Miller Case Changed Many Lives--Some Devastated, Others Better Off

“Everything . . . is changing,” Paula Miller said soon after her husband, former FBI Agent Richard W. Miller, was arrested in 1984 for selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. “The ground is moving under my feet. I spend hours and hours lying in my room trying to come up with some answers.”

The dark ruminations for Paula Miller would lead to sweeping changes in her life--divorce, a new husband, new jobs, finally a move out of the country. She and her youngest children took up residence more than a year ago in the Philippines, where her new husband does civilian work for a U.S. military base, her attorney said Tuesday.

For nearly everyone involved, the lengthy, often-startling case--the first espionage action brought against an FBI agent--was a milestone, an event of enormous impact. Lives were abruptly changed. Careers were made; others were broken.

The ripples fanned out from Miller, whose conviction was overturned Tuesday, to his family, his colleagues in the FBI’s counterintelligence unit, his supervisors, his attorneys and even his prosecutors.

“It affected a lot of people’s lives in many ways,” said defense attorney Stanley I. Greenberg, who was skiing at Mammoth Mountain when he learned that an Appeals Court had struck down the 1986 conviction. “Richard’s reputation with his family and loved ones was destroyed. He spent 4 1/2 years in prison without having a fair trial yet.”

Miller’s children ranged in age from 1 to 18 at the time federal investigators took him into custody in Los Angeles. The eldest three sons have remained in the United States but have scattered as part of their work for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Paul Miller, now 23, was planning a two-year missionary trip to Guatemala at the time his father was arrested, but those plans went on hold while he tended to more immediate concerns: supporting the family.

He said he took three different jobs and worked up to 18 hours a day as a restaurant waiter to help pay the mortgage on the family’s four-bedroom home in Fallbrook in San Diego County.

His mother, who had relied on Miller’s FBI income, also had to look for work and eventually took a job teaching English at Lake Elsinore High School.

“The first couple months, it was devastating,” Paul Miller recalled Tuesday. “It was definitely a financial hardship.”

Paul Miller embarked on his missionary work six months late and learned of the hung jury in his father’s first trial while in Guatemala. Slowly, he said, he and other members of the family began to reassemble their lives.

His mother sought a divorce and later married Dennis Manley, a Ford Aerospace worker. They moved to the Philippines when Manley’s job took him there, the younger Miller said.

Paul Miller returned from his missionary work and met his own future spouse in Southern California, where he took time out to follow his father’s trial. He and his bride moved last year to Provo, Utah, where he is attending Brigham Young University. The couple is expecting their first child in September.

Meanwhile, younger brother Drew, 21, a victim of hearing loss because of a childhood illness, also entered missionary work. He worked in Chicago and Sacramento, mostly ministering to the deaf, and was married in April. Recently Drew Miller and his wife traveled to the Philippines to visit the mother and younger siblings.

‘You Go On’

The third-eldest brother, Tres, 20, also embarked on a missionary tour that now has him in New York, Paul Miller said.

“As with any tragedy or good thing in your life, you go on,” he said. “I’m jealous of my little brothers and sisters; they got quite an education over there” in the Philippines.

Others involved with Miller also have gone on with their lives and careers, for better or worse.

Former FBI supervisors of Miller were detached from the Los Angeles-based counterintelligence unit where Miller worked when he became involved with Svetlana Ogorodnikova. Miller was convicted of selling U.S. military secrets to her after entering a sexual relationship.

Gary Auer, who spent three years as Miller’s boss in the counterintelligence unit, was transferred shortly after Miller’s conviction to the FBI bureau in Ventura, where he supervises investigations for that county.

Auer’s boss, Bryce Christensen, was transferred to FBI headquarters in Washington.

Richard T. Bretzing, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, retired and became managing director of security for the the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City.

Although most FBI agents declined to comment on the impact of the Miller case, the turmoil within the agency became the subject of its own lawsuit. A former supervisor of Miller, Bernardo (Matt) Perez, testified during the trial that he had wanted to fire the agent even before Miller was charged with espionage. But Bretzing, who like Miller is Mormon, declined to do so.

Instead, Perez was transferred to the FBI office in El Paso, Tex.

Subsequently, Perez filed a complaint of religious and ethnic discrimination against Bretzing. Perez, in turn, was accused of being a rabble-rouser.

“I was investigated by FBI headquarters for over two years to attempt to show I had perjured myself in federal court,” Perez said, branding his transfer a demotion. “My wife liked Los Angeles. Psychologically, emotionally, it’s taken a great toll on us.”

Perez claimed that he might have advanced to a leadership position with the agency in Washington if not for the Miller case. As part of his court case, he said, he has placed his monetary losses in salary and expenses at $400,000 to $500,000.

Careers Assisted

Prosecutors, however, found their careers assisted by the high-profile trial, which dominated newspaper headlines.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner, who spearheaded the case, is in line to become a federal judge.

His assistants, Richard B. Kendall and Bruce Merritt, went on to lucrative private practices.

“It allowed me to establish some sort of credentials as a trial lawyer,” Merritt said. “You can’t say it’s anything but a wonderful opportunity to be involved in a case that had the notoriety and significance that this case had.”

Times staff writer William Overend contributed to this article.