THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973authentic as to the date when the earlier hour was fixed, the explanation by Marwan’s
Israeli advocates that it was changed after he transmitted his message is spurious.
While Eg yptian field commanders were informed of the date on 1 October, the zero
hour was not divulged to them until a day before the attack. But at the level to which
Marwan’s access made him so highly trusted, the hour was determined long before.^58
At any rate, the Israelis had already been deceived—among others, by Marwan,
when he reported in late July that Sadat had told Assad during a visit to Damascus on
the 14th–16th that Eg ypt would go to war in late September or early October, with
or without Syrian participation. But, as the MI documentation of this report added,
“the source doubts whether Eg ypt will actually go to war at the time the president
specified; ... this date too will pass without a war, as the previous dates did.”^59 Marwan
thus provided himself with a retrospective alibi that he had given correct and timely
warning, while portraying Sadat as again crying wolf, which would discredit genuine
alerts from other informants about Eg ypt’s real intentions (as indeed happened on
1 October). Evidently, Marwan was believed, as ironically and fatefully, on
12 August—as the Alexandria council began—the “Blue-White” alert was relaxed.^60
It was not reinstated even when, despite the Soviets’ precautions, Israel did receive
from other sources some inkling of the council-of-war at Alexandria, including the
Soviets’ role.
Zubok’s 2007 history acknowledges the revision necessitated by new sources
including the veterans’ memoirs, but still maintains ambivalently that Sadat “kept the
Politburo and Soviet representatives in Eg ypt in the dark, although the KGB and
military must have known about the preparations. ... The Kremlin leaders could not
control or restrain their foreign clients.”^61 But did they even try, or did they rather
encourage those clients? Among the recently declassified testimonies before the
Agranat Commission, several top Israeli officers mentioned an intelligence report
whereby the “Russians ... convinced them [the Syrians] that from the balance-of-
power viewpoint, Syria was able to capture the Golan Heights.” Deputy Chief of Staff
Yisra’el Tal, from memory, put this report “between May and September.”^62 Reading
from a file of reports from a source whose identity is censored (but is clearly distinct
both from Marwan and from the source of the 1 October warning that will be dis-
cussed presently), Commission member and former Chief of Staff Yiga’el Yadin
quoted a dispatch from September. It stated that “the Soviet [sanitized] said in late
August that if Syria and Eg ypt attacked Israel simultaneously, the Syrian army can
capture 100 percent of the Golan within 36 hours.”^63
In this context, more attention is warranted to a heretofore little-noticed statement
that former US ambassador in Eg ypt, Hermann Eilts, made in 1998: “As far as I
know, nobody has mentioned that in the weeks before the 1973 war, Marshal
Grechko ... came to Eg ypt and was taken around the military installations. It was
apparently suggested to him that the Eg yptians might attack, not with any indication
of date.”^64