Tried to Fire Miller, Ex-Bosses Say : Frequent Attempts Were Ignored, They Testify in Spy Trial

Two of Richard W. Miller’s former FBI superiors testified Wednesday that they tried unsuccessfully to have him fired for a variety of reasons, including obesity, incompetency, poor judgment and laziness.

Homer A. Porter and Bernardo (Matt) Perez testified that their efforts to have Miller fired in the late 1970s and in 1982 were ignored.

Not until Oct. 2, 1984, after almost a decade of disciplinary warnings and actions against him, was Miller finally fired as an FBI counterintelligence agent.

That was just a few minutes before he was arrested by the FBI on charges of passing secret documents to the Soviet Union in exchange for a trench coat and $65,000 in gold and cash he never received.

‘Sustained Mediocrity’

Porter, who retired from the FBI in 1979, said he tried without success to have Miller fired on four occasions while supervising him in the late 1970s, characterizing Miller’s career as one of “sustained mediocrity.”

Although failing in his efforts to have Miller fired for insubordination in refusing to comply with FBI guidelines on weight and performance, Porter said he succeeded in having Miller censured on several occasions--but not without paying a price himself.

“Every time I recommended him for censure, I got one myself because I was responsible for his performance,” said Porter, who supervised Miller on the FBI’s copyright squad for a three-year period.

Perez, now assistant agent in charge of the FBI’s El Paso office, said he tried to have Miller fired in December, 1982, while he was senior administrative assistant to Richard T. Bretzing, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office.

‘Unduly Harsh’

According to Perez, Bretzing took the view that his top aide was being “unduly harsh” on Miller and told him to let P. Bryce Christensen, then Miller’s direct supervisor on the Soviet counterintelligence squad, handle the issue.

“I told Mr. Bretzing that Miller should be fired,” Perez said. “My characterization was that he was lazy and that he was a conniver, that he could do the work if he wanted to. . . . I don’t recall if I used the word bumbler, but I made that characterization.”

The testimony by Perez on the 45th day of Miller’s espionage retrial directly contradicted testimony by Bretzing April 14 in which he said that Perez had never urged Miller’s dismissal and that “astonishingly enough” there was never even a meeting on the subject.

Perez, a Roman Catholic, filed a religious discrimination complaint against Bretzing, a bishop in the Mormon Church, in 1984 after a long feud between the two men, accusing him of religious favoritism in the operation of the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

Defense Claims

His testimony Wednesday revived defense claims that Miller, an excommunicated Mormon, was first coddled by Bretzing and Christensen, who is also a Mormon, then treated with special harshness by them after the FBI began the Miller espionage investigation.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon cut off the Mormon issue at Miller’s first trial when Miller’s lawyers asked Perez if he knew Bretzing was a Mormon bishop and that Christensen was also a Mormon.

Kenyon tentatively ruled Wednesday, however, that the issue may be raised in the second trial to enable the defense to challenge Bretzing’s “credibility as a witness” against Miller. He made the ruling after disclosure that Perez intends to directly accuse Bretzing of religious favoritism while urging Miller’s dismissal.

The tentative ruling by Kenyon brought strong protests from U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner that the issue of religious favoritism would be “massively confusing” to the second Miller jury.

“Mr. Bretzing is not on trial here,” Bonner said. “I think this is being brought in for other reasons.”

Perez, who will resume his testimony today, was the 14th witness called by lawyers Joel Levine and Stanley Greenberg in 16 days of defense testimony. The first 13 days of the defense case were devoted to the testimony of convicted Soviet spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova, now serving an 18-year prison term for espionage conspiracy.