the election campaign of 1961). Additional assistance to Porst, who
showed an aversion to the mundane details of espionage work, was
provided by Alfred Pilny (code name optic), a liaison officer who
had been resettled in the FRG. In addition to the information that
both men conveyed regarding internal party matters, Porst helped
persuade FDP leader Erich Mende to enter a coalition government
with the Christlich-Demokratische Union as minister for all-German
affairs in 1963. Responsible for Porst’s unmasking as a spy was his
own private secretary, Peter Neumann, to whom he had indiscreetly
disclosed his East German connection. In order to protect himself,
Pilny provided further corroboration. Following his trial for treason,
Porst, completely unrepentant, was sentenced on 8 July 1969 to two
years and nine months in prison. Released after only 15 months, Porst
later ceded his firm to the employees, who were forced to declare
bankruptcy shortly thereafter.PRAGUE SPRING. The communist reform movement in Czechoslo-
vakia led by Alexander Dubcˇek, the Prague Spring of 1968 became
an object of utmost concern for the Ministerium für Staatssicher-
heit (MfS). In March, the first alarm was sounded by Erich Mielke,
who urged increased surveillance of all citizens of the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) working in Czechoslovakia, as well
as greater controls on tourist traffic between the two countries. As
events intensified, Mielke took even harsher steps, including disci-
plinary action against those in the GDR who expressed support for
the “counterrevolution.” Following the military intervention by the
Warsaw Pact, the MfS assisted with the restoration of the Czecho-
slovakian state security apparatus, which had been a prime target of
the reformers.
PRINZ-ALBRECHT-STRASSE. See GESTAPO.
PUJOL, JUAN (1912–1988). A double agent who played a key role
in British deception operations during World War II, Juan Pujol was
born in Barcelona, Spain, on 14 February 1912. Having developed
an intense hostility toward the Third Reich during the Spanish Civil
War, Pujol, a hotel manager at the time, offered his services to
officials at the British embassy in Madrid in January 1940. Their
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