The World Was Going Our Way (31 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
Despite the priority given to active measures against Sadat in and beyond the Arab world during the years after the Yom Kippur War, the KGB remained extremely cautious about operations in Egypt itself. Its caution extended to the illegal Egyptian Communist Party which on May Day 1975 announced its rebirth in fraternal messages to other Communist parties around the world.
78
Andropov instructed the Centre to inquire into the leadership and composition of the Party, then prepare jointly with the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee a proposal for giving it financial assistance. ‘Handing over money directly to the Egyptian Communist Party’, he added, ‘is dangerous for us because of the possibility of a leak.’ It was therefore decided to continue passing money to the Egyptian Communists via the Iraqi Party.
79
Sadat’s introduction of a limited form of multi-party democracy in 1976 made it somewhat easier for leading members of the still-illegal Communist Party to campaign in public - and easier also for the KGB to maintain contact with them. Three opposition ‘platforms’ were allowed to contest the general election of that year - among them the left-wing National Progressive Unionist Party (NPUP)
80
headed by the Communist leader, Khaled Mohieddin, to whom the KGB gave the codename LYUBOMIR. In 1976 the Cairo residency handed over to a Communist contact two sums of $50,000 (slightly more than 18,000 Egyptian pounds): one for the Communist Party, one for the NPUP election campaign.
81
78
Andropov instructed the Centre to inquire into the leadership and composition of the Party, then prepare jointly with the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee a proposal for giving it financial assistance. ‘Handing over money directly to the Egyptian Communist Party’, he added, ‘is dangerous for us because of the possibility of a leak.’ It was therefore decided to continue passing money to the Egyptian Communists via the Iraqi Party.
79
Sadat’s introduction of a limited form of multi-party democracy in 1976 made it somewhat easier for leading members of the still-illegal Communist Party to campaign in public - and easier also for the KGB to maintain contact with them. Three opposition ‘platforms’ were allowed to contest the general election of that year - among them the left-wing National Progressive Unionist Party (NPUP)
80
headed by the Communist leader, Khaled Mohieddin, to whom the KGB gave the codename LYUBOMIR. In 1976 the Cairo residency handed over to a Communist contact two sums of $50,000 (slightly more than 18,000 Egyptian pounds): one for the Communist Party, one for the NPUP election campaign.
81
At a meeting with Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kulik, Kirpichenko’s successor as Cairo resident, and the leadership of the FCD Eighteenth (Arab States) Department in 1975, Andropov reaffirmed the ban on running Egyptian agents in Egypt itself. He also gave instructions that documents were not to be accepted from confidential contacts - probably for fear that KGB officers might be caught in the act of receiving them. There is little doubt that the Cairo residency was frustrated by the restrictions imposed on it. In May 1976 Vladimir Kryuchkov and N. A. Dushin, head of the KGB Third (Military Counter-Intelligence) Directorate, signed a joint submission to Andropov requesting permission to recruit a senior Egyptian military intelligence officer, codenamed GERALD. Andropov replied, ‘By order of the highest authority [
Instantsii
] it is forbidden to carry on agent work in the Arab Republic of Egypt.’ GERALD remained a confidential contact.
82
FCD files noted by Mitrokhin contain a number of examples of former Egyptian agents, downgraded to confidential contacts, who broke contact with the Cairo residency - among them, in 1976, FEDOR, a colonel in the Egyptian army recruited in Odessa in 1972,
83
and MURTARS, an employee of the Presidential Office recruited in Moscow in 1971.
84
A Centre report in 1977 concluded that the Cairo residency had no sources in ‘most targets of penetration’. Later in the year it was discovered that KHASAN, an employee of the Soviet Cultural Centre in Cairo whom the residency had used to channel disinformation to Egyptian intelligence, had in reality been operating under Egyptian control.
85
Instantsii
] it is forbidden to carry on agent work in the Arab Republic of Egypt.’ GERALD remained a confidential contact.
82
FCD files noted by Mitrokhin contain a number of examples of former Egyptian agents, downgraded to confidential contacts, who broke contact with the Cairo residency - among them, in 1976, FEDOR, a colonel in the Egyptian army recruited in Odessa in 1972,
83
and MURTARS, an employee of the Presidential Office recruited in Moscow in 1971.
84
A Centre report in 1977 concluded that the Cairo residency had no sources in ‘most targets of penetration’. Later in the year it was discovered that KHASAN, an employee of the Soviet Cultural Centre in Cairo whom the residency had used to channel disinformation to Egyptian intelligence, had in reality been operating under Egyptian control.
85
Sadat’s unilateral denunciation of the Soviet-Egyptian Friendship Treaty in March 1976 caused little surprise but predictable indignation in the Centre. The FCD claimed that this indignation was more widely shared. It reported in November, probably with some exaggeration, ‘According to information from Egyptian business circles, the curtailment of relations with the USSR is creating dissatisfaction in a considerable section of the Egyptian bourgeoisie . . .’: ‘In an effort to lessen the dissatisfaction in the country with its biased policy towards the West, the Egyptian leadership is taking certain steps which are intended to give the impression that it is interested in the normalization of relations with the Soviet Union.’ However, the FCD quoted with approval the opinion of the former Egyptian Prime Minister, Aziz Sidqi (codenamed NAGIB, ‘Baron’): ‘The readiness of Sadat to seek a reconciliation with the USSR is a mere manoeuvre based on expediency.’ Sadat, the Centre believed, was bent on moving closer to the United States.
86
86
Though the Centre sought to improve the appearance of its Middle Eastern reports by quoting from confidential conversations with prominent Egyptians, the intelligence access of the Cairo residency had diminished considerably since the early 1970s. One sign of its limitations was the fact that it was taken by surprise by the mass popular protests in January 1977 against the reduction of government subsidies on basic foodstuffs and cooking gas.
87
In two days of rioting 160 were killed and hundreds more wounded before the army restored order. Sadat’s government blamed the riots on an ‘odious criminal plot’ by ‘leftist plotters’. ‘Many Communist elements’, it charged, had infiltrated the NPUP and tried to use it to ‘overthrow the government and install a Communist regime’. Over a period of three months, 3,000 Egyptians were arrested and charged with ‘subversive conspiracy’.
88
During the campaign against ‘leftist plotters’ a counsellor at the Soviet embassy, O. V. Kovtunovich, visited its main Communist contact in his office. Fearing that his office was bugged, the contact said little but wrote on a sheet of paper, ‘About 35 members of our organization have been arrested, and 17 are in hiding. The printing press of the organization has not been affected, nor have most of the district leaders of the organization. Assistance must be given to the families of those who have been arrested or are in hiding. We need urgent material assistance, amounting to 3,000 Egyptian pounds.’ Apparently afraid even to hand over the note in his office, the contact waited until Kovtunovich was leaving, then passed it to him in a corridor.
89
Probably as a result of this and similar experiences, three Egyptian Communists were sent for counter-intelligence training in the Soviet Union to enable them to set up a Party security service.
90
The Cairo residency’s main Communist contact sent his thanks to the Soviet leadership. Only their support, he told them, had kept the Party afloat during 1977.
91
87
In two days of rioting 160 were killed and hundreds more wounded before the army restored order. Sadat’s government blamed the riots on an ‘odious criminal plot’ by ‘leftist plotters’. ‘Many Communist elements’, it charged, had infiltrated the NPUP and tried to use it to ‘overthrow the government and install a Communist regime’. Over a period of three months, 3,000 Egyptians were arrested and charged with ‘subversive conspiracy’.
88
During the campaign against ‘leftist plotters’ a counsellor at the Soviet embassy, O. V. Kovtunovich, visited its main Communist contact in his office. Fearing that his office was bugged, the contact said little but wrote on a sheet of paper, ‘About 35 members of our organization have been arrested, and 17 are in hiding. The printing press of the organization has not been affected, nor have most of the district leaders of the organization. Assistance must be given to the families of those who have been arrested or are in hiding. We need urgent material assistance, amounting to 3,000 Egyptian pounds.’ Apparently afraid even to hand over the note in his office, the contact waited until Kovtunovich was leaving, then passed it to him in a corridor.
89
Probably as a result of this and similar experiences, three Egyptian Communists were sent for counter-intelligence training in the Soviet Union to enable them to set up a Party security service.
90
The Cairo residency’s main Communist contact sent his thanks to the Soviet leadership. Only their support, he told them, had kept the Party afloat during 1977.
91
On 1 October 1977, the Soviet Union and the United States signed a joint statement on the need to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moscow believed that it had recovered much of the diplomatic ground it had lost in the Middle East since the Yom Kippur War and at last secured US recognition of the Soviet role in peace negotiations. Almost immediately, however, according to an official history of Soviet foreign policy, ‘Under pressure from Israel, the [US] Carter Administration treacherously violated the agreement.’
92
Only seven weeks after the agreement was signed, Sadat travelled to Jerusalem to begin a dialogue with the Israelis. His visit was one of the most stunning diplomatic
coups de theâtre
of modern times. As Sadat stepped off the plane at Tel Aviv airport on 20 November, an Israeli radio reporter gasped over the air, ‘President Sadat is now inspecting a guard of honour of the Israeli Defence Force. I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it!’ The former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, said of Sadat and the current Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, at the end of the visit, ‘Never mind the Nobel Peace Prize [which Sadat and Begin were to be awarded a year later]. Give them both Oscars!’
92
Only seven weeks after the agreement was signed, Sadat travelled to Jerusalem to begin a dialogue with the Israelis. His visit was one of the most stunning diplomatic
coups de theâtre
of modern times. As Sadat stepped off the plane at Tel Aviv airport on 20 November, an Israeli radio reporter gasped over the air, ‘President Sadat is now inspecting a guard of honour of the Israeli Defence Force. I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it!’ The former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, said of Sadat and the current Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, at the end of the visit, ‘Never mind the Nobel Peace Prize [which Sadat and Begin were to be awarded a year later]. Give them both Oscars!’
With its habitual tendency to conspiracy theory, never more marked than in its attitude to Zionism and the Jewish lobby in the United States, the Centre interpreted Sadat’s visit less as a piece of theatre than as a deep-laid plot. Sadat, it believed, had arranged the trip with the Americans, who had known that it was imminent even when treacherously signing the agreement with the Soviet Union. The ‘Framework for Peace in the Middle East’ signed by Sadat, Begin and Carter at Camp David in September 1978 was instantly denounced by
Pravda
as ‘a sell-out transacted behind the back of the Arab nation, one which serves the interests of Israel, America, imperialism and the Arab reactionaries’. The Centre believed that Carter and the CIA had lured Sadat into an American-Zionist plot intended to oust Soviet influence from the Middle East. It responded with an intensified active-measures campaign accusing Sadat of being a CIA agent with a villa in Montreux waiting for him with round-the-clock Agency protection when he was finally forced to flee from the wrath of the Arab nation he had betrayed.
93
Pravda
as ‘a sell-out transacted behind the back of the Arab nation, one which serves the interests of Israel, America, imperialism and the Arab reactionaries’. The Centre believed that Carter and the CIA had lured Sadat into an American-Zionist plot intended to oust Soviet influence from the Middle East. It responded with an intensified active-measures campaign accusing Sadat of being a CIA agent with a villa in Montreux waiting for him with round-the-clock Agency protection when he was finally forced to flee from the wrath of the Arab nation he had betrayed.
93
In March 1979 Sadat returned to the United States to sign a peace treaty with Israel in a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House attended by distinguished guests and television reporters from around the world. As after the Camp David agreement six months earlier, Sadat was welcomed on his return to Cairo by huge enthusiastic crowds convinced that they were witnessing the dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity. There were authenticated reports of Egyptian taxi drivers offering free rides to Israeli visitors. Initially the opposition of the NPUP leadership to Camp David caused resentment even among some of its own rank and file. In much of the Arab world, however, Sadat was treated as a pariah who had sold out to Israel. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, which moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. Perhaps as many as 2 million Egyptians working in other Arab countries were sent home. Within Egypt, as the new era of prosperity failed to arrive, euphoria gave way to disillusion.
94
Though an Israeli- Egyptian peace treaty was signed in March 1979, the plans made at Camp David for a broader settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict came to nothing. Sadat’s opponents accused him of having betrayed the Palestinian people and reinforced Israeli control of the occupied territories.
94
Though an Israeli- Egyptian peace treaty was signed in March 1979, the plans made at Camp David for a broader settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict came to nothing. Sadat’s opponents accused him of having betrayed the Palestinian people and reinforced Israeli control of the occupied territories.
The Cairo residency claimed that during 1979, thanks to its Communist contacts, it had been able to inspire press articles, public meetings and questions in the People’s Assembly.
95
The trials in 1978-79 of those accused of complicity in the ‘conspiracy’ of January 1977 offered the NPUP a platform for attacks on the Sadat regime which it would not otherwise have been able to voice publicly. Mohieddin announced that the NPUP constituted ‘a democratic committee for the defence of liberties, including lawyers who were non-party members, coming together around the principle of providing all the guarantees of legal defence to those imprisoned for their opinions and supporting their families’. The evidence against most of those arrested was too flimsy even for them to be brought to trial. In most other cases, defendants were found not guilty or received lenient sentences. There were only twenty jail sentences, none longer than three years. Mohieddin himself successfully sued the pro-government press when he was accused of unpatriotic behaviour because of his opposition to Sadat’s peace policy with Israel, and was awarded damages of 20,000 Egyptian pounds.
96
95
The trials in 1978-79 of those accused of complicity in the ‘conspiracy’ of January 1977 offered the NPUP a platform for attacks on the Sadat regime which it would not otherwise have been able to voice publicly. Mohieddin announced that the NPUP constituted ‘a democratic committee for the defence of liberties, including lawyers who were non-party members, coming together around the principle of providing all the guarantees of legal defence to those imprisoned for their opinions and supporting their families’. The evidence against most of those arrested was too flimsy even for them to be brought to trial. In most other cases, defendants were found not guilty or received lenient sentences. There were only twenty jail sentences, none longer than three years. Mohieddin himself successfully sued the pro-government press when he was accused of unpatriotic behaviour because of his opposition to Sadat’s peace policy with Israel, and was awarded damages of 20,000 Egyptian pounds.
96
As well as receiving at least $100,000 a year for the Egyptian Communist Party, the Cairo residency’s main Communist contact also requested - and probably received - a similar annual sum for the NPUP .
97
One of its leaders privately acknowledged in 1978 that, without $100,000 a year from Moscow, the NPUP ‘was in danger of falling apart. The fate of the left-wing movement in Egypt depended on this money.’
98
The Centre had grandiose plans for the formation of an ‘anti-Sadat front’, based on the NPUP, which, it believed, would organize popular opposition to his ‘pro-imperialist’ policies.
99
Its plans, however, achieved nothing of significance. Despite tactical successes, the NPUP was incapable of mobilizing mass support. At the elections to the People’s Assembly in 1983 it gained only 4 per cent of the vote.
100
97
One of its leaders privately acknowledged in 1978 that, without $100,000 a year from Moscow, the NPUP ‘was in danger of falling apart. The fate of the left-wing movement in Egypt depended on this money.’
98
The Centre had grandiose plans for the formation of an ‘anti-Sadat front’, based on the NPUP, which, it believed, would organize popular opposition to his ‘pro-imperialist’ policies.
99
Its plans, however, achieved nothing of significance. Despite tactical successes, the NPUP was incapable of mobilizing mass support. At the elections to the People’s Assembly in 1983 it gained only 4 per cent of the vote.
100
Probably no other Third World leader inspired as much loathing in Moscow as Sadat. While stationed at the Centre at the end of the 1970s, Oleg Gordievsky heard a number of outraged KGB officers say that he should be bumped off. Though there is no evidence that the Centre was ever implicated in such a plot, it was aware that some of its contacts were. In December 1977 it received information that a secret meeting in Damascus between leaders of Syrian intelligence and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had discussed plans for assassinating both Sadat and Ashraf Marwan.
101
On 6 October 1981, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Sadat was assassinated by fundamentalist fanatics while reviewing a military parade. Though there is no indication in files noted by Mitrokhin that the KGB had advance warning of the assassination plot, the news that it had succeeded was greeted with jubilation in the Centre
102
- and doubtless in the Kremlin.
101
On 6 October 1981, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Sadat was assassinated by fundamentalist fanatics while reviewing a military parade. Though there is no indication in files noted by Mitrokhin that the KGB had advance warning of the assassination plot, the news that it had succeeded was greeted with jubilation in the Centre
102
- and doubtless in the Kremlin.
Almost a decade after Sadat’s death, Gromyko could still barely contain his hatred of him: ‘He has been called the “Egyptian darkness”, after the biggest dust cloud in human history which settled on Egypt 3,500 years ago when the volcanic island of Santorini erupted . . . All his life he had suffered from megalomania, but this acquired pathological proportions when he became President.’
103
Underlying Gromyko’s cry of rage was his consciousness that the Sadat era had witnessed the complete failure of Soviet policy in Egypt and the loss of the largest military, economic and political investment Moscow had made in any Third World country - extending to the unprecedented lengths of approving in 1965 the dissolution of the Egyptian Communist Party. But the political system which had made it possible for Sadat to carry out what he termed the ‘corrective revolution’ of the early 1970s and remove the pro-Soviet group from positions of power had been put in place by Hero of the Soviet Union Gamal Abdel Nasser. The presidential system developed by Nasser was a thinly disguised structure of personal rule which survived virtually intact into the twenty-first century. The main effect of the supposedly democratic reforms introduced by Sadat and by his successor, former Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, was to reinforce the clientelism on which presidential rule was based. Even the NPUP, on which in the early 1980s Moscow had pinned its hopes for a return to the Soviet-Egyptian alliance, eventually succumbed to the clientelism of the Mubarak regime. The NPUP’s move from confrontation to co-operation was epitomized in 1995 by Mubarak’s appointment of one of its leaders, Rifa‘at al-Sa‘id, to the Consultative (Shura) Council. ‘It was’, declared Sa‘id, ‘crazy to isolate ourselves from the system of which we are part.’
104
103
Underlying Gromyko’s cry of rage was his consciousness that the Sadat era had witnessed the complete failure of Soviet policy in Egypt and the loss of the largest military, economic and political investment Moscow had made in any Third World country - extending to the unprecedented lengths of approving in 1965 the dissolution of the Egyptian Communist Party. But the political system which had made it possible for Sadat to carry out what he termed the ‘corrective revolution’ of the early 1970s and remove the pro-Soviet group from positions of power had been put in place by Hero of the Soviet Union Gamal Abdel Nasser. The presidential system developed by Nasser was a thinly disguised structure of personal rule which survived virtually intact into the twenty-first century. The main effect of the supposedly democratic reforms introduced by Sadat and by his successor, former Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, was to reinforce the clientelism on which presidential rule was based. Even the NPUP, on which in the early 1980s Moscow had pinned its hopes for a return to the Soviet-Egyptian alliance, eventually succumbed to the clientelism of the Mubarak regime. The NPUP’s move from confrontation to co-operation was epitomized in 1995 by Mubarak’s appointment of one of its leaders, Rifa‘at al-Sa‘id, to the Consultative (Shura) Council. ‘It was’, declared Sa‘id, ‘crazy to isolate ourselves from the system of which we are part.’
104
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