The Egyptian Intelligence Service

A History of the Mukhabarat, 1910-2009

Owen L. Sirrs

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136991301
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Middle Eastern History

This book analyzes how the Egyptian intelligence community has adapted to shifting national security threats since its inception 100 years ago.

Starting in 1910, when the modern Egyptian intelligence system was created to deal with militant nationalists and Islamists, the book shows how the security services were subsequently reorganized, augmented and centralized to meet an increasingly sophisticated array of challenges, including fascism, communism, army unrest, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, conservative Arab states, the Muslim Brotherhood and others.

The book argues that studying Egypt's intelligence community is integral to our understanding of that country's modern history, regime stability and human rights record. Intelligence studies have been described as the 'missing dimension' of international relations. It is clear that intelligence agencies are pivotal to understanding the nature of many Arab regimes and their decision-making processes, and there is no published history of modern Egyptian intelligence in either a European language or in Arabic, though Egypt has the largest and arguably most effective intelligence community in the Arab world.

This book will fill a clear gap in the intelligence literature and will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, Middle Eastern politics, international security and IR in general.

Part I
Intelligence and the monarchy

1
Mamur Zapt

If spying is the world’s second oldest profession then it must have its roots in the Nile Valley—one of the cradles of civilization and foundation for some of the earliest empires in history. While Egyptians proudly trace their origins in terms of millennia, the genesis of their modern intelligence system lies not in the distant past of pharaohs and pyramids but in the more recent present—the beginning of the twentieth century to be precise when another empire created a secret police apparatus to enhance its control over the Nile Valley.

Although Egypt was never a formal part of the British Empire, London regarded its de facto occupation of Egypt in general—and the Suez Canal in particular—as integral to the health and welfare of that empire. While the French and other powers resented British control of Egypt, the British faced few serious threats to their dominance until the beginning of the twentieth century when a growing class of educated Egyptians began demanding national independence. Indeed, the story of Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century is one of frustrated demands for independence, and that frustration manifested itself in secret societies, assassinations, riots and revolution. In order to contain this rising nationalist sentiment, the British created a secret police apparatus which, as the new century progressed, grew in size, influence and capabilities. On the eve of World War II, the nascent Egyptian intelligence community was still bound by many ties to its British creator and master; however, the stage was being set for its eventual independence and further growth.

Origins

When Great Britain formally occupied Egypt in 1882 she inherited a domestic police intelligence system in desperate need of reform. The de facto chiefs of the secret police were the Cairo and Alexandria Mamur Zapts, who investigated anti-regime conspiracies and monitored foreigners. The Mamur Zapts’ sources included plainclothes policemen, informant networks known as mukhbireen¹ and anonymous boxes where citizens could place petitions for the release of imprisoned relatives, denounce neighbors and report on anti-regime plots.²

Unfortunately for the British and their Egyptian quasi-puppet known as the Khedive, the Mamur Zapts lacked sufficient resources and centralized management to handle the new internal threats emerging at the end of the nineteenth century.³ Indeed, an Ottoman official who inspected Egypt’s police force in 1910 was not impressed by what he saw: ‘The secret police consist of a few ignorant men in dressing gowns who have been condemned several times for theft. They are capable of nothing but watching the houses and trade of their former accomplices.’⁴

While the security apparatus languished, new political, social and economic ideas were having a major impact on Egypt’s educated classes. Nationalist and Islamist ideas were emerging at this time as part of the wider Islamic world’s response to European colonial domination. For nationalists, an ‘Egyptian’ or, later, a ‘pan-Arab,’ identity helped counter the humiliation of colonialism and the creeping Westernization of Egyptian society. As for the early Islamists, they sought solutions in a regenerated Islam and a rediscovery of Islamic civilization.⁵ Since neither the British nor the Egyptian monarchy were receptive to these new ideas, underground groups emerged in Egypt to challenge the status quo.

The first demonstration of this underground’s growing confidence was the 20 February 1910 assassination of Egypt’s Coptic Prime Minister Butrus Ghali Pasha by a young nationalist named Ibrahim Nasif al-Wardani.⁶ One Egyptian newspaper put the murder into perspective when it noted that ‘hitherto political assassination has been unknown in Egypt…the form of crime, of which [Butrus Ghali] was the victim, is without precedent in modern Egypt’ Indeed, Ghali’s murder initiated an extended era of political assassination in Egypt while marking a new phase of political warfare against the British and their Egyptian allies.

The Central Special Office

The Butrus Ghali assassination compelled the British to examine Egypt’s secret police apparatus. One of the first moves was to phase out the old political police system and pension off the Cairo Mamur Zapt.⁷ Then a triumvirate of senior British officials including High Commissioner and the Commandant of the Cairo City Police, George W.Harvey, aka ‘Harvey Pasha,’ agreed to establish a new intelligence organization called the Central Special Office (CSO).⁸

To direct the CSO Harvey Pasha selected an aide with experience in the Port Sa’id police named George Philippides (‘Philippides Bey’), a Christian from what is now Lebanon or Syria.⁹ This selection was not unusual since the so-called ‘Levantines’ (of which Philippides was one) and Egypt’s native Copts comprised the functionaries and clerks of the Egyptian administration at this time.¹⁰ Moreover, Philippides was not only regarded as trustworthy by his British superiors he also had the necessary intelligence and skill for his assignment.¹¹ Or, as one British official put it, Philippides was ‘a most subtle detective.’¹²

Official documents described the CSO as ‘a thoroughly organized service for the collection of all information regarding Political Secret Societies—individuals known, or believed to be, Political Agitators.’ The office was to be ‘secret and confidential’ and separate from other police organizations.¹³ To maintain a low profile, the new office rented a residential flat and frequently moved locations in its early years for safety and security. Under Philippides each employee and informant would be identified by a letter of the alphabet; only the Mamur Zapt knew their real identities. Furthermore, there were few face-to-face encounters between the Mamur Zapt and his spies: orders were transmitted by letter and replies could only be sent in written correspondence. None of the informants was permitted to know of the CSO’s existence or whereabouts.¹⁴

The CSO collected data from informant networks run by plainclothes Special Branch detectives. Vetting these informants was challenging, for, as one British police official pointed out, any ‘pervert student’ could make up a report that was ‘five percent truth’ for the sake of the promised financial reward.¹⁵ And money was not the sole motive either: some spies offered information to incriminate enemies or to influence police cases involving accused relatives. Meanwhile, for their part, the secret societies discovered that, by planting false information, they could swamp the CSO system, smoke out informants, and otherwise distract the secret police.¹⁶ Police use of torture to extract confessions was another problem, raising uncomfortable questions about ethics and the reliability of the information obtained in this manner.¹⁷

Data on subversive groups was maintained on CSO index cards with file folders providing supplementary information. Over time, the office developed thousands of files on Egyptian students, nationalists and foreign residents.¹⁸ Harvey Pasha praised the CSO for its rapid ability to obtain ‘accurate’ information on suspects; in July 1914, that speed and reliability was tested when Philippides was able to quickly access information on a murder plot against the Egyptian monarch.¹⁹

The CSO cooperated with foreign security services, and it is here that we find the earliest examples of intelligence liaison between Egypt and the European powers. For example, Scotland Yard assisted the CSO in the Butrus Ghali assassination by investigating Egyptian nationalists residing in the United Kingdom.²⁰ While the British provided most of the training for the CSO and the city police Special Branches, one detective went to Paris before World War I to study ‘police methods’²¹ while two others traveled to St Petersburg for the same purpose.²² The future head of the Cairo City Police, Salim Zaki, later claimed that he had been trained by the Russian Okhrana in surveillance and presumably other methods.²³

The CSO had other missions in addition to espionage. For example, it conducted background checks on Egyptian civil servants.²⁴ It also produced daily intelligence summaries and periodic, comprehensive reports on subversive movements for the British and select members of the Egyptian government. But there was never any doubt about whose interests the CSO ultimately served and among those few Egyptian officials aware of its existence, the CSO was viewed with suspicion at best.²⁵

Philippides enjoyed some early successes at the CSO. For example, only five months after its formal creation in January 1911, the CSO issued its first comprehensive report on secret organizations.²⁶ This was followed a year later by the successful monitoring and apprehension of an assassination plot against the British consul general, Lord Kitchener and the Egyptian prime minister.²⁷ Unfortunately for the CSO, this latter success was marred by allegations of torture and insinuations that Philippides had cooked the evidence against the defendants.²⁸ The Kitchener plot did lead to the extradition of an Egyptian in Constantinople linked to the dissemination of seditious pamphlets, anti-British plots, and the Kitchener assassination attempt. This might well be one of the earliest renditions of a political suspect to Egypt.²⁹

World War I

During World War I, the British relied heavily on the CSO archive for intelligence on enemy subjects in Egypt as well as Egyptians believed friendly to the Central Powers.³⁰ A police official later recalled that the CSO was the ‘only real intelligence office with complete records of persons of interest’ to the British High Commission and the British army.³¹ Indeed, Philippides was regarded as such an authority on Egyptian nationalists and the Turks that one British officer called him ‘the most powerful man in Egypt’ during the war.³²

In fact Philippides rode a crest of power and influence in the early war years. He often had the last word on who should be investigated and deported. Not surprisingly, given this authority, rumors circulated that the Mamur Zapt was using his position for extortion and revenge.³³ He certainly had a determined enemy in a British police officer named Thomas Russell who watched the Mamur Zapt closely. Russell especially resented Philippides’ influence over the disciplining and promotion of police officers, which offered opportunities for extortion and bribery. In one description of Philippides at a reception, Russell recorded that the Mamur Zapt

Walked about among them like a sleek cat, occasionally extending his finger-tips to touch the outstretched hand of some rich provincial with, at the same time, the look of a butcher at a stock show sizing up the weight and value of a fat beast.³⁴

In these circumstances, a showdown was inevitable and it was a battle that Russell ultimately won.³⁵ Eventually, the Mamur Zapt was put on trial where he alarmed British officialdom with his propensity for naming undercover detectives and secret informants in open court sessions.³⁶ The trial also raised awkward questions about earlier Mamur Zapt cases: Philippides supposedly admitted to one witness that he had falsified documents in the 1912 Kitchener plot.³⁷ In the end, Philippides was sentenced in 1917 to five years in prison and a fine. All in all, it was not an auspicious start for the modern Egyptian security apparatus.

On 22 January 1918, Joseph McPherson, or ‘Bimbashi (Major) McPherson’ as he was known to contemporaries, became acting Mamur Zapt in Philippides’ place. An employee of the Egyptian Education Ministry, McPherson was not exactly enthralled by his new assignment which he described as ‘an anomaly and an anachronism,’ an office of the ‘chief inquisitor.’³⁸ Although McPherson felt he lacked qualifications, in some ways he was the right man for the job. F...