POPOV, PETR SEMENOVICH (1916–1960).An early victory for
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Cold Warwas the re-
cruitment and running of Petr Popov, a GRUlieutenant colonel who
volunteered to work for American intelligence in Vienna in the early
1950s. Popov’s motivationswere personal and ideological: he was
disgusted with the regime’s treatment of peasant families like his
own, he coveted a Western lifestyle, and he was deeply fond of his
American case officers.
Popov was run successfully first in Vienna and then in Berlin for
more than five years by the CIA, and he provided detailed informa-
tion about GRU espionage and illegals, including the names of more
than 650 GRU officers and scores of illegals operating in the West. In
1957 he identified Walter and Margarita Tairov, who had been dis-
patched to New York as illegals. The Tairovs were able to avoid sur-
veillanceby U.S. counterintelligenceand return to the East. The
Tairov case may have alerted Soviet intelligence that it had a mole in
its officer corps.
Popov also provided hundreds of documents on Soviet military
policy toward NATO and Germany. A CIA officer involved in the
case stated that Popov “produced the most valuable intelligence on
the Soviet military of any source in that period.” The KGBafter-
action report on the Popov case estimates that his reporting saved the
U.S. government more that $500 million in its scientific and techni-
cal programs.
Popov came under suspicion in 1958—probably as a result of ei-
ther George Blake’s treachery or close KGB scrutiny of the Tairov
case. He was arrested in October 1959 and interrogated severely.
When the KGB tried to run him under their control to entrap a CIA
case officer, Popov showed tremendous presence of mind and
courage; he slipped the American officer a note stating that he was
under Soviet control. Rumors reached the West that following his trial
Popov was fed into a furnace while still alive. The story, like many
Cold War stories, appears to be fiction. Popov was shot in June 1960.PORETSKY, IGNATZ [REISS, IGNACE] (1899–1937).One of the
“great illegals,” Poretsky and his wife Elizabeth operated in Western
Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Elizabeth wrote one of the best ac-
counts of Soviet illegals, Our Own People. From 1934 to 1936 Poret-202 •POPOV, PETR SEMENOVICH (1916–1960)06-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 202