Jury Convicts Miller of Spying for Soviet Union : 1st FBI Agent Charged With Espionage Is Guilty on Six of Seven Counts, Could Get Life Sentence

The first FBI agent ever charged as a spy, Richard W. Miller, was found guilty in Los Angeles federal court Thursday of passing secret documents to the Soviet Union in exchange for a promised $50,000 in gold and $15,000 in cash.

After four days of deliberations, the jury in Miller’s second espionage trial found the former counterintelligence agent guilty on six of seven espionage and bribery charges--two of them carrying a maximum possible life sentence.

Miller smiled and chatted with U.S. marshals as he waited for the verdict, but he showed little reaction as it was announced. He spoke briefly to reporters as he was led away in handcuffs:

“Let’s say thank God for the Court of Appeals.”

18-Month Battle

The quick verdict ended 18 months of courtroom battles that revolved around the bumbling agent’s sexual affair and espionage misadventures with an alcoholic Soviet spy--Svetlana Ogorodnikova--who became the star defense witness in Miller’s retrial.

But Ogorodnikova’s testimony in Miller’s behalf contributed to his downfall.

Jurors said after the verdict that they did not believe many of Ogorodnikova’s claims during 13 days of dramatic testimony in which she protested that neither she nor Miller were guilty of espionage.

‘Too Many Contradictions

“Ninety-eight percent of it I could not believe,” said Dale Lowery, 51, an audio consultant from Pasadena. “There were too many contradictions.”

The jury, after deliberating a total of 21 hours, announced it was unable to reach a verdict on only one charge--a bribery count alleging that Miller, 49, also solicited a $675 Burberry’s trench coat in exchange for passing secrets to the Soviet KGB.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner, pleased with the quick verdict, moved to dismiss the trench coat charge and also asked U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon to lift a gag order he imposed last year on lawyers in the case.

Agreeing to both requests, Kenyon thanked the jurors for their service in the 15-week trial and set a July 14 sentencing date for Miller.

The verdict marked the end of a bizarre espionage case that started with the arrest of Miller and two Russian emigres--Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov--on Oct. 2, 1984, on charges of passing a secret FBI document called the Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide to the Soviet KGB.

The Ogorodnikovs pleaded guilty to conspiring with Miller last June and are both serving prison terms. Miller’s first trial began in August, 1985, but ended in a deadlocked jury three months later, setting the stage for the retrial, which began Feb. 25.

Testimony Problem

Jury Foreman Jorge E. Cuellar, 57, an accountant from San Gabriel, said jurors found the case to be “very difficult” to decide, noting that a key problem for the defense in the retrial was the testimony of Ogorodnikova.

“We thought Svetlana’s testimony was contradictory,” he said. “We thought that in some instances she may have been telling the truth, but the rest of the evidence outweighed anything she said.”

Jurors also cited the fact that Miller did not testify in his own defense and said the most convincing proof against him was a series of confessions he made to the FBI before he was arrested.

‘Probably the easiest thing to look at was Miller’s own confessions. The most difficult might possibly be looking at his motives, but we concluded it was mostly for his own gain,” said juror Cathlene Lamprecht, 34, a market research analyst from Wilmington.

“We had the easiest time with his own admissions,” said juror Clare Goss, 32, a hospital clerk from Torrance. “His own admissions were the most conclusive evidence we had to go with.”

Miller’s lawyers, Stanley Greenberg and Joel Levine, said they had expected the guilty verdicts and announced immediately that they will appeal, partly on grounds that Kenyon permitted the prosecution to introduce evidence that Miller had failed polygraph tests before his arrest and allowed testimony of previous illegal acts by Miller.

Termed a Victory

Bonner, in an interview, called the verdict a victory for the American people.

“Espionage is the only crime that’s against the entire nation,” he said. “In a case of this nature, it is the public that has won in a very real sense.”

Bonner also had special praise for the FBI’s investigation of Miller and the Ogorodnikovs.

“The job the FBI did from the very beginning of the case has been superb in the highest tradition of the FBI,” he said. “I truly believe had it not been for the FBI, the damage to our national security would have been disastrous to contemplate.”

But Bonner also said the Miller case had permanently altered the public perceptions about the invulnerability of the FBI to Soviet infiltration. “The bottom line that an FBI agent can be disloyal was an unthinkable concept before the Miller case. No more,” he said.

Greenberg and Levine charged that Miller had not received a fair trial from Kenyon and contended that the Miller case revealed serious problems in FBI counterintelligence activities.

“It shows the FBI is far from a perfect institution,” Levine said. “To even put an individual like Richard Miller in a position like that tells a lot about the FBI.

“I think Judge Kenyon’s bias toward the prosecution was apparent throughout the proceedings in the case. He certainly made enough rulings against us to give us a good chance of appeal.”

Blunt Criticism

Throughout the trial, Greenberg drew the brunt of Kenyon’s criticisms of defense tactics. He was threatened with contempt of court on several occasions, fined $500 for one outburst during closing arguments and still faces a possible jail sentence stemming from another contempt threat.

Referring to Kenyon’s frequent contempt warnings throughout the trial, Greenberg added:

“The most frustrating part of this trial has been my deep-seated perception that Richard Miller did not receive a fair trial. Most of my problems with Judge Kenyon were because I didn’t hide that perception very well.”

Greenberg also criticized the FBI for prosecuting Miller, calling the case an “aberration” and claiming that Miller did no real damage to national security.

“I’m not even sure it qualifies as an espionage case,” he said. “I think the KGB hasn’t stopped laughing since the arrest of these people. The FBI embarrassed themselves and the country over an alleged operation that was haphazard or slipshod at best.”

FBI Probe Successful

Miller and the Ogorodnikovs were arrested after a monthlong FBI investigation that began shortly after an Aug. 25, 1984, trip by Miller and Ogorodnikova to the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco.

How the FBI learned of Miller’s involvement with Ogorodnikova was kept a secret on national security grounds throughout both trials, but government sources said the FBI knew only that there had been “unauthorized contact” between them.

While the Miller case ultimately was overshadowed by a series of other espionage prosecutions, including the John Walker case, many FBI agents continued to view it as the most important espionage case in the bureau’s history simply because it involved an FBI.

Although there were FBI wiretaps on the phones of Miller and the Ogorodnikovs for almost a month, as well as eavesdropping devices in their personal cars, there was no direct evidence that Miller had passed any documents to Ogorodnikova during their four-month affair.

Series of Calls

During September, 1984, however, the FBI intercepted a series of three phone calls between Ogorodnikova and Aleksandr Grishin, a KGB agent operating out of the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco who could not be prosecuted because of his diplomatic cover as a Soviet vice consul.

The phone calls made it clear that plans were under way for a trip in October to Eastern Europe, where the FBI suspected that Miller was planning to sell secret documents to the KGB.

By late September, there was still not enough evidence to arrest Miller. But the FBI was preparing to arrest him and Ogorodnikova the minute they stepped on the plane for the planned Oct. 9 trip to Europe, figuring that would be the most likely time when he would have secret documents in his possession.

Miller, however, took the FBI by surprise on Sept. 27, 1984, when he unexpectedly requested an appointment with one of his FBI superiors, P. Bryce Christensen. During the meeting, he volunteered that he had been involved with Ogorodnikova in an attempt to become the first FBI agent ever to infiltrate the KGB.

Permission to Travel

Miller’s account was that he had taken his unauthorized double-agent plan as far as he could without bureau approval and he was reporting it to Christensen because he realized Ogorodnikova was serious about traveling to Europe and he needed FBI permission to go with her.

Christensen took a signed statement from Miller and told him that agents in Washington would have to be apprised of the situation. He did not tell Miller that the agents were already in Los Angeles, at a secret command post at the Brentwood Motor Inn, a few miles from the FBI’s offices in Westwood.

Over the next five days, Miller was questioned extensively. In the course of his interrogation, he ultimately admitted he had passed Ogorodnikova a copy of the Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide, a document later described as the FBI’s “playbook” of intelligence-gathering goals.

Food and Sex

Both trials that followed Miller’s arrest frequently focused on the 250-pound Miller’s penchant for adultery, his chronic battles with an ever-increasing weight problem and his general incompetence as an agent.

The Ogorodnikovs’ trial began April 19, 1985, and the chief prosecution witness was Miller, forced to testify for eight days under a grant of immunity from prosecution for any further crimes he might admit. While Miller proclaimed his own innocence, he testified that Ogorodnikova had claimed to be a KGB major and offered him money to work for Soviet intelligence.

“I felt I could do what nobody had done before--infiltrate an active Soviet intelligence network,” Miller testified. “I had a James Bond kind of fantasy. I’d come out a hero.”

Changed Their Pleas

After 27 days of prosecution testimony, Ogorodnikova and her husband changed their pleas to guilty. In a June 25, 1985, plea-bargain, they pleaded guilty to one count of espionage conspiracy. Ogorodnikov was sentenced to eight years in federal prison and his wife received an 18-year sentence.

The first Miller trial began Aug. 6, 1985, with the prosecution focusing on statements made by Miller during his interrogation.

Miller’s lawyers maintained that his admissions had been coerced and that he had never actually passed any documents to Ogorodnikova. They said Miller had been shattered by a “spiritual lecture” delivered to him by Richard T. Bretzing, agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

Fallen From Grace

Miller, the father of eight, had been excommunicated from the Mormon Church for adultery in January, 1984, but was described as working toward getting back into the church. Bretzing, who was a Mormon bishop, during Miller’s interrogation, had privately urged the agent to “repent” and confess.

The defense attacked the credibility of another FBI agent, John Hunt.

Hunt, who retired from the FBI a month after Miller’s arrest, testified for the prosecution that he had attempted to recruit Ogorodnikova as an FBI informant in 1982 and 1983 and that he had warned Miller to stay away from her because she was unpredictable and troublesome to handle.

Ogorodnikova claimed Hunt had also had a sexual relationship with her, which Hunt denied. While the prosecution viewed the issue as irrelevant and confusing, Miller’s lawyers saw it as one of the most important issues in Miller’s defense--an allegation suggesting that Miller’s relationship with Ogorodnikova was not unique.

Betrayal Question

The first jury spent 14 days wrestling primarily with the question of whether Miller had actually intended to betray the FBI or was honestly pursuing his admittedly unorthodox scheme to use Ogorodnikova in an unauthorized double-agent operation.

On Nov. 6, 1985, the first Miller jury announced it was hopelessly deadlocked. The vote was 10 to 2 in favor of convicting Miller on three of the seven counts against him and 11 to 1 on the remaining four charges. Kenyon declared a mistrial.

In Miller’s second trial, which began Feb. 25, both the prosecution and the defense changed their emphasis on the relationship of Hunt and Ogorodnikova.

Bonner and Assistant U.S. Atty. Russell Hayman, aware that jurors in the first trial were skeptical of Hunt’s denials of any sexual involvement with Ogorodnikova, played down Hunt’s testimony.

The defense, deciding to gamble in the second trial, called Ogorodnikova as their star witness, certain that she would blame Hunt for most of her troubles but unsure how she would testify on the crucial question of whether she had received documents from Miller.

Said She Was Innocent

For 13 days, Ogorodnikova, also testifying under a grant of immunity, repeated her claims against Hunt while disavowing her guilty plea and proclaiming that both she and Miller were innocent of any wrongdoing.

First in the privacy of Kenyon’s chambers, then in front of the jury, Ogorodnikova maintained that she had only pleaded guilty because she sensed she would not receive a fair trial from an American jury.

“We are not guilty of this crime,” she said. “Richard is not a traitor of his country. I am not Russian spy.”

While the defense urged jurors to be open to the possibility that Ogorodnikova’s testimony was truthful in at least some respects, the prosecution strongly suggested that the jury disregard her entire testimony as a series of lies.

Hayman, arguing that the defense case rested on her credibility as a witness, disclosed during cross-examination that Ogorodnikova had secretly confessed to Kenyon through her lawyers at the time of her guilty plea that she had received secret documents from Miller.

Lying for Protection?

The prosecutor said in closing arguments that she was lying to protect herself, her husband, relatives in the Soviet Union and her own chances of ultimately being traded back to Russia in some future spy swap.

Joining Bonner and Hayman at a Thursday afternoon news conference was Bretzing, who defended the FBI against criticism for not firing Miller earlier in his 20-year career.

“Marginal agents have been a concern to us for at least the 25 years I have been in the FBI,” Bretzing said. “We must remember these employees have rights that must be taken into account. We are not a cut-throat outfit.”

Times staff writers Jerry Belcher, Edward J. Boyer, Steve Harvey, Marita Hernandez and Michael Seiler also contributed to this story.