Witness Says Miller Sold Him Confidential FBI Data

The opening defense witness in the spy trial of former FBI agent Richard Miller admitted Wednesday that Miller had sold him confidential investigative data normally made available only to law enforcement personnel.

Lawrence Grayson, a sometime police informant who has worked recently as a private investigator in Riverside, told a Los Angeles federal court jury that he paid Miller $1,000 for police investigative reports, criminal histories from FBI files and driver’s license information from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

The testimony was elicited from Grayson after U.S. District Judge David Kenyon ruled Wednesday morning that the jury could be told about what U.S. Atty. Robert Bonner termed a “collusive relationship” that existed between Grayson and Miller prior to the spy case.

Over vigorous defense objections, Bonner won the right to introduce the testimony in his continuing attempt to cast doubt on Grayson’s credibility as a defense witness.

Asked to Take Picture

Grayson had testified on Tuesday that Miller asked him last August to take pictures of Miller meeting with Soviet intelligence agents in Mexico. Defense attorneys contend that Miller’s plan--later abandoned--was an attempt to salvage his failing FBI career by using the photographs to show superiors that he had successfully infiltrated a Soviet spy ring.

Prosecutors take a different view. They contend that a combination of professional and financial problems drove the 48-year-old defendant into the arms of Russian emigre Svetlana Ogorodnikova, who lured him into handing over classified FBI documents for transmittal to Soviet intelligence agents.

Miller, the first FBI agent ever tried for espionage, was arrested last October and charged with conspiring to pass secrets to the Soviets for $65,000. Ogorodnikova and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, already have been convicted in the case and and are serving prison terms.

Grayson’s allegations that Miller sold him confidential information are the subject of charges on which Miller will be prosecuted later in a separate case. Grayson confirmed on Wednesday that he has been granted immunity from prosecution in that case “as long as I’m truthful” in testimony and in his statements to investigators.

Reluctant Witness

In cross-examining Grayson on Wednesday, Bonner asked the frequently reluctant witness whether he had been first interrogated by FBI agents on the morning of Oct. 2, about two months after Miller is said to have proposed the photographic mission--which the two reportedly code-named “Mother.”

Grayson said that agents had interviewed him that morning.

Bonner then asked whether Grayson had telephoned that evening to Miller’s home in Bonsall in San Diego County, leaving a message with Miller’s wife “to tell Richard that two people came by and put flowers on Mother’s grave.” Grayson said he had left that message.

But when Bonner asked if the message was a warning to Miller that FBI agents suspected him of espionage, Grayson denied it.

“I was just angry,” the witness said.

Whether the message was relayed to Miller was not made clear, but several hours after the call, more than a dozen FBI agents descended on the home in the rural community, where they found and arrested the defendant.

Agents Testify

Grayson was followed to the stand Wednesday by five more defense witnesses--all of them FBI agents. Two of them told of the search at Miller’s home on the night of his arrest and one of them told of a surveillance of Miller last Sept. 20, when he allegedly drove from the FBI’s Los Angeles headquarters in Westwood to a rendezvous with Ogorodnikova at a restaurant in Santa Monica.

The other two agents, Alicia Fuentes and Rudolph Valadez, testified that during a meeting they had with Ogorodnikova on March 5, 1984, she told them details of a purported affair she was having with another FBI agent, John Hunt.

The woman said she had to break up a jealous confrontation between her husband and Hunt, during which both men pulled guns.

Hunt has denied the affair.