Ex-FBI Man Tells of Intrigue With Alleged Soviet Spy

On the morning of Sept. 23, 1982, an FBI counterintelligence agent named John Hunt drove a glamorous young Russian emigre to Los Angeles International Airport for a flight to San Francisco.

Wearing a stunning black dress with a hat to match and a black scarf tied around her throat, she fit the movie image of the sophisticated spy.

The FBI code name for the woman in black was Marie. She had been working with Hunt for months as an FBI informant, and there was a possibility she could soon become a U.S. double agent.

Her real name was Svetlana Ogorodnikova, and she was on her way that morning to the Soviet consulate in San Francisco to meet a man named Boris Belyakov.

Ogorodnikova had already told Soviet officials she had an FBI boyfriend, and now the Russians wanted to know more about her relationship with Hunt and how it might be put to possible use.

The situation was tempting to the FBI as well as to the Soviet KGB. There were unlimited intelligence possibilities for both sides.

But nothing of substance ever developed from the young woman’s trip to San Francisco, and the day was stripped of its glamour as it was recalled last week in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles.

On Oct. 2, long after her involvement with Hunt had ended, Ogorodnikova and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, were arrested on espionage charges, accused of conspiring with another FBI agent, Richard W. Miller, to pass secret FBI documents to the Soviet Union.

Hunt was the first key prosecution witness as the espionage trial of the Ogorodnikovs moved into its first full week. During four days of relentless testimony, he described every contact he had ever had with Ogorodnikova.

The story he told was not a spy adventure. It was, instead, the tale of a sad and troubled woman.

Hunt described her at various times as a woman who was very unhappy with her marriage and her home life. She told him that Nikolai Ogorodnikov beat her, and she believed that her only son, Matthew, hated her, he said.

She told him early in their relationship that she was in love with him, but he rejected her romantic overtures, Hunt testified. Still, she bought him presents frequently and seemed at times to be begging him for affection, Hunt testified.

During the relationship, the former agent said, Ogorodnikova broke down crying several times and once she said to Hunt: “Why couldn’t you love me?”

Only a photograph taken the night of her return from San Francisco was left to show the jury in the trial of the Ogorodnikovs that there had ever been the mysterious young woman known as Marie. Ogorodnikova, 34, a tiny figure with no makeup and her hair in pigtails, seemed to be another person altogether as she listened to Hunt’s testimony.

When Hunt first took the stand the previous week, Ogorodnikova erupted in tears and angry shouts as he described how he had first rejected her proclamations of love for him and then discarded her as a government informant a few months after her 1982 trip to San Francisco.

She cried again as Hunt concluded his testimony on Friday.

Ogorodnikova’s lawyers, Brad Brian and Gregory Stone, had charged in pretrial statements that there had been a love affair between Hunt and Ogorodnikova in 1982 that preceded her subsequent sexual involvement and alleged espionage conspiracy with Miller two years later.

Denied Allegation

Hunt, who retired from the FBI shortly after Ogorodnikova’s arrest, steadfastly denied that allegation as he was questioned first by Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Kendall and then cross-examined by Stone.

Stone touched briefly on the sexual allegations as he began his cross-examination of Hunt, but the retired agent scoffed at suggestions that he had ever had romantic thoughts about the emotionally troubled woman he was busily recruiting as an “asset” for the FBI.

“Did you ever kiss her?” Stone asked at one point in his questioning.

“The answer is no, but I should qualify that,” Hunt said. “Sometimes when she would greet me she would give me Russian-style kisses on both cheeks, and I would return them.”

He didn’t think Ogorodnikova really loved him, Hunt said. But he did think she was “psychologically hooked” on him. He mentioned her “dependence” in one memo to his FBI superiors. At the same time, he was attempting to put her to possible use against Soviet intelligence agents on the West Coast.

Stone, focusing more on Ogorodnikova’s role as an FBI informant than on the earlier sex allegations, led Hunt to describe a series of meetings with Ogorodnikova that began Feb. 11, 1982, and continued on a regular basis until he closed the FBI’s informant file on her Jan. 27, 1983.

Value as Informant Minimized

While Kendall’s questioning of Hunt had minimized Ogorodnikova’s value as an informant and emphasized her personal problems, Stone’s cross-examination brought out that in meetings as early as May 25, 1982, she had given Hunt potentially valuable information about officials at the Soviet consulate in San Francisco.

One such official was Aleksandr Chikvaidze, consul general at the San Francisco consulate. Hunt testified that Ogorodnikova told him that Chikvaidze was an alcoholic and an adulterer, and under Stone’s methodical questioning also conceded that she had informed him that the diplomat was in trouble with the Soviet Union for “accepting gifts from Soviet immigrants” and was interested in defecting.

Whether the FBI took any action on Ogorodnikova’s information about Chikvaidze or other Soviet officials was not disclosed in the testimony for reasons of national security, but as Hunt’s testimony continued it was clear she had at least provided some provocative tips to the man she claimed to love.

Provocative Information

In July, 1982, Hunt testified, he learned that Ogorodnikova had also given some provocative information to officials at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. She told him she had visited the embassy June 18, 1982, and told a presumed KGB agent that she was “dating” an FBI agent.

For the next two months, as Hunt described events, his relationship with Ogorodnikova intensified as both the FBI and the Soviet KGB tried to figure out what to do about Ogorodnikova’s story.

On Sept. 23, 1982, Hunt drove her to the airport for the trip to San Francisco. He had rehearsed her before the trip, Hunt said. She was to describe him as a married man who liked to “get out and around” and who drank. At one point Hunt told her she could tell the Soviets she was sleeping with him, but he said he later changed his mind.

Hunt said he picked Ogorodnikova up at the airport when she returned that afternoon and then debriefed her at the Warehouse Restaurant in Marina del Rey, where they met frequently. He said she had told Belyakov she was tired of seeing her FBI friend, and that Belyakov had urged her to continue the relationship, warning her that if she lost Hunt “she would never see Moscow again.”

By Hunt’s account, he then proposed taking Ogorodnikova home. But she insisted instead that he take her out to dinner, saying: “At least you owe me that much.”

Dined at Russian Restaurant

That night, Hunt said, they dined at Mischa’s Restaurant in Hollywood, a popular hangout for the Russian emigre community.

The evening, in some respects, typified the relationship, as it was described by the retired FBI agent.

Hunt said he took her to the restaurant and danced one dance with her. But when she wanted a photograph of them together, he refused. Instead, she was photographed alone and Hunt took the picture, later turning it over to the FBI as evidence against her in the spy trial.

He was anxious to go home to his wife of 33 years, Hunt said. He called his wife from the restaurant and she urged him to get home quickly. So Hunt forced Ogorodnikova out of the restaurant despite her wish to stay, he said.

“I had to grab a hold of her and put her in the car,” Hunt said. “She didn’t want to go.”

Toward the end of his involvement with her, Hunt testified, Ogorodnikova called him at FBI headquarters in Westwood to tell him of some personal problem.

“I told her to find a job like the rest of us, try to put some consistency and regularity into your life,” Hunt said.

Later, Hunt said, he warned Miller to stay away from Ogorodnikova after they had met in May, 1984. But Miller didn’t take Hunt’s advice. Now charged as the first FBI agent ever arrested for espionage, Miller is expected to begin describing his relationship with Ogorodnikova in the coming week.