THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973[Soviet] transports.” The brigade commander received angry responses when he asked
for further clarification.^4
On 28 September, the Soviet Baltic Fleet’s marine force was put on alert. Part of
its complement, under Lt-Col. V.I. Gorokhov, was flown in transport planes to
Sevastopol with personal arms only. There it was loaded, with full battle gear and
weapons borrowed from the Black Sea Fleet’s counterpart regiment, onto a large
landing vessel (BDK). Additional units followed the same day by train, to embark on
two medium landing ships (SDKs); all of them set sail for the Mediterranean.
Another reinforced marine battalion steamed on the same day to the Mediterranean
directly from Baltiisk, on the Baltic Fleet’s own BDK Krasnaya Presnya. The Baltic
Fleet marines’ rotating presence at Port Said had been maintained even after the
“expulsion,” as Cairo station chief Ivliev indicated in 1972. But the urgency and mode
of the additional desantniki’s dispatch indicates preparation for a highly extraordinary
development. The then-lieutenant who recorded it notes that his men’s “combat
service,” until they landed at Tartus on 7 December, was “very difficult.”^5
The MI sigint chief, Col. Ben-Porat, had since 24 September been receiving reports
of preparations for an Eg yptian exercise, which included marshaling of bridging
equipment. As Ben-Porat “knew everything about the source and his quality, ... I was
stunned” at his positive warning that the exercise would turn into an offensive, and
ordered an immediate alert in his array’s forward listening bases against physical
attack. According to the newly released testimony of Brig.-Gen. Yisra’el Li’or, Meir’s
adjutant, before the Agranat Commission, the Mossad was alerted on 30 September
by “one of its important sources” (also described as an “agent”) that an Eg yptian war
game would start the next day, to disguise preparations for launching a war, together
with Syria, a week later.
The source’s Mossad handler asked him repeatedly through 3 October whether he
was certain of this, and the source replied time and again that he was. Still, Mossad chief
Zamir did not refer the report immediately and directly to the political leadership but
passed it on to MI, which in turn buried it in its daily digest. Zamir disparaged both the
source’s credibility and the likelihood that he was right. So did MI chief Ze’ira, though
he qualified the source as “good.” He did point out—in one of the few references to the
USSR in these deliberations—that the Soviet doctrine, “which the Syrians have learned
well,” called for launching offensives from out of a defensive array.^6
Since all agents’ identities were sanitized in the commission’s declassified papers,
some press reports about the new release identified this source as Ashraf Marwan. But
these versions were soon retracted, because the context, as well as testimonies about
Marwan’s subsequent, notorious warning, show that the early warnings came from
other sources—who were discounted so long as he did not confirm them.^7 As
lamented by a senior MI officer at the time, Marwan created an embarras de richesse:
“the intelligence officers had a super-source who provided authentic material, from
the horse’s mouth, but also drew them into a blind dependence ... which overshad-