informer for the East German military counterintelligence (code
name rebell).
In 1955, having completed several military training courses,
Dombrowski joined the fledging military intelligence agency of the
German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Administration for Co-
ordination. Although the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS)
cautioned its chief Karl Linke about his contacts with West Berlin,
the warning went unheeded, and he soon became part of the organi-
zation’s inner circle as one of Linke’s deputies. He continued in that
position under Linke’s successor, Willy Sägebrecht.
On 5 August 1958, Dombrowski—along with his wife, his two
sons, and 71,700 DM—fled to West Berlin and found refuge at the
operations base of the U.S. Central Intelligence Organization. A thor-
ough debriefing lasting several weeks took place at the interrogation
camp at Oberursel in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). While
Dombrowski had brought no official papers and possessed only
partial knowledge of the agent network, he nevertheless proved an
exceedingly valuable source of information about the organization’s
internal structure (including the reasons for Linke’s recent removal).
The defector’s first public appearance occurred at a press conference
on 22 January 1959, where he read a carefully prepared 17-page
statement detailing the extensive espionage directed at the FRG by
the GDR. Dombrowski and his family were resettled in the FRG un-
der the name Hirsch and given extensive police protection.DREYFUS AFFAIR. See SCHWARTZKOPPEN, MAXIMILIAN
VON.
DRONKERS, JOHANNES (1896–1942). An Abwehr spy executed
by the British, Johannes Dronkers was a Dutch postal worker picked
up from a small yacht found drifting near Harwich in May 1942. Af-
ter he and his two companions underwent three weeks of questioning,
his detailed cover story collapsed when a Dutch intelligence officer
presented evidence of his true identity. Dronkers then confessed
that he had been in contact with the Abwehr since 1938 and that his
assignment was to report on a variety of military matters in Great
Britain to contacts in Stockholm and Lisbon. While the two other
men had been provided merely as cover and were therefore released,
88 • DREYFUS AFFAIR