The Angel (38 page)

For all these reasons, the public admission by Eli Zeira, both in his book and in subsequent television interviews in 2004, to the effect that Marwan worked for the Mossad, created for Egypt a new reality: there's a big difference when such a claim comes from a journalist or historian and when it comes from the man who headed IDF Military Intelligence during the Yom Kippur War. And all the more so when a former Israeli Supreme Court justice issues a ruling on the subject, which could easily be interpreted as formal judicial affirmation of Marwan's treachery.

In June 2007, the awareness that this affair could threaten the foundations of Egyptian rule, and of the need to neutralize that
threat, were becoming more and more acute for the regime in Cairo. Something had to be done.

ALL OF THIS,
however, only explains the motive—why in the immediate aftermath of the Orr ruling, the Egyptians had every reason in the world to have Ashraf Marwan killed. But motive alone is not enough. Are there other indicators suggesting that the Egyptians had a hand in his death?

There are—specifically, the method of his execution. By tossing him off the balcony and finding a way to make his shoes vanish, one can maximize the likelihood that suicide or an accident will never be ruled out. After Marwan's death, Egyptian journalists raised a number of parallels, two of which bear a striking resemblance.

The first happened in 1973, when Gen. El-Leithy Nassif, whom Nasser had chosen to command the Revolutionary Guard, and who, under Sadat's orders, had jailed leading opposition figures in May 1971, was murdered in London. The general, who had a reputation for being honest and ethical, had been reassigned out of the Guard in 1972. Sadat promoted him in rank and appointed him to a meaningless “advisory” position in the army. A year later, he was made ambassador to Greece, but before moving to Athens he stopped in London for a medical procedure. He stayed on the eleventh floor of the Stuart Tower, a residence in Westminster frequented by Middle Eastern visitors. On August 15, 1973, his body was found at the base of the tower, having fallen from the balcony of his suite. An autopsy revealed nothing suspicious, but his wife repeatedly claimed he had been murdered by Sadat's men, who shoved him out of the shower and off the balcony, because he had been a secret Nasser man. In particular, she blamed a senior Egyptian intelligence officer who lived in the same building at the time. The officer owned the apartment where Nassif was staying and had a key to the front door. In Nassif's home in Cairo, it was later learned, surveillance devices had been planted, and Nassif knew
about them. Though it is far from clear why Sadat would have wanted him killed after he had been loyal during the Corrective Revolution, the general sense in Egypt was that this was no accident but an execution on the orders of the government.
²⁶

Twenty-eight years later, on June 21, 2001, an Egyptian movie actress, Soad Hosny, met a very similar death. Hosny, who had appeared in eighty Egyptian films and was dubbed the “Cinderella of Egyptian Cinema,” was found dead at the base of Stuart Tower, after falling from her balcony on the seventh floor. Hosny had suffered from chronic pain and was being treated for weight gain, but people who were close to her in her four years in London claimed that she showed no suicidal signs. Her personal physician also knew her closely; he testified that he had spoken with her a day before her death, and she had sounded optimistic, promising to see him soon. Another close friend, her personal assistant, testified that when she had entered the apartment, Hosny had been on the balcony, but then once the assistant was inside, she could no longer find Hosny. She walked out onto the balcony and saw Hosny's body on the grounds below. But because the assistant had contradictions in her story, the British judge attempting to establish the cause of death concluded that she was an unreliable witness.

The mysterious death of Soad Hosny, one of the most revered movie stars in the Arab world, triggered a wave of rumors, some of which pointed fingers at Egyptian intelligence. According to what became the established narrative, she was planning on writing a memoir in which she would reveal how she had worked for Egyptian intelligence in the 1980s. Her story of her work as an agent—which likely included acts of seduction by the beautiful actress—got a boost when the head of the Mukhabarat at the time, Gen. Fuad Nasser, claimed in an interview for an Egyptian paper that Hosny had been murdered. No wonder, then, that many around the Arab world believe that she was killed by Egyptian
government officials who feared the embarrassment that would be caused by the publication of her memoir.
²⁷
No wonder that according to the sensational
Ros
e
al-Yusuf
weekly, Scotland Yard's investigators of Marwan's death concluded that the same team of three Egyptians—two men and a woman—committed the murder of both the movie actress and the Mossad spy.
²⁸
Probably a false story, it received no confirmation from Scotland Yard or any other knowledgeable source.

THE IMPRESSIVE FUNERAL
and President Mubarak's statement, according to which he did “not doubt at all the patriotism of Dr. Ashraf Marwan” and that Marwan “was not a spy for any organization at all,”
²⁹
convinced quite a few Western journalists and analysts that maybe the double agent hypothesis was right after all. Others, familiar with the tiniest details of the story of Ashraf Marwan during the war, remained skeptical. Israeli Brig. Gen. (res.) Amos Gilboa, himself a former head of MI-Research who went through all the material that Marwan had provided, gave his own take on the behavior of official Egypt. The pictures of the funeral in which senior government officials are shown comforting his bereaved widow and their sons, he said, reminded him “of a mafia film. The mafia takes somebody out. Then, when the widow and children are crying on his grave, the killers come and kiss her.”
³⁰

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.

T
he 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 telling here is accurate. My hope is that it will prove to be so also in the years to come.