U.S. Says Soviet Couple Hoped to Return Home

A Russian couple were trying to earn their way back to the Soviet Union when they recruited FBI agent Richard W. Miller into a conspiracy to steal secret U.S. documents, federal prosecutors contended in court papers filed in Los Angeles on Monday.

In a 47-page trial memorandum submitted to U.S. District Court, the government revealed for the first time its theory on the motive behind the actions of Svetlana Ogorodnikova, 34, and her 51-year-old husband, Nikolai.

The memorandum states that Miller, a 17-year veteran of the FBI, was a “classic target” for recruitment by the Soviets because he was assigned to the foreign counterintelligence squad and was “a man with severe financial, marital and career problems.”

The document says Miller, 48, “had access to the most sensitive documents relating to the defense of the United States against Soviet intelligence operations.”

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner and his assistant co-prosecutors, Richard B. Kendall and Bruce G. Merritt, state in their memorandum that the Ogorodnikovs became disenchanted with their life in the United States shortly after emigrating here in 1973.

“Recent Soviet emigres, however, are not normally allowed to return to the Soviet Union unless they ‘earn’ their way back through service to the Soviet government,” the prosecutors state as the basis for their theory on motive.

Ogorodnikova’s reported involvement with another FBI agent, John Hunt, is detailed in the document, saying that in the spring of 1982 she offered to act as informant for the FBI, claiming that she was disillusioned with the Soviet system.

Hunt dealt with her over a nine-month period as a “potential asset,” according to the government’s papers, but decided in January, 1983, to close the file on her as an informant because he “was not convinced of her reliability.”

The prosecutors assert in the trial memo that Ogorodnikova made repeated attempts over the next 1 1/2 years to re-establish some relationship with the FBI while at the same time performing tasks for Soviet intelligence officers.

One of those tasks, the government document states, was an unsuccessful attempt in May, 1984, “to locate a high-ranking KGB defector, Stanislav Levchenko, a man much wanted by the KGB.”

It was that same month, on the day after visiting the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco, that Ogorodnikova first contacted Miller, the document states. Over the next several weeks, Ogorodnikova and Miller “carried on a sexually intimate relationship” until June 24, 1984, when she returned to the Soviet Union for about a month.

They resumed their romantic relationship upon her return, the document says, and in August, 1984, she proposed to Miller that “he could make a lot of money if he went to work for the KGB.”

‘$50,000 in Gold’

Miller expressed interest in the proposal, according to the document, but told Ogorodnikova that he would have to receive “at least $50,000 in gold.”

The memo also chronicles the last time Ogorodnikova and Miller met before their arrests. It was Sept. 26, 1984, and, by that time, Miller had told her that he would accompany her Oct. 7 to Vienna for a meeting with Soviet intelligence officers.

They drove around West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley in search of clothes that would “make Miller more impressive to the KGB officers he was to meet in Europe,” according to the memo. Among the items they selected were a Burberry trench coat and a pair of burgundy-colored Italian shoes.

The Ogorodnikovs are to go on trial next Monday, and Miller is due to be a key government witness against them. Miller, who on Oct. 2 became the first FBI agent to be arrested for espionage, will go on trial after the first case is resolved.