Egyptian closely held his nation’s secrets

Omar Suleiman, the once-powerful head of Egypt’s intelligence service who represented the old government’s last attempt to hold on to power, died on Thursday at an American hospital, according to the state-owned Middle East News Agency. He was 76.

There had been no public reports that Suleiman was ailing or that he had gone to the United States for medical care, so the news of his death came as a surprise. Reuters said he died suddenly while undergoing a medical examination. Al Ahram, the state-owned newspaper in Egypt, said he died at a hospital in Cleveland. No cause was given.

That he died in the United States was, to his Egyptian critics, emblematic of his close ties with the CIA, which he had helped as it established the practice of extraordinary rendition: sending terrorism suspects to foreign countries to be interrogated and, its critics say, tortured.

When the CIA asked Suleiman if he could provide a DNA sample from a brother of the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, Suleiman offered to send the agency the brother’s entire arm, according to Ron Suskind, who has written extensively about antiterrorism efforts. Suleiman’s supporters, however, saw him as a pillar of the old order who might have served as a buffer between military rule on the one hand and dominance by Islamist groups on the other.

In 18 years as the head of the General Intelligence Service, better known as the Mukhabarat, Suleiman became, in the view of many, the most powerful spymaster in the Middle East. He was often referred to as president Hosni Mubarak’s “black box.” His insistence that the Egyptian leader use an armored car during a visit to Ethiopia in 1995 is said to have saved Mubarak from an assassin’s bullet.

As Mubarak was buffeted by months of street protests and calls for his resignation, he turned to Suleiman to lead negotiations with his critics. He later charged him with a last-ditch effort to reorganize the government, appointing him to the long-vacant post of vice president. The move was widely ridiculed by revolutionaries, and 13 days later, on Feb. 11, 2011, it was Suleiman who announced that Mubarak was standing down and handing over interim power to the military. Another figure took over the Mukhabarat.

Suleiman was the first head of the intelligence service whose identity became publicly known. He played a crucial role in Egyptian diplomatic efforts to forge a reconciliation between Palestinians from Hamas and from Fatah, although releases of diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks showed that he had worked with the Israelis to try to deny Hamas its electoral victory in Gaza. Mr. Suleiman viewed the organization as an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian party he had helped ban from participating in national politics until its victory in this year’s presidential election.

“I think a lot of secrets will die with him,” said Nabil Fahmy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States. “He had a unique ability of being in a very sensitive, often controversial position as head of intelligence but at the same time preserving the respect of people toward him. He was a professional.”

Suskind, who wrote about American antiterrorism efforts in his 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine, had a more trenchant view. “Suleiman was our go-to guy for ugly extralegal actions — like torture and renditions — that we wanted done, but without U.S. fingerprints on them,” Suskind said in a telephone interview. “His legacy represents the ongoing costs of these ‘ dark side’ engagements for the U.S. — a loss of our honest broker’s credibility at a time it could be so valuable in shaping and guiding the democratic springtime in the region.”