Miller’s Wife Relates Agent’s Counseling : FBI Official Gave Religious Advice After Alleged Spy’s Arrest, She Says

The wife of former FBI Agent Richard W. Miller told a federal judge Friday that the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office gave her religious instructions and counseling on the night her husband was arrested as an accused spy for the Soviet Union.

The testimony of Paula Miller was introduced during a pretrial hearing to bolster defense claims that Richard T. Bretzing, the agent in charge of the Los Angeles office and also a Mormon bishop, unfairly used his religious position during the investigation of Miller, an excommunicated Mormon.

Bretzing has said in court declarations that he urged Miller to “repent” during the five days of FBI questioning that preceded the agent’s arrest on espionage charges Oct. 2, but he has maintained that he was speaking only as Miller’s boss and not in any religious capacity.

Miller’s attorneys, Joel Levine and Stanley I. Greenberg, claim that Bretzing’s appeal shattered Miller emotionally and led him to make a series of confessions that ranged from stealing candy bars to handing over secret documents to Soviet emigres Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov. The government claims that the Ogorodnikovs are agents of the Soviet Union.

Personally Led Team

Bretzing personally led the team of FBI agents that arrived at Miller’s San Diego County home on the night of Oct. 2 to arrest him as the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage. Mrs. Miller described the scene for the first time in her Los Angeles courtroom testimony Friday.

“I was upset. I was crying. He (Bretzing) told me I should read Isaiah,” she said, referring to a book of prophesies in the Old Testament.

Bretzing also said that while he felt no sorrow for Miller, he was sorry for her and the couple’s eight children, Mrs. Miller continued.

”. . . ‘I want you to take full advantage of all the services the church has to offer,’ ” she quoted Bretzing as saying. “He said that twice. I assumed he meant the welfare services.”

Mrs. Miller added that before leaving her home, after taking her husband into custody, Bretzing instructed her to telephone her own Mormon bishop.

“He said, ‘Call your bishop. Call your bishop now,’ ” she testified. “I did it. I thought he knew what was best. Then my bishop wanted to talk to him, and they spoke on the phone together.”

Mrs. Miller took the witness stand late in the third day of hearings on 19 defense and government motions that have been submitted to U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon in connection with the scheduled Feb. 12 spy trial of Miller and the Ogorodnikovs.

Her testimony is scheduled to resume today at the beginning of an unusual weekend court session ordered by Kenyon in an effort to conclude the hearings without delaying other scheduled trials previously set to begin next week.

Rejects Defense Claim

So far, Kenyon has rejected a defense claim that the FBI’s electronic surveillance of Miller and the Ogorodnikovs in the month before their arrest was illegally authorized.

Kenyon has not yet ruled on a government request to sever Miller’s trial from that of the Ogorodnikovs, and to prosecute the former agent before beginning the trial of the two Russians. Miller’s lawyers have objected, claiming that the Russians should be tried first.

Miller’s lawyers also want Kenyon to rule as inadmissible all the admissions he made to FBI agents after his meeting with Bretzing, on grounds that his statements were not made voluntarily, but under religious pressure.

Both Miller and Bretzing are scheduled to testify today on the Mormon issue.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner, joined by federal prosecutors Bruce G. Merritt and Richard B. Kendall in arguing the government’s case, has dismissed the charge of undue religious influence by Bretzing as unfounded, contending that Miller was primarily influenced in his statements by his failure to pass FBI polygraph tests during initial questioning.

Miller claims that he was involved with the Ogorodnikovs in an effort to catch them as spies.

The government alleges that he turned over FBI documents to the Russians in exchange for a promised $65,000 in gold and cash.