London police are investigating the death of a high-level Mossad operative who operated in Egypt before the Yom Kippur War whose body was found near his London home Wednesday.

Dr. Ashraf Marwan's body was found near his apartment at Carlton House Terrace in central London. He fell from his balcony. It is as yet unclear whether the death was an accident, suicide, or homicide.

The official version presented by the Egyptian media is that Marwan was a private businessman. In Egypt, at least publicly, Marwan was not seen as an Israeli agent. Marwan is Gamal Abdel Nasser's son-in-law, and he worked as a special envoy and private assistant to his successor Anwar Sadat.

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"I didn't sense any distress in his voice, but he spoke about 'that headache,'" said Dr. Aharon Bregman, an Israeli historian teaching in London, who was among journalists and writers who had published Marwan's name in the past and was supposed to have met him Wednesday afternoon. "That headache," was the information published about Marwan in Haaretz in reports about the arbitration decision announced two weeks ago by Justice Theodore Or, confirming that Major General (Res.) Eli Zeira had leaked Marwan's identity.

Several committees of inquiry established by the Mossad and Military Intelligence to verify Marwan's credentials reached the conclusion that whe was not a double agent.

The ruling ended a legal dispute between Zeira and Zvi Zamir, who served as head of the Mossad during the war. Bergman told Haaretz that about a week ago he had sent two articles published in Haaretz to Marwan following the arbitration decision.

"I have no clue whether he commited suicide or was killed," said Zamir. "That has to be determined by the British police. What I am certain of is that his exposure in Israel inspired by Zeira haunted him."

"The tragedy in this affair is that the Israeli intelligence and security establishment, including defense ministers, showed their impotency by not preventing the leaking of his name," he added. "What should really concern us is that a name of a source was leaked and the consequences for the future are that human intelligence sources which intelligence needs will have doubts about working with us."

He called on Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to open a criminal investigation into the leak, and charge Zeira in the wake of Justice Or's ruling.

Finally, he said the theory that Marwan was a double agent died with. "He was never a double agent," he said.

On Tuesday, Marwan called Bregman three times and finally they spoke and Marwan said he had received the articles and mentioned "the headache."

Bregman said that his relationship with Marwan developed after he wrote a book noting that Marwan was a double agent and gave interviews to that effect. Eventually the two met. "I didn't ask him if he was a spy or a double agent, but I did ask him why the information he gave about the start of the war was four hours late. He answered "what difference does a few hours make?"

Bregman said Marwan began writing his memoirs in 1971, two years after he started working for the Mossad. "On one occasion, when I asked him what kind of book it would be, he said that everyone in Egypt, the whole system, worked to embarrass Israel. I concluded from this that he really was a double agent."

However Bregman, heard about Marwan's alleged status as a double agent for the first time from Zeira, which he also noted in testimony he gave Or.

In 2004, Zeira filed a libel suit against Zamir, after Zamir had publicly accused him of betraying Marwan's identity and published the information in a book published 14 years ago. Zamir published the book in order to absolve himself of the responsibility he was said to have born for the Military Intelligence's failure to give an advance warning of the war.