Miller Flunked Lie Detector Test, Spy Trial Jury Told

The jury in the spy trial of Richard W. Miller was told Thursday that the former FBI agent failed polygraph tests last September, when he was asked if he had ever passed secret documents to Svetlana Ogorodnikova.

The damaging testimony was permitted by U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon in a rare decision holding that the results of lie detector tests were admissible to show Miller’s state of mind during five days of questioning that preceded his arrest last Oct. 2.

FBI polygraph expert James K. Murphy testified that he told Miller he had failed “several questions” during polygraph examinations Sept. 28 and 29, including the question: “Did you ever give Svetlana any classified documents?”

Miller’s lawyers had urged that the polygraph results not be allowed in evidence for any reason, arguing that they were inadmissible for the purposes of “truth” and too damaging to Miller’s case to be permitted for any other reason.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner, citing a 1951 case in Washington in which polygraph results were ruled admissible, persuaded Kenyon, however, that the testimony was needed to establish a reason for dramatic changes in Miller’s story during his questioning by the FBI.

Classified Information

Miller, the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage, first claimed that he had never passed documents to Ogorodnikova and had no classified information in his possession. Before his arrest, however, he had admitted showing secret documents to the convicted Soviet agent.

Joel Levine and Stanley Greenberg, Miller’s lawyers, have argued that the reason for the switch in Miller’s stories was the emotional impact of being told by a fellow Mormon, Richard T. Bretzing, agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, that he should “repent” his misdeeds.

Bonner has claimed the more likely reason is that Miller realized that he needed to amend his story after learning from Murphy that he had failed the polygraph tests, and Kenyon agreed with that view in deciding to admit Murphy’s testimony.

While Kenyon decided it was relevant to let the jury know that Miller had been told by Murphy that he had failed the polygraphs, the judge stressed to the jurors that they were not to give any consideration to the question of whether the test results were valid.

“You will have to approach this with the clear understanding that the quality of polygraph simply is not an issue here at all. The questions will go only to what was said,” Kenyon said. “Its scientific validity has never been proved. People take polygraphs--absolutely honest people, and they are telling the truth--and the polygraph says they are not telling the truth.

“This gentleman is not going to be judged like that,” Kenyon continued, adding that the testimony would be allowed only because Miller’s state of mind was “a key factor in many ways in this case.”

Following Murphy on the witness stand Thursday was FBI Agent Larry E. Torrence, a Washington counterintelligence agent who helped supervise the FBI investigation of Miller that began shortly after the ex-agent traveled with Ogorodnikova to San Francisco late last August.

Torrence said Miller first denied that he had any classified documents in his house, when he was questioned Sept. 28, but was later confronted with the fact that FBI agents had found a secret document, known as the FBI’s “Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide,” in a file marked “Svetlana” in Miller’s bedroom.

“He said that document had nothing to do with Svetlana and if it was in that folder he must have placed it there accidentally,” Torrence said.