Life Changed Forever, Wife of Spy Suspect Miller Says

The wife of Richard W. Miller, the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage, said Monday that her life and the lives of her eight children were changed forever on the night her husband was arrested.

Paula Miller and the oldest of the eight Miller children, Paul, 19, recounted the night of Miller’s arrest and the family’s ordeal since that time in an interview at their home in this rural community of northern San Diego County.

“Nothing can ever be the way it was,” Paula Miller said, referring to the disclosures about her husband since his arrest. “My life was over Oct. 2. Whatever happens, everything will have to be very different from now on.”

Her son, who has taken a job as a waiter at the nearby San Luis Rey Downs Country Club in Bonsall to support the family since Miller’s arrest, said his father asked to speak to him after his arrest just before he was taken away in handcuffs in an FBI car.

No Private Talk “He wanted to speak to me alone, but they wouldn’t permit it,” Paul Miller said. “There were two men on each side of me as we spoke together.

“He said, ‘You are going to have some hard times. You’re going to have to be the man of the house. Take care of your brothers and sisters, and take care of your mother.’ ”

Miller, 48, is accused of passing secret FBI documents to Svetlana Ogorodnikova, 34, and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, 51, Soviet emigres who have also been charged with espionage. Their trial is set for Feb. 12. If convicted, all three face maximum sentences of life in prison.

Since Miller’s arrest, the government has disclosed that the former FBI agent had a sexual relationship with Ogorodnikova and had been excommunicated from the Mormon Church early last year for alleged adultery with another woman.

Other disclosures have portrayed Miller as a petty thief who stole from his relatives and misappropriated FBI funds earmarked for government informants.

Miller, who grew up in Lynwood before attending Brigham Young University, met his wife at the Lynwood Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) when she was 11 and he was 16. Later, when assigned to the Los Angeles office of the FBI in 1981, he stayed during the week at a Lynwood home owned by his father and commuted to the family’s Valley Center home on weekends.

Picture Called Distorted Paula Miller, 43, describing herself as “deeply hurt” by the public disclosures of her husband’s conduct, refused to discuss his involvement with Ogorodnikova but said that the general picture of him painted by FBI officials and federal prosecutors has been unfairly distorted.

“He obviously has his weaknesses,” Paula Miller said. “I would say he’s not a terribly sophisticated man. But no one has ever said he’s not a nice guy. Richard W. Miller is the world’s nicest guy.”

Paul Miller had been planning to go on a two-year mission for the Mormon Church in Guatemala beginning Oct. 11 but canceled his plans and took the waiter’s job instead.

Since the arrest, two of the other Miller children have been sent elsewhere for their own protection. Drew Miller, 17, who has been deaf since an attack of meningitis when he was a year old, is living at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside. Another boy, Tres, 16, who was a student at nearby Fallbrook High School, has been sent to live with friends in Washington, D.C.

“He was getting it pretty bad from the other students,” his brother, Paul, said. “When the school bus came by, the other kids were yelling, ‘Better dead than Red,’ and things like that.”

In addition to working 40 to 50 hours a week as a waiter, Paul Miller said, he hopes to find a second job soon to bring in more money for the family. He has regularly escorted his mother to Los Angeles whenever his father is taken to federal court for pretrial proceedings.

“The man they are describing and the man I had as a father are two different men,” Paul Miller said. “I love him. He provided us with the things we needed, and he always supported us. He would bend over backwards to make his kids happy.”

Paula Miller, a substitute teacher who has not worked since her husband’s arrest, said the only family income since Oct. 2 has been her son’s earnings. She said she has been unable to meet monthly mortgage payments of $800 on her four-bedroom home since then and is afraid she is going to lose the house.

Repossession of Cars She also has been unable to make payments on two family cars financed through a credit union and has been told to take the cars to Los Angeles to be sold in the next few days, she said. Her immediate plans include a possible move to a smaller house in Escondido if that can be arranged and a return to work as a full-time high school English teacher in the fall if she can find work.

The Miller house is on five acres in Couser Canyon, a rugged area of granite hills and oak trees in an unincorporated area of San Diego County. Adjoining the site is a seven-acre parcel planted in avocado trees. Both pieces of land are jointly owned with Paula Miller’s mother, Verna Monson, and Monson’s former husband, Philipe Gonzales, who live nearby.

Her mother and stepfather were divorced in November, although they still live together, Paula Miller said. She said the divorce has complicated efforts to sell some of the property.

“When this started, I had eight children and faith in the Lord. That’s the only thing that hasn’t changed,” Paula Miller said. “Everything else is changing on a daily basis. The ground is moving under my feet. I spend hours and hours lying in my room trying to come up with some answers.”

Her attorney, E. Gary Smith, has been attempting to arrange a book project to help with attorney fees for Miller’s lawyers, Joel Levine and Stanley I. Greenberg, Paula Miller said. She has also filled out preliminary forms for county welfare benefits, which would pay about $850 a month if she qualifies, she added.

Beyond her immediate financial concerns is worry about the long-range effect of her husband’s espionage case on her children. In addition to her three oldest sons, she has two daughters, Angelina, 12, and Amanda, 5, and three other sons, Van, 9; Roy, 8, and Zane, 2.

“I’m a fighter, obviously,” said Paula Miller, who has publicly backed her husband since his arrest and maintains a belief that he is innocent of any spy activity. “But I’m also a realist. We have eight children. We have a lot of personalities here. I hope we have the strength to deal with it.”

Outside the house, the younger children played as Paula Miller spoke of her uncertainties about the future. For their amusement there are a backyard trampoline, a coop full of pigeons, two dogs and a Welsh pony named Ginger, the prized possession of Angelina.

“It’s been easier on the younger children, although there’s been some trouble at the junior high level,” Paula Miller said. “The church has been supplementing the food supplies we already had, and people around here have been wonderful. They just sort of formed a wall around my children when the media first descended.”

Angelina, bouncing on the trampoline and showing off her pony, provided a glimpse of what life was like for the Miller family before her father’s arrest. They had moved to the remote area from Santa Ana in 1979, and she had hated it at first because there were no other children.

But there are red-tailed hawks, and rattlesnakes and coyotes that come in the night to make off with the chickens. There was a pony named Pipsqueak, and now there is Ginger.

“My horse keeps me mostly company,” Angelina said. “I’ve gotten to like it now. But we may have to move.