Miller Defense Rests Without Calling Ex-FBI Agent to Stand

Defense lawyers for Richard W. Miller rested their case Friday without calling the first FBI agent arrested for espionage to testify on his own behalf.

Instead of putting Miller on the witness stand, his lawyers played a dramatic tape recording of a tearful conversation between Miller and his wife on the morning of his arrest Oct. 2, 1984.

In the telephone conversation--played outside the jury’s presence and later ruled inadmissible as evidence--Miller at first denied his guilt, but later made a damaging admission.

“I did some awful dumb things, but I don’t think I did what they think I did,” he told his wife, Paula. “I’m sure these guys think I’m the best BS artist this side of the Atlantic Ocean, but it just ain’t true.”

Miller, who made the phone call after four days of intense FBI interrogation, made his statements while also telling his wife that the conversation was being recorded and that he needed to speak to her in private.

“I don’t have anybody to turn to. I’m upside down and inside out,” he said. “The more I review this in my own mind, the more I think I’m digging my own grave. I’m helping them hang me. . . . As much as I want to cooperate, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the slammer for something I don’t think I did.”

On the Verge of Tears

Miller, an FBI agent for 20 years and the father of eight children, seemed on the verge of tears at points in the phone call, recorded by an FBI wiretap on his phone that was in place for more than a month.

He said his FBI questioners apparently believed he had passed secret documents to the Soviet Union, but insisted he could not remember if he had actually done so.

“I honestly believe I’m innocent,” he said. “I don’t remember knowingly passing documents.”

While Miller denied his guilt, he also made an incriminating statement toward the end of the conversation:

“The allegation is life in prison. If they can prove in a court of law that I did what I did, then that’s what the sentence is.”

Because of Miller’s awareness that his telephone was being monitored by the FBI, Kenyon ruled that the telephone call was inadmissible as evidence because it was a “self-serving” statement.

Defense lawyers Stanley Greenberg and Joel Levine sought to have the conversation introduced as evidence on grounds that it showed Miller’s confused emotional state during his FBI interrogation.

The end of Miller’s defense came on the 34th day of his trial. Government prosecutors immediately proceeded with a short list of rebuttal witnesses who are expected to conclude their testimony Tuesday.

Kenyon estimated that the case may go to the jury sometime late next week, after closing statements and a scheduled trip by jurors to a Little League ballpark in Westwood that was a frequent meeting place for Miller and convicted Soviet spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova.

Another FBI agent, Paul DeFlores, was in the park Sept. 26, 1984, when he spotted Miller and Ogorodnikova and testified earlier that Miller recognized him. Miller reported his involvement with Ogorodnikova the next day.

Unusual Excursion

The defense claims it would not have been possible for DeFlores to have seen a look of recognition on Miller’s face because he was too far away, and the unusual planned excursion to the ballpark was ordered by Kenyon to resolve the issue.

Miller met Ogorodnikova on May 24, 1984, and the government claims he subsequently conspired with her and her husband, Nikolai, to pass secret FBI documents to the Soviet Union in exchange for her sexual favors and the promise of $65,000 in cash and gold.

Greenberg and Levine have contended that Miller was actually trying to salvage an otherwise mediocre career by becoming the first FBI agent to penetrate a Soviet KGB spy ring.

The Ogorodnikovs pleaded guilty to espionage conspiracy June 26 after a two-month trial. Ogorodnikova was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Her husband received an eight-year sentence, but is appealing on grounds that his guilty plea was coerced.

Neither Called

In the course of the Miller trial, neither of the Ogorodnikovs was called by the defense or the prosecution to testify to the crucial question of whether Miller actually passed secret documents to Ogorodnikova.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner and Assistant U.S. Atty. Russell Hayman called 70 witnesses during the 23 days of the prosecution case, and Miller’s lawyers called 41 during their 11-day defense.

After Greenberg and Levine announced that they were resting their defense without calling Miller, the prosecution attempted to introduce FBI videotapes of Miller at work in the FBI’s Los Angeles office during the month preceding his arrest as part of its rebuttal testimony.

Miller’s lawyers disclosed that they had never seen the tapes, however, and a special hearing was called by Kenyon for Monday to determine whether the government had damaged the defense case by withholding the undisclosed contents of the videotapes.