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Miller Told of Giving Secret Paper to Spy, Agent Says

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Times Staff Writer

Former FBI Agent Richard W. Miller confessed last October that he passed a secret FBI document to Svetlana Ogorodnikova in the bedroom of his Lynwood house and actually drew a map to show agents the exact spot where the exchange took place, an FBI agent testified Friday.

Agent Larry E. Torrence said Miller also admitted that he had slipped a copy of the same document--the FBI’s Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide--into Ogorodnikova’s traveling bag during a trip to the Soviet Consulate last Aug. 25 and permitted her to take his FBI credentials into the consulate to display to Soviet officials.

“He said he knew he was out of line,” the agent testified.

Torrence said Miller confessed to passing the document to Ogorodnikova in questioning Oct. 1, the fourth day of FBI interrogation about his relationship with Ogorodnikova. The statements led to Miller’s arrest the next day as the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage.

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‘I’ll Sign Anything’

“ ‘Just give me a confession; I’ll sign anything,’ ” Torrence quoted Miller as saying after the former agent abandoned earlier claims that he had never passed classified documents to the convicted Soviet agent or kept secret documents in his house.

Torrence said he responded by telling Miller that the FBI was not interested in him signing anything unless he was certain of its truth. He said he told Miller that he could sign a confession the next day if he desired to do so, but Miller declined.

The testimony by Torrence, who helped supervise the FBI investigation of Miller that was launched shortly after Miller’s trip to San Francisco with Ogorodnikova, was the most damaging of any prosecution witness in the first four weeks of Miller’s spy trial in Los Angeles federal court.

As Torrence testified, U.S. Attorney Robert C. Bonner introduced a giant photographic blowup of the map of the Lynwood home drawn by Miller, with markings showing where both Miller and Ogorodnikova were standing after he had taken the Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide from a briefcase on his bedroom dresser to show her.

“He said she took the document, held it in her hands and looked at it,” Torrence told the jury. “He said she seemed to be disinterested in it and she asked if she could have it. He said he walked into the bathroom for a brief period, then returned to her.

“He believed when he returned from the bathroom that he took the document, but it was possible she kept it. He couldn’t recall,” Torrence added.

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Papers Put in Envelope

Under Bonner’s questioning, Torrence also testified that Miller told him and Agent Graham Van Note that he placed a copy of the Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide and another document in a manila envelope last Aug. 24--when he and Ogorodnikova traveled to San Francisco--and put the envelope in her traveling bag.

“He said he put his shaving kit in her bag also. He said she also had his credentials. They were in the shaving kit,” Torrence said. “He said he gave her these documents to pacify her and assist in her recruitment of him.”

Miller, 48, who was excommunicated from the Mormon church in early 1984 for adultery, has maintained since his arrest that he admitted passing documents to Ogorodnikova partly because he was exhausted from his questioning by Torrence and Van Note and shaken by an appeal to “repent” by Richard T. Bretzing, agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office and also a Mormon bishop.

The ex-agent, who was fired from the FBI Oct. 2 just before he was arrested, has maintained that he was secretly involved with Ogorodnikova for four months last year in an effort to salvage his dismal 20-year career with the FBI by becoming the first agent to penetrate a Soviet KGB spy network. His lawyers, Joel Levine and Stanley Greenberg, claim his compromising activities were planned to make himself look like a good target for the Soviets.

Portrayed as Petty Thief

In addition to the charges that Miller decided to become a Soviet agent himself after meeting Ogorodnikova in May, 1984, the former agent has been portrayed since his arrest as a petty thief who stole from relatives and an FBI informant and who had sold FBI information previously for relatively small amounts of cash.

Miller allegedly offered to sell documents to the Soviet Union and meet with Soviet intelligence officials for $50,000 in gold and another $15,000 in cash. Miller has told the FBI that Ogorodnikova spoke of a long-term relationship which might net as much as $2 million, after which she suggested that they consider retiring from the spy business and settling down together.

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Miller’s interrogation started after he went to P. Bryce Christensen, assistant agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, to tell him last Sept. 27 that he had taken his scheme “as far as it could go” by himself and requested approval to proceed with plans to meet with Soviet officials in Eastern Europe under the pretense of being an FBI renegade.

‘Enhance Life Style’

Torrence’s testimony Friday, however, indicated that Miller was thinking of stealing money from the FBI if he could obtain approval to continue his contacts with Soviet intelligence. Torrence said Miller told him he expected that part of the $15,000 in cash would be given back to him to “enhance his life style.”

“He didn’t intend to take any of (the $50,000 in gold) but he did intend to skim from the subsequent payments he would be receiving,” Torrence said.

Before making his Oct. 1 admissions to Torrence and Van Note, Miller had made a similar confession to FBI polygraph examiner Paul Minor, who is scheduled to follow Torrence as a witness when the trial resumes on Tuesday.

Under cross-examination by Levine, Torrence was asked if Miller had ever told him his purpose was to harm the United States.

“No, he never used those words,” Torrence said.

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