Miller Deserves Life Sentence, Prosecutors Tell Judge

Federal prosecutors Wednesday called for a life prison sentence for former FBI Agent Richard W. Miller, convicted on espionage charges last month, declaring that Miller “sold out his country” despite his special position of trust as a law-enforcement officer.

“Despite the trust placed in him by the American people and by the FBI, Miller sold out his country,” U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner and Assistant U.S. Atty. Russell Hayman said in a sentencing memorandum filed in U.S. District Court. “It is difficult to conceive of a more wholesale betrayal of one’s country.”

Miller’s lawyers, who have tried to minimize the damage actually done by Miller to U.S. security, quickly responded that a life sentence would be “totally unjustified.”

“If he’s given that kind of sentence, he won’t live long enough to serve it,” defense lawyer Joel Levine said. “It’s totally unjustified in terms of the fact and circumstances of the case. We will be asking for something significantly less.”

Miller, 49, the first FBI agent ever arrested and convicted on espionage charges, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon. He was convicted June 19 on six counts of espionage and bribery linked to the passing of one secret document, the FBI’s Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide, to the Soviet KGB.

The prosecution’s sentencing memo actually requested that Kenyon impose two concurrent life sentences on Miller, one for conspiring to pass documents, another for actually delivering a document to the Soviet Union. In addition, the government urged the judge to sentence Miller to an additional 50 years concurrently on four other espionage-related charges.

Under federal parole rules, Miller would be eligible for parole consideration after 10 years if sentenced to the two life terms. He would have to serve a minimum of 18 years if also sentenced to an additional 50 years.

Federal parole officials said Wednesday, however, that only slightly more than half of the federal prisoners who receive life sentences are paroled before serving at least 15 years, and many others spend their entire lives in prison.

In calling for a life prison sentence for Miller, Bonner and Hayman referred to pre-arrest statements by Miller that he had passed more than one secret document to convicted Soviet agents Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov, who have already been sentenced to 18 years and eight years in prison respectively.

“Miller’s actions after he detected he was under FBI investigation aggravate the seriousness of his crimes,” the prosecutors said. “Rather than cooperate with the FBI in assessing the damage he did to our national security . . . Miller has never identified those additional documents that he admitted passing to the Soviets.”

Miller, assigned to the FBI’s Soviet counterintelligence squad in Los Angeles, was arrested with the Ogorodnikovs on Oct. 2, 1984, accused of conspiring to pass FBI secrets to the Soviets in exchange for a promised $65,000 in gold and cash and the sexual favors of Ogorodnikova.

His defense during two lengthy trials was that he was involved with the Ogorodnikovs in an unauthorized plan to become the first FBI agent to ever infiltrate the Soviet KGB. In his first trial, the jury deadlocked after 14 days of deliberations. In his second trial, however, jurors deliberated only four days before finding Miller guilty.

Bonner and Hayman cited the fact that former Northrop Corp. aerospace engineer Thomas Patrick Cavanagh received two concurrent life sentences for espionage last year even though he spared the government the expense of a trial by pleading guilty.

“Cavanagh received such a sentence despite the fact that he, unlike Miller, had no special duty to protect our national security by virtue of any status as a public official,” the prosecutors said. “The betrayal of his country by an FBI counterintelligence agent is a more egregious crime than an act of espionage by a private citizen.”

Under federal law, there are no minimum sentences for espionage, and Kenyon can impose any sentence that he deems appropriate.