News you may have missed #625
November 8, 2011 Leave a comment
Ahmed Al Hawan
►►Egypt’s most famous spy dies at 74. Egypt’s most famed spy on Israel, Ahmed Al Hawan, 74, has died after a long fight with illness, local media reported on Wednesday. Al Hawan worked for the Egyptian intelligence service during the years that followed Egypt’s military defeat by Israel in 1967. He supplied the Israelis with mistaken and misleading information that was crucial in Egypt’s war with Israel in 1973.
►►Analysis: Dark days for Taiwan’s spies. When Taiwan’s government last month announced budget cuts in military intelligence, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) insisted operations against mainland China would not be affected. However, media paint a vastly different picture, suggesting Taiwan’s future leaders will be completely deaf and blind to secretive developments across the Taiwan Strait.
►►US cyberespionage report names adversaries. A US intelligence report released last week concluded China and Russia are “the most aggressive collectors” of US economic information and technology online. But the report also states that America’s “allies and partners“, including the “French and the Israelis” are also stealing the s vital industrial and commercial secrets by infiltrating computer networks.
intelNews.org 
Ashraf Marwan: Israel’s ‘Angel’ or Egypt’s Double Agent?
October 13, 2025 by intelNews 3 Comments
However, a comprehensive investigation by two Israeli journalists, Ronen Bergman and Yuval Robovitz, published in the popular Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth under the title “The Angel of Lies”, presents a different picture. Based on thousands of secret documents not yet revealed and rare conversations with people involved in the operation, their report claims that ‘the Angel’ was actually the spearhead of Egypt’s deception plan before and during the war—and that he succeeded beyond all expectations.
A Spy or Double Agent?
Bergman and Robovitz examined whether Ashraf Marwan—advisor to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and a Mossad agent who died in 2007—was truly the best agent Israel had before the Yom Kippur War. Their findings indicate that a series of serious operational failures, combined with arrogance within the Israeli intelligence community, made Marwan one of the most dangerous spies ever to act against Israel.
They also investigated whether he was genuinely an Israeli agent who contributed meaningfully to Israel’s national security, as claimed by Mossad and by scholar Professor Uri Bar-Joseph, who wrote extensively about the Yom Kippur War intelligence failure and authored the well-known book The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel. Netflix later produced a film, The Angel, based on Bar-Joseph’s book.
Or, was Marwan, as the journalists argue, a double agent working for Egypt from the beginning—since volunteering for Israeli intelligence in 1970—and who managed to deceive Israel for years, particularly by delaying his warning about Egypt’s impending attack until roughly 12 hours before it began? According to Bergman and Robovitz, Marwan knew about Egypt’s plans weeks earlier but withheld that information, allowing Egypt to launch a surprise attack.
A Public Debate
Following the article’s publication, a public debate erupted between Bergman and Robovitz on one side and Professor Uri Bar-Joseph on the other, over Marwan’s true motives. Whether he was a double agent or a loyal Israeli operative, all agree he played a key role in the intelligence drama preceding the Yom Kippur War. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 1973 Yom Kippur War, Ashraf Marwan, Avner Barnea, double agents, Egypt, espionage, HUMINT, Israel, Mossad