THE ANGEL
The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel
Uri Bar-Joseph
HarperCollins
371 pages; Rs 999
On June 27, 2007, a 63-year-old Egyptian businessman fell to his death from the fifth floor of his luxury apartment in London. Was he pushed or did he jump?
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The dead man’s identity makes this a curiouser and curiouser sort of story. The son-in-law of Egypt’s most revered leader, Abdel Gamal Nasser, and a trusted aide of Anwar Sadat, Ashraf Marwan had been “exposed” five years before as a double agent who had tricked Israel in the opening days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
To the Mossad, however, he was the greatest spy Israel ever had. That is why, among his many operational names as an Israeli mole the “Angel” was the one that stuck. Without his valuable intelligence from the heart of Sadat’s administration, the disaster of the two-pronged attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel on the most important holiday in the Jewish faith could never have been turned into an advantage that brought Israeli forces within miles of Cairo.
Since the Yom Kippur War ended in a ceasefire, the view of Marwan’s role depends on each country’s narrative. For Egypt, October 6, 1973, remains a source of enormous pride. That was the day Sadat wrongfooted the Israeli defence forces with a surprise attack across the Suez, reclaiming large parts of the Sinai Peninsula that Egypt lost in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Intelligence analyst Uri Bar-Joseph book makes a credible case that it was the Egyptians who were double-crossed and that Israel was well aware of the impending attacks, thanks to Marwan.
He was what spy agencies called a walk-in, having made contact with Mossad in London. Why did Mossad not dismiss his approach as a set-up? Apart from the standard checks, Marwan’s credibility stemmed from his career trajectory and unimpaired appetite for the good life. Having married the austere Nasser’s younger daughter as a career move, he found himself working in the President’s office simply because his father-in-law didn’t trust his flamboyant son-in-law and wanted to keep an eye on him.
When Nasser died, Marwan, with his keen instincts for the main chance, backed Sadat’s bid for the presidency and became part of the inner circle, with unprecedented access to power and pelf.
So how was Israel outmanoeuvred with such a mole in place? The burden of Mr Bar-Joseph’s argument is that the early advantage that the Egyptians and Syrians gained in the Yom Kippur War was the result of a rigid military doctrine known as the kontzeptzia (Concept) that posited that Egypt would never attack without first solving the problem of Israel’s air superiority.
This view stemmed from Egypt’s status as a Soviet client. The Egyptians needed a long-range fighter-bomber to attack Israeli air bases. The Soviets had nothing comparable to the Israeli Air Force’s US-made F-4 Phantoms, A-4 Skyhawks or the French Mirages. Thanks to Marwan’s conscientious reporting on Egyptian-Soviet negotiations, Mossad also knew that Russia had refused to supply its ally with Scud missiles that could have deterred Israel from attacking Egypt in depth.
A chagrined Sadat expelled Soviet military advisors and exhorted military planners to change their focus. The strategy was to rely on massive anti-aircraft batteries along the west bank of the Suez to provide cover for troops and tanks crossing the canal and a split of Israeli resources between two fronts — the northern one on the Golan heights, where ally Syria would attack, and the southern flank on the Sinai. These moves and the element of surprise, Marwan informed his handlers, would be Egypt’s chief means to compensate for its air inferiority.
Israeli military intelligence declined to accept Mossad’s assessment even as other sources confirmed that an attack was imminent. If Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan hesitated to heed Mossad, it was because of the strength of the kontzeptzia as much as a reluctance to create nationwide panic by pulling reserves out of synagogues ahead of this major Jewish holiday.
It was Marwan’s urgent insistence the night before the attack — dramatically related here — that prompted a full mobilisation. It was too late to stop the initial Egyptian and Syrian inroads but in time to prepare for decisive retaliation. Later Marwan presented the Israelis with all the battle plans, including a tip-off that pre-empted an attack on Israeli Defence Force headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Yom Kippur marked the apogee of Marwan’s contribution, since the war was followed by American-brokered negotiations leading up to the Camp David Accords. Mr Bar-Joseph does not provide definitive answers to the riddle of Marwan’s death. He discounts his role as a double agent because the accusation came from the man who headed Israeli military intelligence during the Yom Kippur War and whose assessments had been so wrong. But it is unclear what the Egyptians thought and whether, two decades after Sadat’s assassination, they deemed Marwan worthy of murder.
After Sadat’s death, Marwan set base in London, brokering dodgy deals, including the one that had fellow Egyptian businessman Mohamed al-Fayed diddle the equally egregious Tiny Rowland of Lonrho out of ownership of Harrods. Meanwhile, Marwan’s debts on other dubious businesses were piling up. These, too, could have been probable causes for suicide or murder.
Even if we accept the inter-agency rivalries within Israel that prompted this book, Marwan’s story, written with engrossing clarity, is a reminder of the Cold War era in West Asian politics that have taken such a different turn today.