The intelligence chief who went fishing in the cold: How Maj. Gen. (res.) Eli zeira exposed the identity of Israel's best source ever

In March 2007, following arbitration between Israel's director of Military Intelligence in the Yom Kippur War, Maj. Gen. Eli Zeira and the Mossad chief in 1973, Zvi Zamir, it was officially ruled out that Zeira leaked the identity of Israel's most important source in Egypt to unauthorized journalists. The agent, Dr Ashraf Marwan, Nasser's son-in-law and Sadat's close advisor, had since 1969 given the Mossad excellent information about Egypt’s war preparations. He was also the source for the warning that ultimately geared Israel to war a few hours before it started on 6 October 1973. This article describes the process through which, from the early 1990s, Zeira leaked to unauthorized students of the Yom Kippur War information concerning the identity of the source and hypothesizes about what could have motivated him to take this action.