THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973actually served the Eg yptians well by temporizing until it was too late to do much
about it, especially to mobilize and effectively deploy vital reserve forces.^69 The dis-
pute was settled by arbitration in Zamir’s favor, but in July 2012 Israel’s attorney-
general dropped criminal charges that Zamir pressed against Ze’ira, and further
official investigation or pronouncements were precluded.^70
The Marwan saga concerns this study only insofar as his input dealt with the
Soviet involvement. His report on Nasser’s “secret talks in Moscow” was the first in a
series that show this aspect’s centrality in his activity, and the evidence we have
assembled in this regard strongly supports the double-agent thesis.^71
Dudchenko’s “novel” Kanal claims that following “Mirwan Hassan’s” first contact
with the Israelis (after the arrival of the IAF’s first Phantoms, that is, after 5 September
1969), Soviet surveillance cameras recorded him entering the embassy in London.^72
But Uri Bar-Joseph’s more recent book—the strongest academic presentation of
Zamir’s case—clarifies that Marwan never physically visited the embassy.^73 This detail
in Dudchenko’s story may, then, have originated in a too-literal reading of Marwan’s
frequent description as a “walk-in.”
On the other hand, the evidence bears out Dudchenko’s claim that after detecting
Marwan’s dealings with the Israelis, the Soviets checked with his boss—a veteran
Soviet agent, Nasser’s chef de cabinet Sami Sharaf.^74 Once the Soviet military attaché
and GRU rezident in Cairo, “Ivanov” (in real life, Rear-Admiral Nikolay Ivliev) ascer-
tained that Marwan was under control, he was authorized to “put [him] into opera-
tive play,” that is, to supply the Eg yptians with material intentionally prepared for him
to feed to the Israelis (and, as will appear presently, to others as well). But the Soviets’
subsequent attitude toward Marwan indicates that they did not recruit him directly;
he did not sell out to them, or to anyone else. Besides feathering his own nest, he
consistently served Eg ypt’s interests through its changing orientations—including its
policy toward Moscow.
The specifics of Marwan’s report on Nasser’s “crucial meetings with ... Brezhnev in
January 1970” remain murky.^75 The only details that Bergman and Meltzer give about
this first product are that the Eg yptians demanded long-range bombers and Scud
missiles as a prerequisite for launching a war.^76 Retrospectively, Ze’ira described this
as one of the origins of Israel’s notorious “Concept,” whereby Eg ypt would be unable
to launch a war so long as the USSR supposedly denied it this offensive weaponry.^77
The Bergman–Meltzer book, however, also ascribes the same content to “a secret
message from Sadat to Brezhnev on 30 August 1972,” which Marwan reported too,
and indeed it appears more appropriate at that point.^78 But even without a negative
assessment of Nasser’s mission, reporting the dubious mission itself might well qualify
as Marwan’s first plant of disinformation—and if Rabin relied on it, it worked.^79
More will be said about the Eg yptians’ and Soviets’ subsequent use of the “chatter-
ing classes” in Cairo, including Marwan, to mislead Western as well as Israeli moni-
tors at critical junctures. As Ahron Bregman—who knew Marwan personally and has