prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died in Opio on 10
August 1981.POPP, DIETER (1938– ). A long-term agent for the Verwaltung
Aufklärung (VA) resident in Bonn, Dieter Popp was born in Berlin
and worked as an insurance agent. He offered his services to the
VA in 1966. In 1969, Popp (code name asriel) moved to Bonn to
penetrate the Defense Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Through the cultivation of a homosexual relationship with Egon
Streffer (code name aurikel), a well-regarded civilian employee
in the planning section in the ministry, highly confidential material
was regularly conveyed to East Berlin, beginning in 1970 and ending
shortly before Streffer’s death in 1989. Unmasked in May 1990, Popp
was tried and given a six-year sentence for aggravated espionage. His
deep sense of injustice regarding the treatment of former Eastern bloc
spies led him to head an Internet-based organization after his release
from prison in 1994. See also ROMEO SPIES.
PORST, HANNSHEINZ (1922– ). A highly successful West Ger-
man entrepreneur and agent of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung
(HVA), Hannsheinz Porst was born in Nuremberg on 8 November
1922, the son of the owner of a photography firm. After working
in the family business and assuming its leadership in 1960, he built
through innovative marketing techniques a popular nationwide chain
in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and, with its profits, con-
structed a large printing-press complex replete with workers’ housing
outside Nuremberg. Strongly influenced by his cousin Karl Böhm, an
avowed communist prior to World War II and resident of the Ger-
man Democratic Republic, Porst also developed an attachment to
Marxism, which led him to early contact with the HVA. Beginning in
1955, his control officer was HVA chief Markus Wolf, who encour-
aged Porst to join the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP), a small but
pivotal party favored by West German entrepreneurs. Yet Porst was
so committed to the communist cause that he also requested mem-
bership in the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands. Although
denied at first, his membership was secretly approved in 1958.
While Porst functioned as a generous patron of the FDP, much
of the financing was supplied by the HVA (such as 75,000 DM for
354 • POPP, DIETER