Svetlana Once Offered to Testify for Prosecution

Lawyers in the Richard W. Miller espionage case revealed Wednesday that convicted Soviet spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova, who now proclaims Miller’s innocence, tried to negotiate a 15-year sentence last year partly in exchange for testifying against the former FBI agent.

The disclosure came after Ogorodnikova concluded seven days of testimony for the defense in Miller’s retrial. The witness broke into tears as she told the jury that she loves the United States and that Miller never passed her secret FBI documents.

“We’re not guilty of this crime,” Ogorodnikova said. “He did not give me any documents. He likes his country and I love this country. . . . I didn’t do any harm to America. . . . “

Publicly disavowing a confession she made last year that she had “unlawfully” plotted with Miller and taken a “handwritten note” and his FBI credentials into the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco in 1984, Ogorodnikova said her only reason for pleading guilty was that “nobody would believe” that she was innocent.

Sobs During Testimony

“I saw that everyone was against me,” she said, dabbing at her eyes as she sobbed in front of the Los Angeles federal court jury. “I asked my lawyers, ‘Could I win or could I lose?’ My charge is (a possible) life sentence. For what? So I decided to plead guilty. I couldn’t fight anymore. I was tired.”

As Ogorodnikova concluded her testimony for the defense and braced herself for a tough government cross-examination today, Miller’s lawyers revealed the plea-bargain attempt of last April.

Seeking to blunt the government’s questioning of Ogorodnikova, defense attorney Joel Levine told U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon that he was worried that the prosecution plans to introduce damaging polygraph evidence against the Russian emigre to discredit her testimony.

Levine disclosed for the first time that Ogorodnikova was interviewed last April by the FBI’s top polygraph expert, Paul Minor, during the plea-bargain talks which subsequently were broken off by the government after Minor conducted a polygraph examination on questions that included the issue of whether she received any documents.

Second Plea Bargain

Following the breakdown of those talks, Ogorodnikova and her husband, Nikolai, proceeded to trial. But before the prosecution had concluded its case, lawyers for the couple agreed to another plea-bargain arrangement leading to an 18-year sentence for Ogorodnikova and an eight-year term for her husband.

“I’m concerned if the government plans to bring that (the polygraph test) up,” Levine said. “The government is proposing to tell the jury she flunked a polygraph test.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Russell Hayman, who will cross-examine Ogorodnikova, confirmed that the plea-bargain talks had been halted after the polygraph test.

“The government refused to give her 15 years after a polygraph test,” the prosecutor said. “She made those same statements to Minor (on) April 2, 1985--that she was exhausted. Now she’s stuck in jail.”

Kenyon responded by advising the lawyers not to identify Minor again as a polygraph expert when Hayman raises the issue.

The exact questions put to Ogorodnikova during her polygraph testing and other FBI interviews were not disclosed, but courtroom comments revealed that the topics covered the issue of whether she received secret FBI documents or took Miller’s credentials into the Soviet Consulate in August, 1984.

Ogorodnikova, 35, conceded that she was a “bad witness” for Miller as she concluded her defense testimony Wednesday, apologizing to the jury for frequently forgetting crucial events.

She told the jury essentially the same story she had told Kenyon and the lawyers in private last week--that she was disavowing her previous guilty plea after seeing one of Miller’s children in the courtroom and being reminded of her own son, Matvei, now reportedly living in the Soviet Union.

“My son is far away, but his son is waiting for his father,” Ogorodnikova said. “My life is finished. After 12 years I will be deported and I will be shot. I only weep for my child in order to help him. He doesn’t have nice life over there.”