The Angel (21 page)

Marwan continued to supply crucial information even after it became clear that there would be no war in the spring. On May 20, he notified the Israelis of a new Egyptian surface-to-surface missile that carried a range of about 200 miles. It was the first sign of Soviet willingness to provide Egypt with the Scuds it had long asked for. Two weeks later, as recalled, he reported that the Egyptian leadership had stopped regarding the acquisition of long-range fighter-bombers as a necessary condition for launching war.

“THE MAIN REASON
behind the failure to recognize that Egypt's war aims had changed,” said Eli Zeira thirty-five years after the war, “was a failure of intelligence gathering. The intelligence gatherers did not provide any information about it. I can't remember a single report from any source about the shift. I can't
remember a single report that even suggested that such a change in their war aims was possible.”
¹⁸

This was a smoke screen. Given the fact that Eli Zeira personally received Khotel reports detailing all the information Marwan provided, including the detailed war plans, he knew full well that the intelligence gatherers had seen it all and reported it all.

The real source of the Israeli failure, rather, was the inflexible commitment to the
kontzeptzia
on the part of Israel's professional intelligence assessors, above all Zeira himself, despite all the information they held in their hands, over the course of a full year, that pointed unequivocally to its irrelevance. So committed were they to the
kontzeptzia
that they continued believing in it up until the morning of October 6.

On that day, as hundreds of thousands of Israelis who made up the core of the nation's reserve army fasted and prayed in their hometown synagogues, the people on whom they relied to sound the alarm in case of war were caught with their pants about their ankles.

T
he Blue-White Alert declared by the IDF on May 17 took effect just as the tide of indicators of impending war had crested. Marwan's report that the date of attack had been put off for at least two months created a sense, at least among some Israeli decision makers, that Israel may have jumped the gun when it started gearing up for a war that would never happen. The man who expressed this concern most clearly was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. On May 21, he ordered the IDF to prepare for a war likely to begin “in the second half of this summer . . . at the initiative . . . of Egypt and Syria.”
¹
Two months later, however, in an interview for
Time
magazine, he asserted that “the next ten years . . . will see the borders frozen along the present line, but there will not be a major war.”
²

The defense minister's about-face was out of sync with what was really happening in Egypt and Syria. Although Sadat toned down the rhetoric in his speeches, and the overall atmosphere in Egypt was less belligerent, Egypt nonetheless kept arming, deploying new weapons, and conducting military exercises. A large weapons deal sealed in March 1973 and delivered over the summer brought in
a squadron of MiG-21s, a brigade's worth of SA-6 surface-to-air missiles, armored personnel carriers (APCs), Sagger personal antitank missiles, and artillery pieces that included 180-mm cannons capable of blasting through the embankments of the Bar-Lev Line. And then there were the Scuds, which arrived from the USSR in July and were introduced in the summer exercises, beginning in August and continuing all the way up to the war. In addition, as Marwan told the Israelis, the Egyptian air force received its Mirages from France via Libya—and these, along with the Kelt missiles that would be carried on Tu-16 bombers, made an attack on the Israeli heartland a real possibility.

Egypt, meanwhile, accelerated its preparations for crossing the canal. The war's delay allowed Egypt to finish preparing the five task forces, each comprising 144 assault boats, to shuttle 32,000 Egyptian troops to the eastern bank, holding the beachheads until the bridges were completed. The five infantry divisions practiced pushing the boats into the water, climbing aboard, using oars or outboard motors to cross, and quickly positioning themselves on the Israeli side. Crews from tanks, armored personnel carriers, and amphibious assault vehicles drilled. The antiaircraft teams stationed at the canal were beefed up to give the ground forces the protection they would need from air attacks.

On Israel's northern front, war preparations entered an advanced phase as well, with the Syrian army taking an offensive posture even before Egypt did. The Syrian army, which with the onset of spring had shifted units from the front line on the Golan Heights back to the home front to train for the war, brought them back to the front lines again during the late summer. Israeli surveillance from Mount Hermon, reconnaissance sorties, and intercepted Syrian communiqués traced the troop movements, deployment of artillery batteries, high alert in the air force, and the movement of tanks associated with three infantry divisions that were meant to
break through Israel's defenses on the Golan. MI experts had a hard time explaining Syria's moves, because normally the Syrians would pull back deployment at the front as summer waned and winter approached—for in winter it was more difficult to maintain troops, and a major military assault would be a lot harder to pull off. But now the Syrian army began a major buildup along the front exactly when they should have been scaling back.

Meanwhile, the Syrians began getting large shipments of advanced Soviet weaponry, especially SA-6 antiaircraft batteries. The way they deployed them should have raised Israeli concerns. Not only had they deployed the batteries very close together, in some cases—especially at the front line—more densely than anything the Egyptians had put at the Suez Canal; they had also deployed the batteries right along the border, spreading their umbrella over the whole Golan Heights. This came at the expense of effectively defending Damascus or other strategic targets in Syria. This unusual deployment was not lost on Israeli intelligence, but the opinion that emerged from MI-Research and IAF intelligence rejected out of hand the possibility that the Syrians would attack without the participation of Egypt, and that therefore the deployments must be defensive in nature.

With each passing day, the need grew for Egypt and Syria to coordinate the final details before the attack. The most important open question was the actual date of attack. On August 22 and 23, when the Syrian buildup was well under way, the military chiefs of the two countries met secretly to finalize the attack plans. The earlier planners had already zeroed in on a few different dates that provided optimal conditions. When the chiefs met now, at Egyptian naval headquarters in Alexandria, they narrowed it down further, to two date ranges: September 7–11 and October 5–10. They reported back to their leaders, and on September 12, during a visit by Assad to Cairo, it was agreed that the date of the assault, now
called Operation Badr, would be October 6. Ten days later, they each officially informed their military chiefs of the date.

By this time, a significant part of the Syrian army was deployed along the Golan front, with more on the way. Now the Egyptian army started implementing its battle plans as well. The leaders still had to agree on the precise time of attack, or H-hour, but this would not be decided until about seventy-two hours before the attack.

THE ISRAELIS DID
not know all the details of the collusion between Egypt and Syria. But thanks to Ashraf Marwan, the intelligence analysts at MI had at least a partial picture of what was happening in Egypt, and it indicated that the Egyptians were preparing an imminent attack. In the first half of the summer, a number of sources suggested that Egypt would attack in June or July. Wherever they got their information, it was not accurate. But some of them asserted that the war would be launched at the end of a planned military exercise—which is in fact what ended up happening in October. A source reported on June 12 that the war would be launched either in August or in September.

Also on June 12, Ashraf Marwan gave what was up till then his most accurate warning of the date of attack. He reported that President Sadat had already informed his Syrian counterpart that Egypt intended to launch a war in late September or early October. Of course, the fact that Marwan's report came three full months
before
Sadat and Assad picked October 6 as the attack date raises some questions about the reliability of the report. But since all along, Egypt had seen May, early September, and late September to early October as the three possible date ranges, many of Egypt's top people likely believed that the last of the three ranges was the most likely. Marwan apparently was passing along what he had heard from others.

During August, Marwan's diplomatic activities intensified. Sadat wanted to maximize international backing for the war, and he relied more on Marwan for this job than on the foreign minister. The most crucial meeting Sadat held was with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, which was important not just because the Saudis were considered the senior player in the Arab world, or for the significant financial aid that the kingdom had given Egypt, but also because of plans that had started coming together at around that time which involved bringing together the twin powers of Saudi oil wealth and Egyptian military might to create a vise grip that would get the diplomatic process moving. But this would require Saudi support for the war. A few days after the Sadat-Faisal summit, the Saudis began putting together the operative aspects of the initiative, which resulted in the world's first oil crisis.

Naturally, the substance of the conversation between the two leaders was top secret. Even Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the Saudi oil minister and one of the king's closest confidants, learned nothing of what was discussed. All the dour and cautious king was ready to tell Yamani was that he was not to travel abroad for any extended period in the near future. The only person present at the meeting other than the two leaders was Ashraf Marwan, who accompanied Sadat on every trip to the Arabian Peninsula.

According to Marwan, Sadat explained to his host that the great war, the one everyone had been talking about but had yet to take place, would be launched “soon, very soon.” In recalling the meeting years later, Marwan emphasized that Sadat had refused to invoke a specific date. “It wasn't because we were afraid that the Saudis would tell the Americans and that the Israelis would find out. No. There was simply no need to reveal anything further, other than that a war was in the works.”
³

Marwan met his Israeli handlers in early September, passing along everything he knew about the summit and about the late-August
meetings between Syrian and Egyptian military officials in Alexandria. Sadat, he told them, continued to speak of war, but the date of attack would likely be later in 1973. At the same time, he emphasized that, as opposed to the past, this time Sadat was keeping his cards much closer to his chest.

Nonetheless, the real focus of the meetings between Marwan and the Mossad in early September 1973 was on something different: the prevention of what was very nearly the worst terror attack in Israeli history.

ON FEBRUARY 21,
1973, a day after IDF paratroopers overran a Palestinian terror base in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, a Libyan Boeing 727 airliner, Flight 414 from Benghazi to Cairo, entered the airspace over the Sinai. IAF jets scrambled to intercept the plane, making contact just after 2:00 p.m. The fighter pilots gave the universal signal ordering the jet liner to follow them. Their plan was to have the Libyan plane land at the air base in Rephidim, in the middle of the Sinai Desert.

At first it seemed that the Libyan pilot was following. But as they closed in on the air base, the plane suddenly veered west, back toward the Suez Canal. The fighter pilots reported its unusual behavior, and the fact that all the plane's window shades were shut, making it impossible to see into the aircraft. The airliner was now heading west for the Suez Canal area covered by the Egyptian SAM umbrella, which was off-limits to commercial traffic—yet despite this, the SAMs didn't open fire. The whole Sinai had been a no-fly zone for civilian aircraft since Israel had captured it in 1967. Add to this the fact that there had been explicit warnings about terrorists trying to blow up an airliner over Tel Aviv or another Israeli target, including the nuclear facility in Dimona, and the decision of IAF commander Maj. Gen. Moti Hod to request permission to shoot down the aircraft is not surprising. The IDF
chief of staff, who had not slept the previous night because of the operation in Lebanon, was now awakened, and he promptly approved the request. A few minutes later, the smoking remains of the aircraft were strewn across the desert floor. One hundred five out of 112 passengers on board were killed. One of them was Salah Bousseir, the former foreign minister of Libya.

Later on, it would emerge that the airplane's communication system had failed. The pilot, who had strayed off course, at first thought the fighter jets were Egyptian, and the airfield was Cairo International Airport. When he realized his mistake, he panicked and decided to make a break for it. Worried about the terror warnings and finding themselves under intense time pressure, the Israelis made a tragic mistake.
⁴

Israel was condemned around the world, but some of the most fateful consequences of the error were delayed. One was the adverse effect it would have on Marwan's ability to give proper warning in advance of the Yom Kippur War.

THE LIBYAN LEADER,
Col. Muammar Gaddafi, could not ignore what he and his citizens viewed as an unprovoked Israeli attack on a defenseless Libyan civilian aircraft. His first phone call was to Sadat, to talk about retaliation. Gaddafi's proposals included attacking the Israeli port city of Haifa with Libyan bombers. Sadat, however, was concerned about ruining his surprise attack on Israel and urged restraint, though he could not say why. But Gaddafi was not a man to whom restraint came easily. He was frustrated, and his people wanted blood. The public outcry reached its peak during the funerals of the victims, when crowds swarmed the Egyptian consulate in Benghazi, enraged at Sadat's failure to protect the plane and his weak response to the crime.

Gaddafi decided to act without Egypt's cooperation. On April 17, he summoned the captain of an Egyptian submarine stationed
in Libya, functioning as part of the Libyan navy according to a military pact Gaddafi had signed with Nasser. The Libyan leader ordered the captain to sail east into the Mediterranean and to torpedo the famed British cruise liner
Queen Elizabeth
, which was on its way to Ashdod carrying dignitaries to Israel for the country's twenty-fifth Independence Day celebrations. The captain asked for the order in writing, which Gaddafi supplied. After a full day undersea, the vessel surfaced and the captain radioed his commander in the Egyptian navy, reporting on his mission. The report quickly reached Sadat, who responded by ordering the captain immediately to head back to port in Alexandria. Soon after the
Queen Elizabeth
had left Israel and was back out at sea, Sadat informed Gaddafi that the commander had failed to locate the British ship.

Gaddafi didn't buy it. The downing of the plane, coupled with his inability to retaliate, had fostered in the dictator a deep sense of impotence and frustration—and he spiraled into a severe depression, even a personal crisis. He left the capital to find solitude in a tent in the desert. He told the members of the Revolutionary Council that he intended to resign. He then cut himself off from them completely. The council, however, rejected his resignation, and Gaddafi then traveled to Egypt and met with Sadat. During and after the visit, Libyan pressure on Egypt to unify their countries intensified; there was a mass march from Tripoli and other Libyan cities toward the Egyptian border. Egyptian pleas to stop the march were to no avail. In the end, the Egyptian army had to physically block about 40,000 Libyans trying to cross the border, with roadblocks and even freshly laid land mines.