The Angel by Uri Bar-Joseph Page A

the power struggle was drawing near, he sent his older daughter Lubna in her private car to Alexandria, where she met the mayor of the city, Mamdouh Salem. Salem was a former officer in the Interrogation Corps, a police unit charged with, among other things, protecting the person of the nation’s leaders. Lubna’s message was brief and clear: “The president wishes to see you immediately. Tell no one.” Salem rushed to Cairo. Sadat asked him whether he was willing to assume the position of minister of the interior. Salem accepted the offer and was quietly installed to replace Shaarawy Gomaa.
    IMMEDIATELY UPON BEING sworn in, Salem took the commander of internal security forces in Alexandria and appointed him to be Egypt’s new chief of interrogations. Sadat gave Salem a list of all the people he identified as conspirators against the president. They were all to be arrested.
    Even before Salem was sworn in, while Sadat sat in his office waiting for him to arrive from Alexandria, the president decided to test the loyalty of Gen. El-Leithy Nassif, commander of the Presidential Guard, who had been personally appointed by Nasser and whose job it was to keep Sadat safe. The general and his guard, however, were under the command of Sami Sharaf, and Nassif owed his direct allegiance to the presidential secretary. But the day before, in what in retrospect was a major blunder on Sharaf’s part, he had given Nassif the unusual directive that in all circumstances, he must remember to honor the chain of command as part of his professional duty. The result was that when Sadat now asked Nassif about his personal loyalty to the president and his willingness and ability to imprison government officials conspiring against him, Nassif understood what was happening and swore his total loyalty to the president. Sadat made him swear not to tell anyone of their conversation. Nassif swore, and kept his oath.
    Himself a seasoned conspirator, Sadat now felt that everything was in place to make his move. The timing was decided, in no small measure, by Ashraf Marwan, who was still working under Sami Sharaf in the President’s Palace.
    Though all sources agree that Marwan played a central role in helping Sadat overcome his opponents and establish his rule over Egypt in May 1971, there are disagreements as to what, exactly, he did. Sadat’s memoirs, In Search of Identity , which are strewn with basic factual errors, say that Marwan came to him at 10:57 p.m. on May 13, bringing the letters of resignation of the chairman of the popular council, the war minister, the presidential secretary, and members of the Supreme Executive Council. The purpose of their collective resignation, Sadat believed, was to create a constitutional crisis that would force the president himself to resign. Instead, Sadat wrote, “I accepted their resignations.” 5
    Sadat’s wife, Jehan, who also wrote a memoir, A Woman of Egypt , in which she claimed for herself an important role in guiding her husband in general and upending the conspiracy in particular, gives a more dramatic and detailed account. In her telling, she and the president were watching the ten o’clock news in their home when they heard a knock on the door. It was Ashraf Marwan, who, in addition to his family connection to Nasser and his role in the President’s Office, was also a personal friend. He handed them the letters of resignation and added, uncomfortably, that a public announcement would be made in just a few minutes, during the news broadcast they were watching. Sadat shook his head in disbelief. Then, indeed, the anchorman reported on the mass resignations. Marwan continued standing there uncomfortably, and when Jehan asked him why he hadn’t given them more notice, he answered that Sami Sharaf hadn’t let him leave the office. Jehan understood from this that Marwan, whose loyalty to Sadat she had never doubted, had genuinely been unable to get