Ogorodnikova Sticks to Her Claim That She and Miller Are Innocent

Convicted spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova concluded a marathon 13 days of often confusing testimony in the Richard W. Miller espionage retrial Thursday, leaving jurors to decide the question of whether she was lying last year at the end of her own trial, or this year in the middle of Miller’s.

Maintaining her innocence and tearfully begging a Los Angeles federal judge to forgive her for “lying” when she confessed to conspiracy charges last year, Ogorodnikova stuck to her present claims that neither she nor her husband, Nikolai, ever worked for the Soviet KGB and that they never plotted with Miller to pass FBI documents to the Soviet Union.

As she concluded her testimony--the longest of any witness in the trials of the Ogorodnikovs and Miller--Ogorodnikova maintained the position she adopted when she took the witness stand three weeks ago, that Miller is an innocent man who had recruited her to help him in an unorthodox plan to infiltrate Soviet intelligence.

13 Days on Stand

“He did not want to work for KGB,” she said. “He just told me that I should tell them so they would think he wanted to work for them.”

During her 13 days on the witness stand, Ogorodnikova denied previous confessions, made both publicly and in private, that she had received documents from Miller, taken his FBI credentials and a note into the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco, and witnessed an actual meeting between Miller and KGB officer Aleksandr Grishin, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.

Ogorodnikova, 35, who made many of the admissions in exchange for an 18-year prison term imposed last June 26, also consistently testified that Nikolai Ogorodnikov, 52, who is now appealing for a new trial while serving an eight-year sentence for conspiracy, had no knowledge of her relationship with Miller and never met Miller. The testimony conflicted sharply with Miller’s own version of events.

Previous Statements

Explaining some of her previous statements, Ogorodnikova told Joel Levine, one of Miller’s defense lawyers, that one of her reasons for lying in the past was that she was tired and anxious to be moved from the county’s Sybil Brand Institute for Women.

“I was so tired physically and morally and I lost my belief in everything,” she said. “I was so tired of being in Sybil Brand in a doghouse. They had me in a cold, dark room. They would tie me to my bed with belts and tie my hands and feet.”

Ogorodnikova, accused by the prosecution of tailoring her testimony to help the KGB, her relatives in the Soviet Union and her own chances of eventually returning to her homeland, testified as a defense witness under a grant of immunity, which protects her from prosecution for anything she said as long as it is not a provable lie.

Legal sources said she could be subject to possible perjury charges because of the conflicting admission of guilt she gave to U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon last June, but noted that her frequent memory lapses and emotional breakdowns during the last three weeks make such a possibility remote.

Sexual Allegations

In addition to her disavowal of any espionage activity on behalf of the Soviet Union, Ogorodnikova laced her testimony with references to a past claimed sexual relationship with FBI Agent John Hunt, now retired, who had earlier denied the allegations as a witness for the prosecution.

Scattered among her claims and counterclaims were that Hunt had once paid for an abortion for her, that a Santa Monica lawyer she knew was in debt to the “Israeli and Hungarian Mafia,” and that she would be shot by the Soviets if she ever returned to Russia, because they “know the truth” that she was really an FBI operative.

Ogorodnikova said one reason she pleaded guilty was that she could not receive a fair trial from an American jury. But the question raised by her testimony was whether she is capable of confusing a jury to the point where at least one juror might believe her account more than the preceding two months of prosecution testimony against Miller.

Miller, 49, is charged with seven counts of espionage and related bribery charges. His first trial ended in a mistrial last year, when the jury deadlocked.