Story of unknown Egyptian officer who helped Israel avert defeat in Yom Kippur War reveleaed - Aharon Weissberg

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by Aharon Weissberg

Military Intelligence recruited the officer, who later gave the Mossad one for the most important "golden tips" of the war. His identity remains top secret, but senior intelligence sources say his contribution to Israel's victory in the war is undeniable.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister Golda Meir during a meeting with IDF soldiers after the war.

 | Archives: GPO/Rom Frenkel

On Friday, Oct, 12, 1973, at 2:30 pm, Prime Minister Golda Meir convened her so-called "Kitchen Cabinet" – the small forum that made the Israeli government's major military-political decisions. The Yom Kippur War had entered its seventh day, and the discussion centered on one fateful question: should the IDF cross the Suez Canal the next night.

After the IDF had successfully pushed the Syrian army back from the Golan Heights, breaking through the Syrian border, the war's center of gravity shifted to the south. These were the most crucial moments on the Egyptian front. The decisive meeting took place in Golda's room and included Zvi Zamir, the director of the Mossad; GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Haim Bar-Lev, and Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Benny Peled.

The situation reports presented at the discussion were stark. Chief of the General Staff David (Dado) Elazar warned that with no decisive victory the forces would grow exhausted, and proposed requesting a ceasefire. Major General Benny Peled said that the Air Force had already lost a large number of planes and that it was nearing the threshold of 220 planes – which, if reached, would mean it could no longer assist the ground forces.

Israel's defense establishment had for many days been expecting Egypt's 2nd and 4th Armored Divisions, deployed west of the canal, to move eastwards; their failure to do so reduced the chances of a successful crossing. Nevertheless, Bar-Lev and Peled expressed their support for the operation. Then, before Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, had a chance to sum up the discussion, Zamir was called away to answer an urgent phone call from his bureau chief Freddy Eini and Yoel Salomon, head of the Mossad's technology division.

Israeli troops cross the Suez Canal, Oct. 6, 1973 (AFP/Archives)

Upon his return to the room, Zamir said that he had received a "golden piece of information," according to which the Egyptian army was preparing a paratrooper assault on the Mitla and Gidi Passes within a day or two. The operational conclusion was that the armored divisions would follow.

"I understand that Zvika has ended our discussion," said Meir, and the decision was made: the crossing of the canal was suspended; the IDF was to organize for a defensive battle, lay in wait for the Egyptian forces, contain the attack – and then begin the crossing.

The existence of this information has been publicized in recent years, but a lesser-known detail is the identity of the man responsible for supplying it: an officer in the Egyptian Army, recruited as a spy, who passed on internal information to the Israeli intelligence community. To this day, 47 years after the war, the Israeli Military Censor is wary of revealing details about him, even refraining from publishing his code name.

The information provided by the Egyptian source led to a turnaround in the war; the IDF, which up until then had been losing on the southern front, was now able to take the initiative.

"After Dado left the discussion he went down to the [IDF] war room, and I remember he wiped the sweat off his brow with his finger and said: 'Now I know what to do. We'll pull one over on them and then we'll cross the canal," recalls Brig. Gen. (Res.) Aharon Levran from the Intelligence Corps, who at the time served as Assistant to the Chief of the Research Department for Operations.

Unlike Ashraf Marwan, the famous Egyptian agent dubbed "the Angel," the contribution of the "Golden Source" has been forgotten, unacknowledged by the public and the press.

"Everybody talks about Marwan, and no one talks about 'Golden Source,' who is just as worthy of being called 'Israel's best spy,'" says Moshe Shaverdi, a scholar of the Yom Kippur War. "At money time, before the war broke out and at its most critical juncture, he passed on not one but two golden pieces of information."

The crucial message the source transmitted on Oct. 12 was not his first, as Shevardi indicates. Two weeks earlier, on Sept. 30, he had informed his operators that Egypt and Syria were about to launch a joint attack on Israel. However, the heads of the security establishment did not treat this information properly. "It was the ultimate piece of information," says Col. Haggai Mann (83), who at the time was the intelligence officer of the Northern Command.

The Egyptian officer was recruited as an Israeli spy by Levran. "I created him and brought him into being," reveals Levran, now 88. "When I first met him I wasn't sure he would agree to work for Israel, because of his status in the army. I just wanted to be his friend so that I could ask for his assistance in understanding the Egyptian side.

"We told ourselves that we in the Intelligence Corps, though we make assessments and draw conclusions regarding the Arabs, at the end of the day we're Israelis with Western concepts and ways of thought. I thought he would help me understand the approach and mentality of the Arabs through Egyptian eyes and would provide me with his perspective in different situations.

"I tricked him, on which I won't expand, and happily he volunteered to become a source. I handled him for several years. Our relationship was conducted along the same lines as in the case of the late Eli Cohen in Syria a decade earlier. I could contact him and he would send me material."

In 1970, Levran and the agent were forced to part ways at the insistence of the Mossad, which demanded that the Egyptian be transferred to its authority. "Within the Israeli intelligence community there are very clear boundaries," explains Levran. "The Shin Bet works inside Israeli territory, the IDF Intelligence Corps meets its agents at border checkpoints, and the Mossad works with agents abroad.

"I could operate 'Golden Source' only with the help of the Mossad. Because of his position, he could not be brought for meetings at border checkpoints, so that our relationship was conducted abroad. I handled him from many places worldwide.

"In 1970, after I had begun meeting him regularly thanks to the Mossad, they said, 'Damn it, what is this? Why should an Intelligence Corps officer use our services all the time?' and asked that the source be transferred to them."

An Israeli tank crossing the Suez Canal (GPO/Ron Ilan/Archives)

Q: Did you fight to keep him?

"Zvi Zamir, the head of the Mossad, is a good friend of mine. I had no choice but to accept the transfer, and I have to admit that the Mossad's arguments were justified. The last time I met him was in 1970 in Europe, and since then there was no contact between us. But he was already recruited in Israel's service, so it was easy for him to continue his work with the Mossad.

"I received a certificate of commendation from the chief of the Intelligence Corps, and I let it go. I put it behind me. The greatness of the Mossad is that they gave him a more sophisticated communications device. This allowed him to transfer information in real-time, like the two important items he provided in '73, before and during the war."

Q:When the source provided the Mossad with the two "golden tips" and you received them in the IDF's war room, did you know they were from him?

"No. The moment he was transferred to the Mossad, they gave him code names different from the ones I had given him. Sometimes the same agent is given more than one name in order to protect him. If he provides military information, he's called X. If he provides information on the top echelons of the Egyptian government, he's called Y. At the time I didn't know who had provided the information, I only learned about it years later."

Q: How is such an important source rewarded? 

"Sometimes you look for ways to give him a lot of money, depending on the quality of the information he supplies. I can tell you for sure that this source was worth every penny, and I imagine that for the golden information in the Yom Kippur War he was not left empty-handed. At the time we had three excellent sources: Ashraf Marwan, him, and another one who we won't discuss."

Q: During his when he was active, was there a point when you were afraid he might be "burned"? That the Egyptians suspect him?

"I don't know if he was ever in any danger, certainly not during the years when I was in contact with him, nor when he worked with the Mossad. A rumor spread that he had died during the Egyptian offensive on Oct. 14, 1973, but it wasn't true. He died from natural causes a few years after the war. The Deputy Chief of the Mossad informed me of his death. I felt I had lost a friend."

Q: As far as you know, did any of those close to him know of his collaboration with Israel?

"I don't think so. I suppose he took that secret with him to his grave."

Quite a few hints and indications were placed before the Israeli intelligence services regarding the attack about to be launched by Egypt and Syria in October 1973. One came from the communications device of the Egyptian officer in the evening hours of Sunday, September 30^th, six days before the outbreak of the war.

"We knew that the following day the Egyptian army was to hold a large military exercise called 'Tahrir 41,'" says Levran. "But the source's information said that at the end of the maneuver, a real crossing would be made that would, in fact, lead to war."

Sitting at his home in Kibbutz Beit HaShita, at 4 a.m. on Monday, October 1^st, Haggai Mann briefed an intelligence officer in the Golan Heights region by phone. "The operator intervened to tell me that I had an urgent call from the General Staff. On the line was Aviezer Ya'ari, Head of the Intelligence Corps' Division 5 [in charge of the Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi arenas], who said to me: 'A very good source, someone you don't know, not from our arena, has informed us that the Egyptians will be crossing the Suez Canal this morning at dawn. They will attack and be joined by the Syrians. Get the Command up and going.'

"There was panic. The GOC, Yitzhak Hofi, was at a recruiting and equipping exercise of the 179th Armored Division. I called him immediately and communicated the information. I went to the command headquarters in Nazareth. When I arrived, there was a telegram waiting for me on the table with the information transmitted to me by Ya'ari, with no additional comments.

"I called the intelligence officer of the Southern Command, David Gedalia, but a sleepy officer on duty answered that Gedalia was sleeping at home, and so was his deputy. At 7 a.m., after the day had dawned and nothing had happened, the head of the Intelligence Corps' Research Department, Maj. Gen. Aryeh Shalev, called me and said, in a very angry tone, 'What was all that panic you stirred up tonight in the Northern Command?' Before I could answer that I had received the information from his department he said: 'We'll look into it' – and put down the phone. That same morning I was summoned for a meeting with him the next day."

Q: What did you make of the information? It had been distorted before it arrived.

"The war alert reached the Intelligence Corps on Sunday evening, and I received it much later. I was already worried since we had identified major activities on the Syrian side, and even before the message had reached me we had decided on a massive reinforcement of our lookout personnel on the Golan Heights."

On Monday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m., Mann arrived for an inquiry at Shalev's bureau at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. Ya'ari also attended the meeting. "Shalev asked me: 'Didn't anybody tell you it had to do with the Egyptian exercise?' I said no. The inquiry ended without a reprimand.

"Before I left, I told both of them that I have indications that Syria is planning to attack Israel. There were at least ten such indications. Hundreds of tanks had gathered, the forces were doubled, an array of ground-to-air missiles was put in place."

Q: What was Shalev's answer?

"He said, 'We have other indications.'"

Q: Did you know that the asset behind the information was working for Israel?

"No.I thought it was Marwan. It was only many years later that I learned that we had another asset in Egypt, and only recently did I discover that he was the one who transmitted the information."

"The Intelligence Corps did not underestimate or ignore the information provided by the Egyptian source," says Levran. "The situation was problematic. The night after the message arrived, the Southern Command examined the condition of the Egyptian air force and saw that all was quiet. At that moment, this message was just one of many. It is only in retrospect that information like this becomes 'golden.'"

Less than a week later, the Israeli "concept" collapsed, with the war breaking out on Yom Kippur. "I was disappointed that I had been right all along," says Mann. "To this day I ask myself how it could be that I saw things clearly while others disregarded or didn't see them. That question has been haunting me for 47 years."

The golden information transmitted by the Egyptian spy on Oct. 12^h changed Israel's outlook, and in retrospect seems to have had a major and essential role in preventing Israel's defeat on the southern front: it eliminated the other options – a request for a ceasefire or an early crossing of the Canal in face of a large and significant buildup of enemy forces.

"His message was not about the crossing of two Egyptian divisions to the eastern bank of the Canal, but about the paratrooper units, which were supposed to land in the area of the Mitla and Gidi Passes, at Bir Gafgafa and Mitla," says Levran. "The meaning of this, as every senior military commander knows, is that only armored forces can join the paratroopers."

Two days later, in the morning hours of Oct. 14, the Egyptian army launched the planned offensive at six main points, using armored forces, infantry, artillery units, air bombardment, and helicopter raids by commando fighters. Contrary to the information transmitted by "Golden Source," no paratroopers took part in the offensive.

Yet the IDF was prepared for the Egyptian attack and pushed back on all fronts, causing the Egyptian army heavy losses. In retrospect, it transpired that President Sadat, under pressure from Syria, had called on the army to launch the operation, against the opinion of his senior officers.

It was the first Israeli victory in the Sinai battles, and the one that marked the beginning of the turnaround along the entire southern front: the Egyptians' switch to a mobile offensive left their air defense behind, exposing their front line to attacks from the air. At first, Egypt conceded that 100 of their tanks had been destroyed on that day, yet later the army's Commander in Chief, Saad el-Shazly, admitted that it was in fact 250. The next night, between the 15th and 16th^h of October, the IDF embarked on the Canal crossing.

From then on the situation on the battlefield changed: Israel began to attack and launch offensives and Egypt was on the defense. Our forces reached the west bank and surrounded the Third Field Army, while the Egyptian army did not attack again until the end of the war.

Some question the importance of the forgotten spy. Military scholar and historian Brig. Gen. (Res.) Danny Asher (76) served during the war as the intelligence officer of the 16th Brigade, the Jerusalem Brigade, after having served as head of the Egypt Department in the Northern Command. Years later he published the book Breaking the Concept.

"From a military standpoint, the information was incorrect," argues Asher. "We were impatient for the Egyptian army to move its tanks into open spaces, since we were better than them in armored warfare, and we could bombard them from the air. When the 'golden message' arrived, it said, in fact: here, what you've been waiting for is now happening. The Egyptians indeed launched an attack, but it wasn't the one the message described, no forces were parachuted at the Mitla and the Gidi. The expectation that two Egyptian divisions would move east did not materialize since only two brigades from these divisions took part in the offensive.

"I know in retrospect that the Egyptians were planning on doing something on October 13^th. We were deep inside the enclave in Syria, within 40 km of Damascus, we were shelling the Damascus suburbs. The Syrians yelled Gevald! and demanded that Sadat launch an operation that would force us to move forces to the south. On Oct. 14th Egypt launched a sporadic, sputtering offensive with few forces. Maybe our decision-makers understood what they wanted to and made mountains out of molehills."

Levran disagrees. "There were those who downplayed the Egyptian attack. The Egyptian forces included the entire 21st Division, alongside at least one brigade from the 4th Division and another mechanized brigade. Three mobile anti-aircraft batteries, the most advanced in Egypt's arsenal, were moved east of the Canal. Why move all these forces if they did not intend to continue the offensive?

"True, paratroopers were not flown in over the Canal, but since the source was reliable, and his message fit in with the IDF's knowledge of the second stage of the Egyptian offensive and the information that Syria was pressuring Egypt to act, the information he supplied could be taken as closest to Egypt's military logic, with a high chance of being realized. A partial and rough message thus became highly significant, and in this case, fateful."

"The value of the information lies in that it allowed the decision-makers to pin their hopes on the high-quality intelligence they had and thereby extricate themselves from their difficult position," says Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yosi Kuperwasser (67), former head of the Intelligence Corps Research Department, who served during the war as a fighter in the Nahal Brigade on the northern front. "Thanks to this information, army intelligence could present a clear picture, indicate the opportunities afforded by the situation, and resolve the dilemma facing the leaders.

"It is always dangerous to rely on a single source, and the Jewish precept that 'according to two witnesses a matter shall stand' has a good reason, but sometimes there's no other choice. The story of the Egyptian spy shows that there is no better alternative than human intelligence. If you have a source with direct access to your focus of interest, that can lead to golden information, which is better than any intelligence received from technological sources."

Q: How did the Egyptian spy remain in the shadows for 47 years?

Levran: "It is to Zamir's credit that he was extremely cautious with the release of information, even after so many years. If it were up to him, Marwan's identity would not have been revealed either.

"Furthermore, Zamir knew about the source but did not know him personally. He knew Marwan and even handled him, due to Marwan's proximity to Presidents Nasser and Sadat. He knew about the officer and considered him a good source, but that was all.

"We should also recall in this context the gloomy mood in the IDF and the Israeli public after the war. The 'golden tip' vanished in the grieving atmosphere and did not resonate as it should have.

"I once said to Zvika Zamir that we should receive the Israel Defense Award, because that information saved us from defeat in the south. Those who did the job were the radio operator at the Mossad and his supervisors, who received the message in real-time, understood its vital importance and relevance and were able to bring Zamir out of the cabinet meeting so as to notify him immediately.

"According to my estimate, thousands of lives were saved thanks to that spy. If we hadn't delayed the crossing, which was planned for the next day, the operation would have failed and that would have been a tragedy for generations, a step which we would have regretted to this day.

"Many years later Zamir recalled that at that cabinet meeting Dayan had said that 'If we fail in one more attack, we'll have to fight at the entrance to Tel Aviv.' No more, no less. So it wasn't just the fact that soldiers' lives had been saved on the battlefield, it was also the total change in the character of the war. If the Egyptians had stopped us at Suez, they could have retaken the Sinai Peninsula and then continued northwards."

Aharon Weissberg

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/09/27/story-of-unknown-egyptian-officer-who-helped-israel-avert-defeat-in-yom-kippur-war-reveleaed/

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