Siegfried's Journey

A thin, small, birdlike man, peering through heavy horn-rimmed glasses, was presented to reporters in West Berlin last week as the biggest spy catch in years. His name: Siegfried Dombrowski. His former job: deputy chief of East Germany's military espionage organization, innocently called "Administration for Coordination." Dombrowski, 42, told newsmen he had defected "several months ago," and brought with him long lists of agents and dispatches that he had turned over to the "proper Western authorities." The total East German apparatus, he declared, involved control of 60,000 agents, with 13,000 of his own agents working undercover in Britain, France, Spain, Italy, West Germany, and in the U.S. installations in Europe.

Why had he fled to West Berlin? To save his skin, for he feared that his superiors were going to "fry" him because one of his aides had been discovered to be a double agent, and also because a relative had recently decamped to West Germany. "I spent eight years in Nazi concentration camps," said Dombrowski candidly. "I did not want another dose of it."

Dombrowski's defection was welcomed not only for the information he brought, but as a badly needed shot in the arm for Western "spook" organizations, which are one of Berlin's major industries. They have had a bad year. The chief of a West Berlin refugee camp for Russian and Polish defectors last month was arrested and reportedly confessed that he had been working for the Communists since spring. The potent Investigating Committee of Free Jurists, whose network of spies in East Germany helps make life miserable for the Red rulers of that unhappy state, suffered a series of body blows: one of its top officials was exposed by the East Germans as a former Nazi youth leader; another was captured by the Reds when he went for a sail alone on the Wannsee; a third confessed he had been working for the Reds from the moment he joined the Jurists in May 1956.

As the dozens of spy organizations. East and West, continue trading lefts and rights in Berlin, the climate around them is changing. While applauding the Western underground's previous services against the Reds--which include everything from smuggling out scientists to sending anonymous warnings to East German authorities that their misdeeds are being recorded --Berlin officials and newspapers have begun to suggest that some of the spook groups are overdoing it.

West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt, who regards much of the underground activities as "grownups playing cowboy and Indian." wants the Berlin senate to examine how to get "rid of certain undesirable activities in the twilight zone of political propaganda." The spook business is causing dissatisfaction in East Germany, too, but of a different sort. Dombrowski's boss, Major General Karl Linke, has reportedly been given the boot for letting Dombrowski get away.

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