29. The Ultimate Test of Ashraf Marwan
A. An embarras de richesse for Israeli intelligence
Soviet foreknowledge of impending war is further attested by an unprecedented
reinforcement of the Fifth Eskadra that began before the first shots were fired. The
same technique that had been used in the run-up to the Six-Day War was employed
again: ships were sent into the Mediterranean as though for normal rotation, but the
ships they were slated to replace stayed put.^1 According to Vladimir Zaborsky, one of
the squadron’s officers, by the outbreak of war its order of battle was raised to a record
120 units. Lyle Goldstein and Yury Zhukov, working from Soviet naval documents,
arrived at lower figures: fifty-two units on 4 October, eighty-eight on the 24th and
ninety-six by the 31st, but this too surpassed the Sixth Fleet in numbers and
approached it enough in firepower to leave either fleet the only option of a first strike
if it was to survive a confrontation. As described to the skippers, some of their activity
was directly linked to preparations for war: “At the end of August 1973,” Capt.
Zaborsky writes, the Eskadra “according to the plan to assist Syria at preparing a war
with Israel, in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy ... carried out an operation to
transport a brigade of Moroccan troops from Algeria to Syria ... under cover of sup-
posedly conducting landing maneuvers.”^2
In 1967, CIA Director Helms had held that there were no nuclear weapons in the
arena. This time there was no doubt that the Soviets had nuclear-missile submarines
in the Mediterranean (at least two at the outset of the crisis, seven by its end), as well
as nuclear-armed surface vessels.^3 An entire “brigade” of ten diesel submarines, with
their tender ship, were dispatched from the Northern Fleet early enough to pass
Gibraltar on 3 October, the earliest date conventionally given for Sadat’s alert to
Moscow—without the previous Mediterranean “garrison” being withdrawn.
According to naval historian Rozin, the submarine captains were puzzled by some of
the orders that the fleet commander gave them in person. Two of the submarines
were to take up positions off the Israeli coast and “upon the outbreak of hostilities”
to search for and destroy enemy vessels approaching or leaving Israeli ports. One of
these submarines was positioned “south of Cyprus and west of Haifa” to “protect