The Angel (31 page)

But the true value of almost all these contracts, in the end, was little more than the paper they were written on. In late 1977, after hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent, AOI's total revenues amounted to $41 million. The only actual armament it produced was a West German armored personnel carrier capable of carrying ten soldiers a distance of four hundred miles. It is unclear exactly how many of the APCs were produced, or whether they were ever deployed in any army.

One of the central problems with the project was the poor state of manufacturing in Egypt. Experts assessed that the country lacked the qualified personnel needed to carry out AOI's ambitious plans. Marwan failed to prove otherwise. But what finally brought AOI down was the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. In the wake of Sadat's initiative in October 1977, Egypt found itself suddenly isolated in the Arab world—and all the more so after the Camp David Accords were signed in 1979. In March 1979, Egypt's partners in the consortium announced their decision to cease all funding for the project—resulting in the immediate layoff of sixteen thousand employees in Egypt.

Marwan was not one of them. He had already quit in October 1978. Not, of course, because of the failure of the consortium or of his poor performance. On the contrary—he proved himself more than capable as a manager, and had the backing of the Saudis and
the others. Rather, the reason was, as always, the incessant efforts of his rivals in Egypt and abroad to bring him down. And as always, it was his appetite for corruption that gave them exactly the ammunition they needed.

THE MEN WHO
led the decisive battle against Ashraf Marwan were Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi and Musa Sabri, editor of
Al-Akhbar
and one of Sadat's most ardent supporters and longtime friends. They were joined by a number of other important players in Egypt, including journalists who published accounts of Marwan's affronts and who were deeply worried about the prospect of his continuing to play a major public role—or even returning to the political arena.

Some of the charges were probably unwarranted. One day, for example, the editor of the newspaper
Akhbar al-Youm
placed a call to the foreign minister on a certain matter. Fahmi told him that instead of asking about that, he should be focusing on a story about the theft of diamonds worth tens of thousands of dollars from a certain hotel in London where, as it happens, Marwan was staying. Fahmi's aim was to foment a scandal by making it seem that Marwan, the public servant, was wealthy enough to have the diamonds in his hotel room. He told the editor to publish the item, adding that it came from a “secret and official” source. The report appeared not only in
Akhbar al-Youm
but in a number of other papers as well, and even though Marwan's name was not mentioned explicitly, there were enough hints to make it clear who was implicated. The affair, which became known as the
fadikha
, or “scandal,” was brought to the attention of Sadat, who insisted on being told precisely whom it was about. When Musa Sabri identified Marwan, Sadat ordered a thorough investigation.

This time, the charges turned out to have been completely fabricated.
²⁹
But that didn't stop the rumor mill from putting more and more pressure on Marwan. One of AOI's main offices was in
London, and Marwan traveled there often. Rumors soon reached Cairo about weapons deals being hatched by Marwan and his old friend Kamal Adham. In some cases, Jehan Sadat's name was mentioned as well. Marwan, it was said, had an apartment in London and had lost a fortune playing roulette at the Playboy Club. It was also said that Marwan worked hard to close a huge deal in which EgyptAir purchased airliners from Boeing, knowing that Adham would get a sizable fee for every plane sold. At the same time, there were published reports that Marwan gave expensive gifts, including color televisions, to senior figures in the Egyptian government and in the military industry in order to dampen the accusations against him.
³⁰

This string of revelations, many of which originated with people most loyal to Sadat, increased the pressure on the president to remove Marwan from his position as head of AOI. Sadat resisted, offering a number of excuses: Marwan was irreplaceable in carrying out important and sensitive missions abroad on behalf of the president; his special relationship with the leaders of the Libyan regime had enabled him to solve the thorniest crises between Libya and Egypt; and the Saudi monarchy regarded him as a highly effective link to Egypt, especially in delicate business, thus making it possible for Sadat to conduct a productive dialogue with the king. And then there was the debt Sadat owed Marwan for his important contribution to the war effort, especially the acquisition of Mirages from France via Libya.
³¹

But the pressure on Sadat continued to mount. If, in the past, it had been relatively painless for him to accept Marwan's flat-out denials and claims that Nasserites were looking to do him in, this time the clamor for Marwan's head was coming from Sadat's own friends, including Sabri and the media moguls, the brothers Mustafa and Ali Amin. When media pressure combined with intelligence reports describing Marwan's behavior, Sadat realized that he had to act. What probably tipped the scales was not just
the incontrovertible evidence of Marwan's corruption, but recordings of his conversations with various Gulf potentates, in which he sounded dismissive of Sadat, even antagonistic. And the moment Marwan appeared disloyal, he became a sitting duck. Soon thereafter, he complained to Sadat that his office had been bugged, and Sadat ignored the complaint. Marwan heard the president's message loud and clear. Sadat had decided to remove the protective cover that had kept Marwan safe for so long, and he wanted Marwan to know it.
³²

As on so many other occasions in the life of Ashraf Marwan, the announcement on October 12, 1978, that he was leaving his position at AOI was accompanied by drama. Sadat wanted to play down the whole affair. Yet the decision reached the ears of Musa Sabri, and his
Al-Akhbar
paper ran a story with the headline, “An End to the Legend of Ashraf Marwan: Presidential Order to Fire Him from the Arab Organization for Industrialization and Transfer Him to the Foreign Ministry.”
³³
This angered Sadat—not least because within a few hours' time he found himself standing before Marwan's wife, Mona, in tears, who claimed that the articles implied that Nasser's daughter was married to a thief. Sadat called Sabri and insisted that he bury the story. And indeed, in the paper's later editions on the same day, Marwan was described as having “resigned” and being given a senior appointment at the Foreign Ministry. Not long after, Sadat sent him on several new diplomatic missions, in order to make it look as though Marwan still had his favor. Sabri wound up feeling more than a little hurt by it all—a feeling that certainly increased when it turned out that Sadat, his longtime friend, had stopped taking his calls and refused to meet. Sabri, in response, announced his own resignation as editor of
Al-Akhbar
, and though he eventually was persuaded to withdraw his resignation, relations between the two never fully recovered.
³⁴

And as with the last time Sadat found himself dismissing Marwan, this time, too, he gave his former aide all the pomp and honor due a national hero. In a public ceremony covered widely by the media, he gave Marwan the highest medal of the Republic of Egypt and emphasized the man's achievements during the October War. Thanks to Marwan's efforts, Sadat concluded, “our air forces could complete their battle missions as necessary.”
³⁵
Later on Marwan made good use of his two medals to prove his loyalty to Egypt and, before the press, to bolster his claims that he had been a double agent working for Egypt against Israel.

Outside of Egypt, Marwan's dismissal was taken as a significant development in the Egyptian political leadership. Several days earlier, before the annual military parade on October 6, it was announced that another major figure, the army's chief of staff, Mohamed Abdel Ghani el-Gamasy, had also been retired. So Marwan's departure was taken to signify an effort on Sadat's part to clean house in a way that showed balance among competing camps in the regime.

The man who benefited most from the shake-up was Sadat's vice president, Hosni Mubarak, whose two main competitors had suddenly been eliminated.
³⁶

EVEN BEFORE MARWAN
had been booted from the Egyptian public arena, his status with the Mossad had begun to decline. There had been no rupture in the relationship, and he continued passing information to his handlers whenever he traveled to Europe. During negotiations with Israel over the disengagement of forces following the Yom Kippur War, for example, Marwan gave over crucial information that led to the successful conclusion of the armistice on the southern front. And when Israel needed to conclude a similar agreement with Syria months later, Marwan, as we have seen, provided an invaluable portrait of the Syrian president.

But the war also brought about a shift in the relationship. Part
of it was personal. Egypt's great successes in the first few days of the war, especially raising the Egyptian flag over the Bar-Lev Line, gave the Arabs back much of their lost honor in the wake of 1967. Part of Marwan's original motivation to spy for Israel came from his innate desire to be on the winning side of the conflict. In his meetings with his handlers immediately after the war, he expressed his frustration that Israel had been surprised despite his warnings and that the IDF had taken heavy losses without making effective use of the detailed plans he had provided. Suddenly, the Israelis were no longer the perfect, indomitable force that they once were, and the Egyptians were no longer the humiliated bums that he had been loath to ally himself with.

Other aspects of his original motivation had been undermined as well. He was now a wealthy man, and the payments he received from the Mossad no longer meant what they once did. And he also had received great honor from the Egyptian government and continued to be welcomed in capitals all over the world, soothing the wounds to his ego that his father-in-law had inflicted—wounds that had surely contributed to his initial decision to betray his country.

Another change had to do with the shifting relations between Israel and Egypt. The end of the war, the armistice agreements, and Egypt's shift from the Soviet to the American camp, opened the doors to a genuine peace process, and the likelihood of a new war initiated by Egypt had lessened considerably. As a result, the Angel's most important role as far as the Mossad was concerned—to sound the alarm if Egypt were about to attack—was no longer nearly as important.

Yet despite this, Marwan still continued giving Israel crucial ongoing intelligence on Egyptian foreign policy. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he repeated a single message to his Israeli handlers: that Sadat was looking to end the conflict with Israel and instead
focus on “building Egypt.” But the president's thoughts about peace concerned the Mossad and the rest of the Israeli intelligence community far less than did his thoughts about war. And so, the intelligence Marwan delivered garnered far less attention among Israeli decision makers than it had in the past. After Sadat launched the peace process, and especially after the Camp David Accords were signed, Egypt was suddenly a far lower priority for the intelligence community—and so was Ashraf Marwan.

Marwan's dwindling stature in Israel was also reflected in a drop in the caution Israelis were exercising with his intelligence. A CIA friend warned him one day that information only he knew was somehow getting to the Israelis—suggesting that the Israelis had neglected their long-standing practice of “paraphrasing” Marwan's intelligence in a way that made it impossible to know who the source had been before passing it to the Americans. Marwan complained bitterly to Dubi. An inquiry was made, the cause of the slip identified, and steps taken to ensure it didn't happen again. But clearly keeping Marwan a secret no longer held the same urgency for Israelis as it once did.

There were other indicators as well. Zamir finished his tour as chief of the Mossad in the summer of 1974. His replacement, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Hofi, did not see a need to participate in Marwan's handling, and Dubi became the Mossad's only direct link with him. Their meetings also became less frequent. If prior to the war they would meet at least twice a month, and sometimes more, now they met only once every month or two. In the mid-1970s, Dubi left London and relocated back to Israel. Now he could no longer meet Marwan without notice whenever the Angel came to town. This, too, would never have happened when Marwan's importance for the Mossad was at its peak.

Even Marwan's payments were scaled back. Around the Yom Kippur War, his occasional payments reached $50,000 apiece. After
the war, he received a fixed annual sum of $100,000—far less than before. Not that he really needed the money. Indeed, at one point he informed his handlers that he no longer wanted compensation at all, and for a number of years he continued to supply information without receiving payment. In the late 1970s, however, he fell on hard financial times and asked for help from the Mossad. Hofi agreed to forward him a onetime payment of over half a million dollars for all the years he had continued supplying information for free. That was the last time the Angel received any money from Israeli taxpayers.

All this brings to the surface, again, the question of Marwan's motives. Why would he continue to work for Israel for years, at considerable risk to his career and life, even after 1981, when he would leave Egypt for good? It clearly wasn't the money. It wasn't about his personal honor in Egypt; he had kept on helping Israel even when he was at the height of his glory. Nor was he coerced: We have no reason to believe that the Mossad ever attempted to get Marwan to do anything against his will.