FOCUS OF SPY DRAMA TURNS TO SOVIET PAIR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000604910005-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 19, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

-~ \`1 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04 :CIA-RDP90-009658000604910005-0
LUS ANUEL~;S TIMES
AggICLTs APPIrOREB 19 March 1y85
oi~ PsaTr PR T ~
. Tria/to Open in Bizarre Case ,
Focus of Spy Drama
Turns to Soviet Pair
~--~-`By WII:LIAM OVEREND, Times Sta`f f Writer
h
was his own admission that from the very beginning of his
relationship with Ogorodnikova, they had been sexually involved.
hey aze strange figures in what has become one of the
strangest espionage cases in U.S. history.
For months, they have played bit roles in the bizarre spy
drama of Richard W. Miller, the first FBI agent ever charged with
espionage. ~
Beginning today in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles, however,
the focus will shift to the two Russian emigres who were arrested
with Miller Oct. 2 in an alleged plot to provide secret FBI documents
to the Soviet Union: .'.
Svetlana Ogorodnikova, 34, and her husband, Nikolai
Ogorodnikov, 52, go on trial today as accused Soviet spies. If .
convicted, they could be sent to prison for the rest of their lives.
The first job for the federal prosecutors and the defense lawyers
in the case will be to select the 12-member jury that will ultimately
decide the fate of the Russian couple. The jury selection is expected
to take at least two days,.and the entire trial could take another
two months.
Although Miller is chazged with the Ogorodnikovs, his trial
has been severed and will follow that of the Russians.
It was Miller, who will be seen by the jurors in this trial only
as a witness, who presented the first of several dramatically . , .
different portraits of the Ogorodnikovs that have emerged since
their arrest.
Miller, questioned by the FBI for five days before his own azrest, .
initially portrayed Ogorodnikova as aself-described major in the
Soviet KGB who had spent months trying to recruit Miller as a
Soviet spy.
Nikolai Ogorodnikov, Miller said, was a shadowy figure in the
Soviet intelligence hierazchy in Los Angeles, a man who called
himself Nikolai Wolfson and allegedly controlled the finances
for KGB operations in the Los Angeles azea.
As Miller told the story before his arrest, he was the loyal FBI
counterintelligenceagent attempting to use the Ogorodnikovs
so that he could become the first FBI agent ever to infiltrate an
active Soviet spy ring.
Adding to the already sensational nature of Miller's account
In the months of legal prelimi-
naries leading up to the Ogorodni-
kov trial, however, a completely
Ydifferent picture of the two Rus-
- sians has been drawn by their
.;defense attorneys.
;s Ogorodnikova's lawyers, Brad D.
I~ Brian and Gregory P. Stone, de-
~: scribe her as an alcoholic and a
deeply troubled woman with an IQ
;~ between 64 and 74, faz below the
range of normal intelligence.
c
F The Proucution's Version
She had been an FBI informant
for years, the lawyers said. What-
ever she did with Miller, they
contend, was in the belief that she
was helping an FBI agent do his
job.
Ogorodnikov was hardly the
mysterious KGB financier as he
'was originally described; adds his
lawyer, Randy Sue Pollock. In-
stead, by her account, he was a
hard-working meatpacker :who
knew virtually nothing of his wife's
activities. j
Between those extremes; gov-.
ernment prosecutors have hinted,
there may. be a third picture to
emerge at the trial of the couple,
arrested as spies almost six months
ago in a cheap apartment in West
Hollywood. ;.
That version, anticipated by
some of the defense lawyers in the
case, would be that the Ogorodni-
kovs were neither the master KGB
spies of Miller's early account nor
the total innocents that their attor-
neys describe.
Richard B. Kendall and Bruce G.
Merritt, two of the top prosecutors
in the U.S. Attorney's office, have
declined to reveal their trial strate-
gy. But to prove the Ogorodnikovs
guilty of espionage they need not
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 ._::~ ~~" Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04 :CIA-RDP90-009658000604910005-0
present them as high-level Soviet
ignorance in a case where all three
operatives.
'
defendants remain accused of at-
Miller
s testimony is viewed as
tempting to betray the interests of
critical by both the defense and the
the United States.
prosecution in the Ogorodnikov
In an exchange with Kenyon in a
trial, and nobody is quite sure what
pretrial hearing weeks ago
Green-
Miller will say.
,
berg pointed out to the judge that
Ma
Ch
' Miller had to count on his fi
y
ange Hia Story
T
ngers to
figure out how much time had
o the extent that he sticks to
the st
t
passed between .the date in May
a
ements he made before he
w
h
,
..1984, when he met Ogorodnikova
as c
arged with espionage him-
-
lf
,
and the time in September when he
.
se
, lawyers for the Ogorodnikovs
f
l
'
finally told his FBI superiors about
ee
that their client
s chances of
his involvement with her
acquittal will be reduced.
B
.
"When was the last time you saw
ut if he modifies his testimony
d
an FBI agent resorting to countin
an
chooses to emphasize such
tt
g
on his fingers to tell the difference
ma
ers as Ogorodnikova's alcohol-
i
between three and four?" Miller's
sm and his observations that she '
h
lawyer asked the judge
ad a tendency to exaggerate her
own i
.
"I must admit the next day I
mportance when drinking, his
t
ti
_
found myself counting on m
fin
es
mony could help the defense.
'
y
-
gers,"Kenyon replied
Miller
s own credibility has been
hu
t
h
.
"I'm sorry I mentioned it then
r
,
owever, by a series of
,
-your honor," said Greenberg.
government charges that before
his arrest on espionage.charges he
regularly misappropriated FBI
funds, stole from his own relatives
-
.
. and even swiped candy bars from a ~~
7-Eleven store close to FBI head-'
quarters in Westwood. "
In recent months, Miller's law-
; yers, Stanley Greenberg and Joel
Levine, have consistently por-
trayed the former. agent as a
slow-witted bumbler who ended up
facing spy. charges only because he
was not smart enough to let his FBI
superiors know what he was doing.'
Thus the stage is set for a spy
trial where one defendant, Ogorod-
nikova, is pleading limited intelli-
gence, the other defendant, Ogo=
rodnikov, is claiming basic
ignorance of what was happening,
and the star witness, Miller, has
E proclaimed himself to be the "office
screw-up."
So far, however, U.S. District .
Judge David V, Kenyon Jr. -has
given little indication of any sym-
pathy for a defense of stupidity or, i
.:. a.::.. ......
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