite II Improved also included some serious improvements for crossing the canal. To deal with the problem of the embankments, water cannons would blast away enough to make room for amphibious vehicles landing on the eastern bank. To minimize loss of Egyptian forces and maximize the territory secured on the eastern bank, Egypt would encircle and cut off IDF fortifications rather than try to overrun them. And to prevent or delay IDF reservists from reaching the front, commandos would be dropped by helicopters at key locations in Sinai, cutting off approach roads. On the first day of combat, Egypt would send its five infantry divisions to establish five beachheads on the eastern bank. On the second day, they would expand the beachheads, and on the third day they
would link them up, creating a strip of conquered territory along the canal and extending up to seven and a half miles deep into Sinai. Once this was complete, two armored divisions, the 4th and the 21st, would cross the canal and launch an eastward attack heading for the Mitla and Gidi Passes.

That was Granite II Improved, the official plan shared with the Syrians. The plan that Shazly actually intended to implement, however, was Operation High Minarets—identical to Granite II Improved, just without the final step of bringing the armored divisions across the canal or attacking deeper into Sinai. It was so secret that even the division commanders were unaware of it.
²

Meanwhile, Egypt began its exercises to train for the attack. While in the past, exercises focused mostly on training the tank divisions for combat in Sinai, now they focused on the crossing itself—especially preparing the assault boats that would ferry 32,000 soldiers across the canal in the first phase, and building bridges to carry over the heavy equipment in the second. They also practiced bursting through the earth embankments on the Israeli side. As for the tanks, many of them were now attached to infantry divisions to help out in the first phase, rather than practicing their fictitious plan to invade Sinai.

By the spring of 1973, Egypt was ready. It was the first time since 1967 that the Egyptians had workable, operative plans for attacking Israel without waiting for “weapons of deterrence.” Now they just needed to set a date.

ASHRAF MARWAN, WHO
played so decisive a role in developing Israel's
kontzeptzia
regarding the minimal conditions Egypt thought were necessary to launch a war, was also the key source of information about Egypt's change of heart, which should have convinced the Israelis that the paradigm was no longer relevant. What happened instead was that a number of top figures in Israeli Military Intelligence
remained so deeply committed to the
kontzeptzia
that they just dismissed Marwan's new reports as false or irrelevant. Their inflexibility continued all the way to the morning of October 6, 1973—and was the single biggest reason that things went so deeply wrong from Israel's perspective.

Marwan did not participate in the fateful meeting a year before the war, on October 24, 1972, when Sadat announced his new vision. But one of his assistants did and took notes. Just over a week later, Marwan met with Zamir and Dubi in London, and handed them documents that testified clearly to Sadat's decision to go to war soon. It explicitly described the expulsion of the Soviets in July 1972 as a first step toward maximizing Egypt's freedom to maneuver. The document did not say outright that Sadat would no longer wait for the weapons he had once believed he needed in order to attack. But whatever it was missing in print was made up for by Marwan's oral account of the October 24 meeting and its implications. He told the Israelis that Sadat had come to the conclusion that the diplomatic option had reached a dead end, and the only way to start it again was through military action; and that he had fired his minister of war because the latter had refused orders to prepare the attack. Marwan also explained that Sadat had fired other generals who had doubted the Egyptian army's readiness—all in the effort to ensure broad agreement that would enable the most efficient path to launching an attack. Marwan also provided a timetable: Preparations for the defense of the Egyptian home front were to be completed by the end of November 1972; during December, the army would complete its preparations for a low-level “static” war. The crossing of the canal would not take place before the end of 1972. Finally, he told the Israelis that Syria was in on the plan. Already at this stage, Israeli intelligence had all the information it needed to conclude that the
kontzeptzia
was a dead letter.

Three weeks later, Marwan met them again. What became clear
this time was just how great the gap was between Sadat's determination to attack and Egypt's actual readiness for war. The Soviets continued to refuse to supply the Scuds and long-range fighter-bombers; the Sukhoi Su-17 fighters they gave Egypt couldn't stand up to Israel's Phantoms. Yet as Marwan kept pointing out, Sadat was far from dissuaded. The president would order the attack—and the army would not refuse him.

How did Marwan account for Sadat's determination to fight a war he was bound to lose? Sadat, he answered, was willing to pay a very heavy price in order to get something moving on the diplomatic front.

The unavoidable conclusion from all of this is that any claim to the effect that Israeli intelligence had no idea that the
kontzeptzia
had become outdated, that they had no idea the Egyptians had changed their minds about the conditions needed to launch an attack, and that Marwan had somehow tricked the Israelis into sticking to the old way of thinking in order to maximize the effectiveness of the surprise attack a year later—such a claim is completely unfounded. Neither was Marwan the only source Israel had about Sadat's change of heart or the decision to prepare for war—far from it.