The Angel by Uri Bar-Joseph

of the individual power brokers with their comet tails. When Sadat came to power, however, this was no longer the case. His continued rule would depend entirely on his ability to work with, or manipulate, the centers of power.
    This was no easy task. In addition to building comet tails, the power brokers also developed their connections with each other. In some cases, such as between Sami Sharaf and the minister of war, Mohamed Fawzi, the connection was based on blood ties. In others, alliances were built on common worldviews or political convenience. The result was a fairly well-oiled leadership machine that had worked alongside Nasser and held most of the power in the country. The most notable of these included Ali Sabri, chairman of the Arab Socialist Union, who continued to hold power even after Nasser dismissed him as vice president and appointed Sadat in his place; and Interior Minister Shaarawy Gomaa. Many people, including in IDF Military Intelligence, saw these two as the natural successors to Nasser and expected that Sadat would swiftly be replaced as president by one of them. The centers of power, however, had someone else in mind. They may have planned on Sadat being quickly replaced, but in the long run, it was Sami Sharaf, Ashraf Marwan’s boss, who would end up leading the country. Or so they believed.
    Anwar Sadat never built himself a power center or comet tail. Not only did it go against his leadership style, which relied heavily on a small number of loyal aides, but the posts he filled were also mostly ceremonial, making it hard to build a following when he had so little to give his followers. Thus in the first few months of his presidency, he cooperated with the centers of power, even though he knew what they planned to do to him. At the same time, however, he took popular steps like releasing political prisoners and improving the overall standard of living in Egypt.
    These steps improved Sadat’s position and gave him, within a few months, confidence in his ability to stand his ground in the face of the centers of power. In their view, Sadat was no Nasser, but at best a primus inter pares — and a temporary one at that. Sadat, however, began making decisions on his own, and tensions with the leadership rose. This was especially the case concerning efforts to get the Sinai back from Israel. Believing that Egypt had no way of retaking it by force, in February 1971 Sadat proposed an interim settlement in which the IDF would pull back from the Suez Canal just enough to allow Egypt to reopen it to maritime traffic. The proposal angered Ali Sabri, who believed that the only solution to the Israeli occupation was war; Sabri pinned his hopes on the Soviets to help Egypt overcome its military inferiority. Many of the leaders either supported his position or at least voiced their concern about Sadat’s acting on his own. 4
    The tension between Sadat and the centers of power reached its climax in the second week of May 1971. In the drama that unfolded, Ashraf Marwan played a central role. In Sadat’s telling, Marwan was the one who handed him the winning card, enabling him to vanquish his opponents once and for all.
    ONE OF SADAT’S weaknesses was the fact that his adversaries, especially Sami Sharaf and Shaarawy Gomaa, controlled the intelligence agencies; they had tapped his phone lines and infiltrated his closest circles. Knowing this, Sadat looked for ways to circumvent the normal means of communication—a task made especially difficult by his lack of a comet tail of his own. He was forced to rely on his own family. When he wanted to verify a warning he had received from Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, editor of Al-Ahram and one of Nasser’s closest friends, about a plot to assassinate him, he sent his thirteen-year-old daughter Noha to Heikal’s apartment with a request that he meet Sadat in the president’s home. Similarly,on May 13, when he sensed that the moment of truth in