The Spy Who Fell To Earth: My Relationship with the Secret Agent Who Rocked the Middle East by Ahron Bregman; CreateSpace; © 2016; ISBN 13: 9781523339970; 120 pages including appendices.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO –Having read the San Diego Jewish World article by Joe Spier about the master spy Ashraf Marwan, historian Ahron Bregman, who brought Marwan’s name to the surface, sent us a copy of his recently self-published memoir detailing how he figured out the spy’s identity and how their relationship subsequently progressed up to the day that Marwan’s body was found in the bushes five stories below his London apartment.
In brief, Marwan had visited a Mossad connection in London, presented him with some classified Egyptian documents, and because of his relationships – he was the son-in-law of Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser—was warily accepted by the Mossad as a spy.
Over the years, Marwan fed some good intelligence to the Israelis, seemingly proving his worth and reliability. But on the matter of Egypt’s build-up for the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel, Marwan gave Israel the wrong information, leading Israel to be woefully unprepared for the attack.
The question that since has been debated is whether Marwan had Anwar Sadat’s approval to feed good information to the Israelis on other matters, precisely to gain the Israelis’ trust so at the appropriate time they could be caught flat-footed. Or was Marwan sincerely a spy for Israel who perhaps had come across Egypt’s war plans too late to do any good?
Bregman, with qualifications, leans toward the notion that Marwan was an Egyptian spy who intentionally misled Israel. Almost 30 years after the Yom Kippur War, Bregman unraveled the mystery of Marwan’s identity.
Here, on page 60, is a red flag: In authoring his 2002 book, A History of Israel, Bregman wrote in this most recent memoir, “In a chapter on the Yom Kippur War, without spelling out his name, I wrote about the mysterious Mossad spy, and said that he was ‘a very close family member of Egypt’s President Nasser’ and that in Israel he was dubbed ‘The Son-in-Law.’ It was a lie, designed to provoke Marwan. ….”
The shocker, of course, is that someone purporting to be a historian would deliberately lie in a history textbook for an ulterior purpose. While the stratagem worked – in that Bregman eventually made contact with Marwan, who by then lived in London – it will forever raise the question “what else—if anything—did Bregman lie about in that history book, or even in this memoir?” One must ask in winning the battle — that is in “outing” Marwan — did Bregman lose the credibility war?
Bregman eventually got in touch with Marwan and thereafter they developed a relationship–it would be stretching matters to call it a friendship. Marwan, said to be writing his own memoir, consulted with Bregman from time to time about the Yom Kippur War. But before he could finish the memoir, Marwan was found dead on the ground below his 5th story apartment building.
This occasioned yet another mystery–still unsolved. How did Marwan die? Did he jump or slip from his balcony? Or was he pushed? If the latter, by whom was he pushed, and for what motive? The Egyptians? The Israelis? Someone else? And, what happened to his memoir?
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com . Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.).