The Centre’s irritation at its declining influence in Cairo was balanced by its hope of a Communist take-over in Khartoum. The leaders of the Sudanese Communist Party were considered by the KGB to be the most loyal and dedicated in the Middle East.
48
In July 1971 a coup by Sudanese army officers, supported by the Communists, briefly succeeded in toppling President Gaafar Muhammad al-Nimeiri. Vinogradov called on Sadat to urge him to recognize the new regime. An angry argument followed during which Sadat declared, ‘I cannot allow a Communist regime to be established in a country sharing my borders.’
49
With Sadat’s assistance, the coup was brutally suppressed and Nimeiri restored to power. Among those executed for their part in the coup was the General Secretary of the Sudanese Communist Party, Abdel Maghoub. Simultaneously the Centre discovered that a Soviet diplomat in the Middle East co-opted by the KGB, Vladimir Nikolayevich Sakharov, was working for the CIA. Alerted by a pre-arranged signal - a bouquet placed by the Agency on the back seat of his Volkswagen - Sakharov defected just in time. Among the secrets he had betrayed to the CIA was Sharaf’s involvement with the KGB.
50
As Soviet influence declined under Sadat’s rule, Egyptian Communists increasingly regretted the decision to dissolve their Party in 1965. In 1971 the Soviet embassy in Cairo, probably through the KGB residency, paid the relatively modest sum of 1,000 Egyptian pounds to a leading Egyptian Communist, codenamed SOYUZNIK (‘Ally’), to support left-wing candidates for the People’s Assembly.
51
Moscow, however, remained anxious not to provoke Sadat by reviving the defunct Egyptian Communist Party and discouraged attempts to do so. In April 1972 the three main underground Marxist groups united and began producing critical reports on the current state of Egypt under the name Ahmad ‘Urabi al-Misri.
52
SOYUZNIK and the other leaders of the newly unified underground movement secretly asked the Soviet embassy in Cairo to put them in contact with the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party. Moscow replied that the time was not yet ripe for setting up an open Marxist organization in Egypt. SOYUZNIK responded that the Soviet comrades plainly did not understand the real state of affairs in Egypt but that the new movement would none the less count on financial aid from fraternal Communist parties.
53
Two years later the KGB began channelling money to SOYUZNIK via the Iraqi Communist Party.
54
By the summer of 1972, Sadat had secretly decided to expel all Soviet military advisers. On 8 July he summoned the Soviet ambassador to see him. According to Vinogradov, ‘Sadat suddenly announced that our military advisers could return home, as they were “very tired”! I was absolutely furious. “Tired, Mr President!” I then challenged [him], “If you don’t need them any more, then say it more directly!” ’
55
According to Sadat’s version of the same episode, he simply announced that he had ‘decided to dispense with the services of all Soviet military experts’, and ordered them to leave within a week.
56
Moscow, however, still could not bring itself to sacrifice what remained of its hard-won position in Egypt by an open breach with Sadat. The Soviet leadership concluded that it had no choice but to continue political and military support for Egypt for fear that Sadat might otherwise throw in his lot with the United States. It therefore opted for a face-saving official statement which claimed improbably that, ‘After an exchange of views, the [two] sides decided to bring back the military personnel that had been sent to Egypt for a limited period.’ Relations with Egypt, the statement maintained, continued to be ‘founded on the solid basis of the Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation in the joint struggle for the elimination of the results of Israeli aggression’. After a brief interruption Soviet arms supplies to Egypt resumed. Sadat declared in April 1973, ‘The Russians are providing us now with everything that’s possible for them to supply. And I am now quite satisfied.’
57
Sadat’s arrest of the pro-Soviet faction within the Egyptian leadership and the expulsion of Soviet advisers damaged the morale of the KGB agent network and complicated the work of the Cairo residency. Fearful of discovery, a number of Egyptian agents began to distance themselves from their case officers.
58
In January 1973, as a security measure, the Centre ordered the residency to cease operations against Egyptian targets ‘from agent positions’.
59
Its existing agents, however, though downgraded to ‘confidential contacts’, continued in some instances to provide significant intelligence on Sadat’s military planning.
Like Western intelligence agencies, the KGB was confused about Sadat’s intentions towards Israel. On twenty-two occasions in 1972- 73 Egyptian forces were mobilized for periods of four or five days, then sent home. In the spring of 1973 war appeared to be imminent and Israel mobilized its forces. On Andropov’s instructions, the FCD prepared a report on the crisis in the Middle East which was submitted to the Politburo on 7 May:
According to available information, steps are being taken in the Egyptian army to raise its battle readiness. To raise morale, Sadat and the top military leadership are going out to visit the troops. The General Staff of the Arab Republic of Egypt Armed Forces has drawn up an operational plan to force [cross] the Suez Canal.
Similar measures are being taken in Syria, whose leadership has taken a decision to prepare for aggressive military operations against Israel together with the Egyptian army.
The military intentions of Egypt and Syria are known, not only to the leading circles of other Arab countries, but also in the West, and in Israel.
According to available information, the Americans and the British are inclined to believe that the statements of Egyptian and Syrian leaders about the forthcoming confrontation with Israel are intended for internal consumption, but also aim to exert a certain psychological effect on Western countries and Israel. At the same time, they do not rule out the possibility that Sadat will carry out specific military operations.
Analysis of the available information indicates that the actions of Sadat with the support of [Colonel] Qaddafi [of Libya] and [President] Asad [of Syria] could lead to an uncontrolled chain of events in the Near East.
It is not impossible that with the aim of involving world opinion in the Near East problem and exerting pressure on the USSR and the USA, Sadat might opt to resume limited military operations on the eve of the forthcoming meeting between Comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev and Nixon.
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It was of supreme importance that no Middle Eastern conflict interfere with Brezhnev’s visit to Washington in June. To Brezhnev, notorious for his love of pomp and circumstance, his reception on the immaculately groomed South Lawn of the White House was, according to Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador in Washington, ‘the moment of his highest triumph. What could be greater than his being placed on a footing equal to the American president . . . ?’
61
‘In order to influence Sadat in our favour’ and dissuade him from going to war with Israel, the KGB suggested sending a senior Soviet representative to hold talks with both him and Asad, as well as delaying the despatch to Egypt of missiles which the Soviet Union had agreed to supply. It also proposed using ‘unofficial channels’, in particular the head of the CIA station in Cairo, to persuade the Americans ‘that the resumption of military operations in the Near East at the present time would not be in the interests of either the Soviet Union or the USA’ and that they should bring pressure to bear on Israel.
62
In the event, no conflict in the Middle East disturbed Brezhnev’s Washington apotheosis as a world leader. ‘Even the brilliant sunshine’, Dobrynin nostalgically recalled, ‘seemed to accentuate the importance of the event’: ‘The solemn ceremony, with both countries’ national anthems and a guard of honor, the leader of the Soviet Communist Party standing side by side with the American president for the whole world to see - all this was for the Soviet leadership the supreme act of recognition by the international community of their power and influence.’
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The war scare of May 1973 none the less served Sadat’s purpose. Even more than previous false alarms, it persuaded both the American and Israeli intelligence communities that his repeated mobilizations and threats of war were bluff. The simultaneous attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on 6 October 1973, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, caught Israel as well as the United States off guard.
64
The future DCI, Robert Gates, recalled that day as ‘my worst personal intelligence embarrassment’. While he was briefing a senior US arms negotiator on the improbability of conflict, the news of the outbreak of war was broadcast over the radio. Gates ‘slunk out of his office’. The KGB did very much better. Still conscious of having been caught out by the previous Arab-Israeli War six years earlier, it was able to provide advance warning to the Politburo before Yom Kippur - probably as a result of intelligence both from SIGINT and from penetrations of the Egyptian armed forces and intelligence community.
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After the humiliation of the six-day defeat in 1967, the early successes of the Yom Kippur War restored Arab pride and self-confidence. Militarily, however, though the war began well for Egypt and Syria, it ended badly with Israeli forces sixty miles from Cairo and twenty from Damascus. Sadat drew the conclusion that, because of its influence on Israel, only the United States could mediate a peace settlement. While Soviet influence declined, Henry Kissinger became the dominating figure in the peace process. Until his visit to the Middle East in November 1973 the globe-trotting Kissinger had never visited a single Arab state. Over the next two years of shuttle diplomacy he made eleven further visits and conducted four major rounds of negotiations. The Centre tried desperately to devise active measures to persuade Sadat that Kissinger would double-cross him. In operation IBIS, Service A in the FCD forged a despatch from the Swiss ambassador in Washington to his foreign ministry, reporting that he had been told by a Middle Eastern specialist in the State Department that the United States would not infringe any of Israel’s interests. The forgery was shown to Sadat late in 1973 but had no discernible influence on him.
66
The Centre’s anxiety at its loss of Middle Eastern influence to the United States was reflected in instructions from Andropov to the FCD on 25 April 1974 to devise active measures to prevent any further worsening in Soviet-Arab relations, force anti-Soviet Arab politicians onto the defensive and undermine the influence of the West and China, which was currently increasing at Soviet expense.
67
The Centre was particularly outraged by Sadat’s links with the CIA. It reported in October 1974 that the Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby, had visited Egypt as Sadat’s personal guest. The KGB set out to take revenge on the thirty-year-old Presidential Secretary for Foreign Relations, Ashraf Marwan (Nasser’s son-in-law), who it believed had overall charge of the Egyptian intelligence community and was responsible for liaison with the Agency.
68
Section A devised an active-measures campaign which was designed to portray Marwan as a CIA agent. The Centre attached such importance to the campaign that in May 1975 it sent the head of the First (North American) Directorate, Vladimir Kazakov, to oversee final preparations for its implementation at the Cairo residency.
69
Articles denouncing Marwan’s alleged links with the CIA were placed in Lebanese, Syrian and Libyan newspapers.
70
In the course of the KGB disinformation campaign against him, Marwan was accused of taking bribes and embezzling large sums of money given to Egypt by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for arms purchases. The Cairo residency also planted rumours that Marwan was having an affair with Sadat’s wife, Jihan, and reported that these had reached Sadat himself. Predictably, the KGB claimed the credit in 1976 when Sadat replaced Marwan as his Secretary for Foreign Relations.
71
Service A’s active measures against Sadat made much of his early enthusiasm for Adolf Hitler.
72
Sadat himself acknowledged in his autobiography that, as a fourteen-year-old when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he had been inspired by the way the Führer set out to ‘rebuild his country’: ‘I gathered my friends and told them we ought to follow Hitler’s example by marching forth . . . to Cairo. They laughed and went away. ’
73
During the Second World War Sadat was also a great admirer of Rommel’s campaign against the British in the Western Desert, and later established a museum in his memory at El-Alamein. As late as 1953 he said publicly that he admired Hitler ‘from the bottom of my heart’.
74
The KGB claimed the credit for inspiring publications with titles such as ‘Anwar Sadat: From Fascism to Zionism’, which portrayed him as a former Nazi agent who had sold out to the CIA.
75
Sadat’s control of the press meant that within Egypt active measures against him were mostly confined to spreading rumours and leaflets. In other Arab countries the KGB claimed to be able to inspire press articles denouncing Sadat as an accomplice in the attempts of both the United States and Israel to keep the occupied territories under Israeli control. Among the allegations fabricated by Service A was the claim that Sadat’s support had been purchased by secret accounts in his name in Jewish-controlled banks.
76
Other Soviet-bloc intelligence agencies collaborated in the active-measures campaign. In an operation codenamed RAMZES, the Hungarian AVH forged a despatch to the State Department from the US ambassador in Cairo containing a psychological evaluation of Sadat which concluded that he was a drug addict who no longer had sexual relations with his wife and was exhibiting a marked deterioration in his mental faculties.
77