Paul Øistein Engstad (13 October 1926 – 13 May 2012) was a Norwegian writer and politician for the Labour Party.
[citation needed] He was a journalist in the Labour-aligned newspaper Arbeiderbladet, and held several positions in the Labour Party as organizational secretary and information director in the parliamentary group.
[1][2] He was known as one of the closest allies of party secretary Haakon Lie, and was accused of being instrumental in the political surveillance of socialists and communists in Norway during the Cold War, however, he strenuously denied this and nothing was proven.
[3] From 1980 to 1983, Engstad was a press and cultural counsellor at the Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel.
[2] After serving at the embassy in Israel, he was the secretary-general in the association Folk og Forsvar, which promotes the public understanding of military affairs, until his retirement in 1992.