Massive FBI Investigation Detailed at L.A. Spy Trial

Richard W. Miller and Svetlana Ogorodnikova were parked half a block from the headquarters of the FBI in Westwood on a dark night last September, and a tiny tape recorder secretly planted in Miller’s car was recording their intimate exchange.

“How can I be so lucky?” Miller asked. “You have stolen my heart.”

“Well, I know your heart,” Ogorodnikova replied, laughing almost girlishly. “It is my job.”

That Sept. 12 conversation was played to the jury last week in the Los Angeles spy trial of Ogorodnikova and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, who are accused of conspiring with Miller to pass secret FBI documents to the Soviet Union.

The FBI investigation had begun just two weeks before the September conversation. The Ogorodnikovs and Miller, who faces his own spy trial later this summer as the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage, would not be officially charged as Soviet spies for another three weeks.

Massive Operation

But the massive scope of the operation, code-named Whipworm, became increasingly evident during last week’s testimony as more than a dozen agents detailed the movements of Miller and Ogorodnikova almost hour to hour during the surveillance period.

From the time the investigation started--after a trip by Miller and Ogorodnikova to the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco late last August--one of the biggest worries of the FBI was that Miller might find out that he was being followed.

While agents based in Los Angeles were assigned to follow Ogorodnikova throughout September, the job of trailing Miller was given to special FBI surveillance teams brought in from San Francisco and Washington.

There was fear that unusual activity around the FBI offices in Westwood might touch off rumors about the highly secret operation, so a special command post was set up at the Brentwood Motor Inn, a safe distance away.

By mid-September, the motor lodge had been transformed into the headquarters of one of the most sensitive FBI investigations in history. Not only was it the meeting place for those running the operation, it was the listening post for agents monitoring wiretaps on the Ogorodnikovs and Miller.

On Sept. 11, there was a call to Ogorodnikova allegedly made by Aleksandr Grishin, a vice consul of the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco, who has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. The government contends that they spoke in code about plans for Ogorodnikova and Miller to travel to Warsaw to meet with Soviet KGB officials.

After that phone call, according to the first of the FBI’s surveillance witnesses last week, Ogorodnikova drove from her Hollywood apartment to the area of Miller’s residence in Lynwood. But she appeared to get lost about two blocks from his house, witnesses said, and after returning to Hollywood, she reached him by telephone.

Her call to Miller--one of four tape-recorded phone conversations played for the jury last week--appeared to catch Miller by surprise. He began a rambling story about a friend of his wife’s who was allegedly staying at his house, an apparent effort to discourage Ogorodnikova from coming over. But Miller agreed to meet with her the next day.

On Sept. 12, one team of surveillance agents followed Ogorodnikova from Hollywood, while another trailed Miller to a baseball park on Sepulveda Boulevard, two blocks from the FBI’s Westwood office. Agents hiding in a van filmed Miller as he left his car and drove off with Ogorodnikova.

As Miller walked to Ogorodnikova’s car, he was holding a white envelope in one hand. Although the Ogorodnikovs are now charged only with conspiring to commit espionage, it is the government’s claim that Miller actually passed secret documents to Ogorodnikova. In opening statements, Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard B. Kendall said that evidence during the trial would ultimately show that “that white envelope” went to Ogorodnikova.

During last week’s testimony, however, the government was only able to establish that the envelope disappeared at some point during a subsequent round-trip drive from Westwood to Redondo Beach. FBI surveillance agents briefly lost sight of Miller and Ogorodnikova after they left her car and vanished on foot into the arcade area of the Redondo Beach pier.

It was after their return to Westwood that Miller and Ogorodnikova, who had been sexually involved since shortly after their first meetings the previous May, returned to his car and parked briefly on Veteran Avenue, a short distance from the FBI offices.

The tape recording, which included Miller’s reference to his “stolen heart,” also suggested that the clandestine lovers were briefly involved in some sexual intimacy during that meeting. In addition, an FBI surveillance agent who was watching them from a nearby park bench testified that “as time progressed, both heads disappeared” as he was watching them in the car.

FBI Agent Michael di Pretoro testified on Friday that there was another call on Sept. 18 to Ogorodnikova from the man identified as Aleksandr Grishin. That conversation, also played for the jury, was interpreted by the agent as another coded talk about plans for Miller and Ogorodnikova to travel to Warsaw.

Miller and Ogorodnikova met twice during the next two days at the Cafe Casino in Santa Monica, other agents testified. While testimony stopped at that point, the government contends that during the following week the two made plans for the trip to Warsaw, even going on a shopping trip in which Ogorodnikova picked out a Burberry’s trench coat for Miller.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon adjourned the trial until June 4 to attend the U.S. 9th Circuit Judicial Conference in Tucson next week. Miller is expected to take the stand shortly after the FBI surveillance witnesses conclude their testimony.