EX-F.B.I. AGENT TESTIFIES TO EARLY BUREAU INQUIRY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201350016-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: June 20, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201350016-7
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Ex F.B.I. Agent Testifies
To Early Bureau Inquiry
By JUDIITH WE=, ruu+tvNc,S
SpaLal ID Tis New Yarn Timm
J
LOS ANGELES, June 19 - Richard
W. Miller, the first F.B.I. agent in his-
tory to be charged with espionage, was
investigated twice on other charges be.
fore his arrest Oct. 2, he testified today
in Federal District Court.
Mr. Miller said that both times the
investigators reached the stage of
reading him his rights to remain silent,
to consult an attorney, or to have an at-
torney appointed if he could not afford
one.
Mr. Miller gave few details of the in-
vestigations, both of which occurred
while he was an agent of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, and no indica-
tion of their outcome. One investigation
followed an accusation that he had
taken kickbacks, he said, and the other
had to do with an aflWtion that be was
involved in a red 'estate fraud. The
F.B.I. has made no public comment
about these investigations.
The prior invest began were dis.
closed as Mr. Miller began his first day
under cross examination by defense
lawyers at the trial of Svetlana and
Nikolay Ogorodnikov on charges that
they conspired with Mr. Miller to pass
secret documents to the Soviet Union.
Mr. Miller is to be tried later.
`Fully Aceeptab4V Agent
When the arrest of Mr. Miller was an-
nounced, the head of the Los Angeles
office of the F.B.I., Richard T. Bretz-
ing, said Mr. Miller's performance had
been "fully acceptable" as an agent.
Mr. Miller has previously testified
that he had been reprimanded and
placed on probation as an agent at-
tached to the Los Angeles office be.
cause of poor job performance and
overweight. He had also admitted
under questioning by the proeetution
that he had skimmed money from a bu-
reau informer, illegally sold informa-he obtained tion the bureau to
a vate hiswif s investigator and stolen from grandmother.
He testified er t he had been
investigated an another occasion re-
garding an accusation that be had ills
golly benefitted by taking a finder's fee
in a purported real estate scam.
He said that he had been read his
right to remain silent on each occasion.
Mr. Brian dropped the subject at that
point. The Ogorodniko s' lawyer was
trying to show that Mr. Miller was
aware that he was under investigation.
Mrs. Ogorodnikov, a 35-Year-old Rus-
sian emigre who the Government con,
tend$ recruited Mr. Miller as a spy
with a sexual relationship and prom-
ises of money, asserts that she believed
she had been helping the F.B.I. as an
informer by associating with Mr. Mill-
er. Mr. Ogorodnikov denies that he was
involved In spying. Mr. Miller agreed
to testify at her and her husband's trial
under a grant of immunity from Judge
David V. Kenyan.
Mr. Brian, early in his crop exami-
nation, accused Mr. Miller of having
initiated a first contact with Mrs. Ogoy-
1 ~ ~ the other way around,
as Mr. Miller has asserted. Mr. Miller
denied that and stuck by his contention
that she phoned him twice befu he
agreed to most with her on May 24.
He Tens ad Gelag to B1sesu
Mr. Brian also contended that Mrs.
Ogorodnikov had told Mr. Miller of a
suspicion that she was being followed
by the F.B.I. late last September. The
defense lawyer contended that Mr.
Miller's realization that his activities
had been exposed had caused him to go
to his superiors for the first time on
Sept. 27 with an account of some of his
activities with the woman.
Mr. Miller denied that, too. His as-
sertion has been that it was on the 27th
that he felt he had evidence, in the form
of airplane tickets to Vienna purchased
by the Mrs. Ogorodnikov, that she was
serious about recruiting him as a spy.
I an Attempt to redeem his carer a.iA
T rye former agent was interrogated
for flue days by the F.B.I. after his
statement on the 27th. He testified to-
day that be waived his rights to legal
,counsel before the questioning but that the investigating agents
were helping him figure out how to
pro-
coed with Mrs. Ogorodnikov, not that
he was a target of investigation, as he
turned out to be.
Mr. Miller has since denied some
statements be made at that time and
Mrs. Ogorodnikov's lawyers have
argued that some of them would im-
properly damage her defense if al-
lowed to be entered at this trial.
The former agent said that he did not
think he was a target of investigation
"because I didn't think I had done any-
thing wrong at the time."
"I thought it was just that what I was
covers ~thodox," he said. "I was
in my
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201350016-7