The Spy Who Played Both Sides: How One Man’s Deception Reshaped Middle Eastern Intelligence Forever
Newly declassified Israeli documents reveal that Ashraf Marwan, once considered Mossad’s crown jewel, orchestrated one of history’s most devastating intelligence failures through calculated misinformation before the 1973 October War.
The Ultimate Double Game
The revelations published by Yedioth Ahronoth paint a portrait of espionage at its most sophisticated—and most dangerous. Ashraf Marwan, son-in-law of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and confidant to President Anwar Sadat, occupied a unique position in the intelligence world. To Israeli handlers, he was “The Angel,” their most prized asset who provided direct access to Egypt’s highest corridors of power. To Egypt, he may have been something else entirely: a master manipulator feeding carefully crafted disinformation to Israel’s most senior leadership.
The documents expose an extraordinary level of trust placed in a single intelligence source. Mossad chief Tzvi Zamir’s personal involvement in managing Marwan—unprecedented in the agency’s history—demonstrates how completely Israeli intelligence had been captivated by their supposed asset. Raw intelligence from Marwan bypassed normal verification channels, flowing directly to Prime Minister Golda Meir’s desk where it was treated as gospel truth. This blind faith would prove catastrophic.
A Pattern of Calculated Confusion
Marwan’s methodology was brilliantly simple: provide enough accurate information to maintain credibility while systematically undermining Israel’s strategic readiness through false alarms and retractions. By repeatedly warning of imminent war only to cancel or postpone the predicted dates, he created a “boy who cried wolf” effect within Israeli intelligence. Each false alarm eroded confidence in warning signs, making genuine indicators easier to dismiss. When war finally came on October 6, 1973, Israel was caught devastatingly off-guard, leading to initial Arab victories that shook the nation’s sense of invincibility.
The three major consequences identified in the Israeli report—underestimation of war likelihood, undermined intelligence confidence, and dismissal of other sources—reveal how a single compromised asset can poison an entire intelligence apparatus. Other warning signs were ignored or downplayed because they contradicted Marwan’s reassurances. The institutional bias toward a trusted source created blind spots that Egyptian and Syrian forces exploited with deadly efficiency.
Legacy of Deception in Modern Intelligence
For contemporary intelligence services, the Marwan affair offers sobering lessons about source dependency and confirmation bias. In an era of sophisticated disinformation campaigns and state-sponsored manipulation, the case demonstrates how even the most advanced intelligence agencies can be compromised by over-reliance on singular sources, no matter how highly placed. The Egyptian media’s enthusiastic coverage of these revelations as “The Angel Deceived Us” reflects not just national pride but a broader regional fascination with intelligence victories and failures that continue to shape Middle Eastern geopolitics.
The implications extend beyond historical curiosity. Modern intelligence agencies facing threats from state actors employing hybrid warfare tactics must grapple with similar challenges: how to verify high-level sources, how to prevent institutional capture by compelling narratives, and how to maintain healthy skepticism without paralyzing decision-making processes. The digital age has only amplified these challenges, with deepfakes, cyber operations, and social media manipulation adding new layers of complexity to source verification.
As intelligence agencies worldwide study the Marwan case, one haunting question emerges: in our current era of information warfare and sophisticated deception operations, how many “Angels” are operating undetected within the world’s intelligence services today?
