Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?

Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?
Op-Ed Contributor
By HOWARD BLUM
London
The New York Times
July 13, 2007

THE billionaire’s body tumbled over the railing of his apartment’s fourth-floor balcony and landed hard on the London sidewalk. And like so much in the complicated life of Ashraf Marwan — a 62-year-old Egyptian who had been the most effective spy in the history of the Middle East — the mysterious circumstances of his death two weeks ago provoked further speculation.

As Scotland Yard investigates the suspicious fall, and as newspapers and bloggers throughout the world wonder whether any of several intelligence services played a role in his death, a debate continues over whether Mr. Marwan was a well-connected and resourceful Israeli spy or a brilliantly manipulative Egyptian double agent.

Mr. Marwan’s death has also brought a new and chilling significance to a long-running legal battle in Israel involving the unauthorized leaking of his name to journalists. And in the aftermath of the discovery of his broken body on a sidewalk in the St. James neighborhood on June 27, I cannot help but wonder if I had a small part in the events that led to Ashraf Marwan’s death.

Mr. Marwan’s story — a tale overflowing with the suspense and ruthless duplicity of a spy novel — began to take shape in the spring of 1969. He had come to London, ostensibly to consult a Harley Street doctor about a stomach ailment. He chose to be examined by a doctor whose offices had been used previously for a covert meeting between King Hussein of Jordan and the general director of the Israeli prime minister’s office.

Along with his X-rays, Mr. Marwan handed the doctor a file crammed with official Egyptian state documents. He wanted them delivered to the Israeli Embassy in London.

The Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, determined the documents to be genuine. Still, a rapidly formed working group of Mossad wise men debated the risk in dealing with a walk-in, a volunteer who shows up bearing gifts. If he’s not a double — an agent spreading disinformation — then he’s uncontrollable. It was decided, however, that this walk-in’s credentials were worth the gamble.

Mr. Marwan, the excited vetters discovered, was married to a daughter of Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was also President Nasser’s liaison to the intelligence services. Not even 30, he was an intimate of the leaders who determined Egypt’s future.

Three days after meeting with the doctor, Mr. Marwan was contacted by the Mossad as he walked through Harrods, the London department store. His operational life as a spy began.

From the start, Mr. Marwan delivered. He yielded so many top secret Egyptian documents it was as if, as one Mossad agent put it, “we had someone sleeping in Nasser’s bed.” Based on this trove of secrets, Israel developed what became an article of faith for the nation’s political and military leaders: “the Concept.” With biblical certainty, the Concept held that until (1) Egypt possessed missiles and long-range bombers and (2) the Arab states united in a genuine coalition, a new war with Israel would not take place.

Running the agent, who was given code names including “Angel,” “Babylon” and most frequently “the In-Law,” grew into a small industry. For face-to-face meetings with his handler and often the head of the Mossad, a safe house was purchased in London not far from the Dorchester Hotel. It was wired to record every conversation, every aside. A special team of clerks turned the tapes into transcripts for the prime minister, the army chief of staff and a handful of other top Israeli officials. Mr. Marwan received £50,000 at each meeting, but this was only a minor expense compared to the estimated $20 million spent over the first four years of Mr. Marwan’s operational life.

Israel’s leaders felt this was money well spent: They knew what their enemies were thinking.

Then in April 1973, the In-Law sent a flash message to his case agent using the word “radish.” This was the code for an imminent war. Zvi Zamir, the head of the Mossad, rushed from Tel Aviv to the London safe house. The In-Law revealed that on May 15, Egypt and Syria would launch a surprise attack.

Israel called up tens of thousands of reservists and deployed additional brigades and support equipment in the Sinai and the north. The alert dragged on for three months and cost $35 million. But it was a false alarm. The In-Law had been wrong.

Six months later, on Oct. 5, 1973, the In-Law sent another flash message with the code word “radish.” Mr. Zamir was awoken at 2:30 a.m. with the news. The next morning, he took the first El Al flight to London.

Syria was massing tanks and missiles in the north. Egypt was conducting military maneuvers near the Suez Canal. Russia had begun evacuating families from the region. Yet that afternoon Gen. Eli Zeira, the head of Israeli military intelligence, announced at a staff meeting that a coordinated attack by Egypt and Syria was “low probability — even lower than low.”

Only jbefore midnight, London time, the In-Law appeared at the safe house. He spoke to Mr. Zamir for less than an hour and then left.

Mr. Zamir phoned an aide at 3:40 a.m. on the morning of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish religious calendar. The Egyptians and Syrians, he said, will attack simultaneously on both fronts at sunset.

At an Israeli cabinet meeting that morning, the In-Law’s warning was not considered persuasive. The last time he had promised war would break out, nothing happened except the expenditure of $35 million. Moshe Dayan, the minister of defense, lectured the army chief of staff, “On the basis of messages from Zvika you do not mobilize a whole army.”

Nevertheless, it was decided that at 4 p.m. — two hours before the In-Law said the attack would be launched — armored brigades would move into position along the Suez Canal. Until then, there would be only three tanks in position to hold off any invasion.

At 2 p.m., the Arab armies went to war. Egypt crossed the Suez Canal in the south and Syrian tanks charged from the north. Their armies overwhelmed the surprised and unprepared enemy. After three days of fighting, General Dayan worried openly about the “destruction of the third Temple,” the state of Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir was given a bottle of suicide pills; she preferred to die rather than witness the destruction of the Jewish state.

Israel’s outnumbered forces fought back and recovered their key positions. After being rearmed by airlifts of weapons and supplies from the United States, they attacked. Before the month’s end, Israel won the war.

Still, the Yom Kippur War was an Israeli intelligence disaster. Decades later, the Mossad and military intelligence continued to argue over who was to blame. General Zeira, who lost both his job as head of military intelligence and a good deal of his reputation, spent years sifting through the events leading up to the attacks.

He wondered: Who had spread the false Concept? Who had “cried wolf” in May 1973 and persuaded Israel to call up its reserves? Who had been wrong about the time of the invasion? The answer, General Zeira was certain, was that Israel had been deliberately and artfully misled. From the start, the In-Law had been a double agent.

The Mossad formed a special committee to examine the In-Law’s role. Its conclusion: Mr. Marwan was not a double.

But General Zeira was unconvinced. He began to talk to journalists about his theory. I was one of those he spoke to. He never told me the spy’s name, but he pointed me in a direction that made it easy — less than a half hour of searching the Internet — for me to deduce his identity. I used Mr. Marwan’s name in a 2003 book about the Yom Kippur War.

Not long after its publication, Zvi Zamir called General Zeira a “traitor” for divulging Mr. Marwan’s identity. Mr. Zamir petitioned the attorney general for an investigation. But there was no official inquiry, and General Zeira sued for slander. Last month, an Israeli Supreme Court justice ruled in arbitration that General Zeira had in fact revealed Mr. Marwan’s identity.

Now with his unexplained death, the many enigmas of Ashraf Marwan’s complex life have grown even murkier. In Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son and possible successor, and Omar Suleiman, the head of the Egyptian intelligence service, attended Mr. Marwan’s funeral. Sheik Mohammad Seyed Tantawi, Egypt’s highest-ranking imam, led the prayers over the coffin, covered with an Egyptian flag. On the following day, in response to reporters’ questions, President Hosni Mubarak called Mr. Marwan “a patriot,” according to Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency. “He carried out patriotic acts which it is not yet time to reveal,” the president added.

In Israel, an angry Mr. Zamir told the newspaper Haaretz, “I have no doubt that reports published about him in Israel caused his death.” The former Mossad chief again called on the attorney general to indict General Zeira.

In London, Mr. Marwan’s sister was described as saying she saw him in good spirits only hours before his death. But another unidentified friend said Mr. Marwan, in declining health, lost his balance and fell. And there were reports that he made many enemies through his activities in selling armaments. A coroner’s inquest is expected to announce its findings in mid-August.

And now I am reminded of my last telephone conversation with Ashraf Marwan.

“Are you afraid?” I asked.

“Why should I be afraid?” he replied. “I was a soldier.”

Mr. Marwan promised to reveal more about which country he was fighting for when we were to appear together on a news program in the United States. But two days before the taping, he called to tell me he would not speak in public until he had finished a book about the war.

I never heard from him again. Now Scotland Yard — and, I suspect, other agencies — is trying to find the manuscript he said was writing at the time of his death.

Howard Blum, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of “The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War.”

The Road Home

Editorial
The New York Times
July 8, 2007

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

•

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda.

That conversation must be candid and focused. Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

The administration, the Democratic-controlled Congress, the United Nations and America’s allies must try to mitigate those outcomes — and they may fail. But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse. The nation needs a serious discussion, now, about how to accomplish a withdrawal and meet some of the big challenges that will arise.

The Mechanics of Withdrawal

The United States has about 160,000 troops and millions of tons of military gear inside Iraq. Getting that force out safely will be a formidable challenge. The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.

The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest.

Accomplishing all of this in less than six months is probably unrealistic. The political decision should be made, and the target date set, now.

The Fight Against Terrorists

Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige.

This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.

And it created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. The military will need resources and bases to stanch this self- inflicted wound for the foreseeable future.

The Question of Bases

The United States could strike an agreement with the Kurds to create those bases in northeastern Iraq. Or, the Pentagon could use its bases in countries like Kuwait and Qatar, and its large naval presence in the Persian Gulf, as staging points.

There are arguments for, and against, both options. Leaving troops in Iraq might make it too easy — and too tempting — to get drawn back into the civil war and confirm suspicions that Washington’s real goal was to secure permanent bases in Iraq. Mounting attacks from other countries could endanger those nations’ governments.

The White House should make this choice after consultation with Congress and the other countries in the region, whose opinions the Bush administration has essentially ignored. The bottom line: the Pentagon needs enough force to stage effective raids and airstrikes against terrorist forces in Iraq, but not enough to resume large-scale combat.

The Civil War

One of Mr. Bush’s arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. That war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out. Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening.

It is possible, we suppose, that announcing a firm withdrawal date might finally focus Iraq’s political leaders and neighboring governments on reality. Ideally, it could spur Iraqi politicians to take the steps toward national reconciliation that they have endlessly discussed but refused to act on.

But it is foolish to count on that, as some Democratic proponents of withdrawal have done. The administration should use whatever leverage it gains from withdrawing to press its allies and Iraq’s neighbors to help achieve a negotiated solution.

Iraq’s leaders — knowing that they can no longer rely on the Americans to guarantee their survival — might be more open to compromise, perhaps to a Bosnian-style partition, with economic resources fairly shared but with millions of Iraqis forced to relocate. That would be better than the slow-motion ethnic and religious cleansing that has contributed to driving one in seven Iraqis from their homes.

The United States military cannot solve the problem. Congress and the White House must lead an international attempt at a negotiated outcome. To start, Washington must turn to the United Nations, which Mr. Bush spurned and ridiculed as a preface to war.

The Human Crisis

There are already nearly two million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan, and nearly two million more Iraqis who have been displaced within their country. Without the active cooperation of all six countries bordering Iraq — Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria — and the help of other nations, this disaster could get worse. Beyond the suffering, massive flows of refugees — some with ethnic and political resentments — could spread Iraq’s conflict far beyond Iraq’s borders.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia must share the burden of hosting refugees. Jordan and Syria, now nearly overwhelmed with refugees, need more international help. That, of course, means money. The nations of Europe and Asia have a stake and should contribute. The United States will have to pay a large share of the costs, but should also lead international efforts, perhaps a donors’ conference, to raise money for the refugee crisis.

Washington also has to mend fences with allies. There are new governments in Britain, France and Germany that did not participate in the fight over starting this war and are eager to get beyond it. But that will still require a measure of humility and a commitment to multilateral action that this administration has never shown. And, however angry they were with President Bush for creating this mess, those nations should see that they cannot walk away from the consequences. To put it baldly, terrorism and oil make it impossible to ignore.

The United States has the greatest responsibilities, including the admission of many more refugees for permanent resettlement. The most compelling obligation is to the tens of thousands of Iraqis of courage and good will — translators, embassy employees, reconstruction workers — whose lives will be in danger because they believed the promises and cooperated with the Americans.

The Neighbors

One of the trickiest tasks will be avoiding excessive meddling in Iraq by its neighbors — America’s friends as well as its adversaries.

Just as Iran should come under international pressure to allow Shiites in southern Iraq to develop their own independent future, Washington must help persuade Sunni powers like Syria not to intervene on behalf of Sunni Iraqis. Turkey must be kept from sending troops into Kurdish territories.

For this effort to have any remote chance, Mr. Bush must drop his resistance to talking with both Iran and Syria. Britain, France, Russia, China and other nations with influence have a responsibility to help. Civil war in Iraq is a threat to everyone, especially if it spills across Iraq’s borders.

•

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.