Beaten by KGB in Moscow, Ogorodnikova Tells Court

A Soviet woman who retracted her confession to spying told jurors in Richard W. Miller’s espionage trial today that she was beaten bloody by Soviet agents who branded her “an American whore” during a trip to Moscow.

Svetlana Ogorodnikova, testifying for a fourth day in federal district court in Los Angeles in the trial of her former FBI lover, said she didn’t tell Soviet agents about Miller during her trip to the Soviet Union in June, 1984, even though their affair had begun the month before.

She said she spoke only of John Hunt, an FBI agent who she said had been her previous lover.

Ogorodnikova gave a sometimes puzzling account of her meetings with a KGB agent named Anatoly in a Moscow hotel.

‘They Beat Me Up’

“I cannot remember exactly what happened,” she said hesitantly, “but they took me to the militia, and they beat me up.”

Asked for further explanation by U.S. District Judge David Kenyon, Ogorodnikova said: “They put me on some kind of bed. One policeman was sitting on me and holding my hands, and the other one grabbed my hair, and they were hitting my head on the wall. I was all in blood.

“They told me I was an American whore,” she said, bursting into tears. “I was feeling very bad.”

Later, she said the man named Anatoly came to see her at her hotel room and ordered her to leave the country immediately.

“That was very strange,” she said. “He asked me to step out to the corridor and told me to get out immediately. . . . “

Son Back in Soviet Union

She said she expressed concern for her son, Matvei, who was in Kiev visiting relatives, but eventually they were reunited and left for the United States. The boy, now 14, is reportedly living back in the Soviet Union at present.

The judge questioned Ogorodnikova in depth about how she knew that those questioning her were with the KGB. She never made this clear, other than to say that their behavior tipped her off.

Her testimony became contradictory when she first claimed that she had received no instruction from the Soviets during her trip, then later contended that she was told to communicate with Anatoly in code through letters written to her mother.

She said she was told to write the words, “I’m calling you from the acquaintances, the ones you had met last summer.”

Words Repeated on Tape

Those words are used repeatedly in Russian-language phone calls between Ogorodnikova and a KGB agent whom prosecutors claim was her spying contact. The tape recordings of the phone calls are key evidence in the Miller trial.

The government, in its case against Miller, claims that Ogorodnikova recruited him for Soviet espionage, telling him that she was a major in the KGB and he would be paid well for classified documents.

Miller, the only FBI agent ever charged with spying, is accused of giving Ogorodnikova classified documents for the Soviet Union in exchange for promises of $65,000 in gold and cash. A jury deadlock in November forced his current retrial.