formerly worked for Israeli intelligence and now is an independent expert on it, makes a convincing case that Marwan not only never misled the Israelis, but was actually astoundingly valuable to them.

Ashraf Marwan was the son-in-law of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led a coup in 1952 and became Egypt’s second president and a pan-Arab hero. Yet Marwan stunned Israeli intelligence when, in 1970, he offered to provide secret documents and insights from deep within the top leadership in Cairo. It was almost too good to be true. Marwan was the chief aide to the new president, Anwar Sadat, and the Mossad ultimately decided that Marwan had seen a golden opportunity to cash in.

The spy was usually paid $10,000 each time he met with his Israeli handler, a Mossadnames, dates and locations of meetings that demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of the Marwan affair, the spy was doing his best to help Israel. He kept the Israelis fully apprised of Sadat’s evolving thought process: Egypt would attack soon. Then it only might attack. Then Sadat decided not to attack until the Soviets provided more arms. Then he wanted to be sure that Syria would join a two-front surprise offensive.

Israeli analysts were not quite able to keep up with this ever-changing picture. Bar-Joseph discloses that the most respected intelligence community in the Middle East, and perhaps the world, was often disorganized and torn by personal strife. He reveals that there was even a delay of several months in responding to Marwan after he first offered to spy for