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The FBI had been following Richard W. Miller for weeks, expecting him to plod. He became as soon as one in every of them, a damaged-down bureau man, and now he became as soon as suspected of betraying his oath and his country. A little military of agents surveilled him day and evening, making an strive to rep him transmitting secrets and tactics to the Soviets. They tapped his car. They tapped his telephones. They tapped his desk on the bureau’s Wilshire Boulevard place of job.

At Forty eight, Miller had floundered and bumbled via a 20-year profession, to the dread of his superiors, who could presumably perhaps now no longer muster the have to fireplace him. As an different, that they had dumped him on the so-known as Russia Squad in L.A., a counterespionage unit intended to combat Soviet spying. He didn’t keep in touch Russian. It became as soon as 1984, the year Moscow boycotted the L.A. Olympics, but Southern California — which didn’t possess a Russian Consulate — became as soon as even handed a backwater in the Cool War focus on game.

On this series, Christopher Goffard revisits ancient crimes in Los Angeles and former, from the eminent to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those that were there.

Peaceful, the KGB became as soon as looking at, and Miller, shambling, bitter and broke, made a tempting intention. He had eight younger of us. He had money owed. He bought Amway nylons to FBI secretaries whereas assorted agents sneered. He took bribes and skimmed money from informants. He had a weak point for ladies now no longer his wife, which had led to his excommunication from the Mormon Church.

He had been suspended for flouting weight laws, stripped of his informants and demoted to monitoring wiretaps. And, now no longer too prolonged previously, he’d been having clandestine trysts with a Russian emigre with KGB ties, Svetlana Ogorodnikova, in automobiles and cheap inns around Los Angeles.

An FBI surveillance describe of FBI agent Richard W. Miller, in white shirt and dusky pants, with Russian emigre Svetlana Ogorodnikov. Federal agents hoped to show conceal he became as soon as giving her disclose secrets and tactics.

(Bettmann Archive)

“Lonely, friendless, despised at his place of job, estranged from his family, alienated even from his God,” is how Paula Hill, his ex-wife, described Miller in a memoir. “A appropriate man who led an scandalous life, an idealist who had betrayed his beliefs. No person despised Richard as a lot as Richard himself.”

The code title for the extensive operation to rep Miller, in the summer and tumble of 1984, became as soon as “Whipworm,” a reference to an intestinal parasite. The case against him regarded damning when a wiretap captured a KGB officer instructing Ogorodnikova to lure Miller to Warsaw, which became as soon as share of the Soviet Bloc.

But in dead September, Miller did one thing that surprised everyone: He walked into his supervisor’s place of job and beneficial on himself.

Poke, Miller explained, he’d been secretly seeing Ogorodnikova, but simplest as share of a heroic, self-styled notion to infiltrate Soviet intelligence. He could maybe be the first FBI agent to provide it. He would be a hero. He would redeem his misbegotten profession and exit “in a blaze of glory,” as he would set up it.

The fable struck the FBI as asinine — agents honest didn’t act that arrangement — but could presumably perhaps or now no longer or now no longer it’s disproved? The bureau brass doubted prosecution became as soon as conceivable with out a confession. At one point right via 5 days of questioning, Miller got a lecture from Richard T. Bretzing, who ran the FBI’s L.A. place of job and became as soon as a bishop in the Mormon Church. He beneficial Miller to remember the “non secular ramifications” of his habits underneath church doctrines, to repent and produce restitution.

“I reminded him that he had a wife and eight younger of us who wanted any individual in his plot to respect, and that it became as soon as his responsibility to search out the courage and the decency interior himself to all but again impact those attributes which would function their respect,” Bretzing wrote in a memo.

A July 1986 describe of ragged FBI agent Richard Miller after his second trial.

(Larry Davis / Los Angeles Cases)

Miller wept, and rapidly after admitted that he had given Ogorodnikova a 50-page FBI doc known as the Certain Intelligence Reporting Info, an interior inventory of the intelligence neighborhood’s dreams.

Charged with passing secrets and tactics for $65,000 in money and gold, Miller grew to change into the first FBI agent to be tried for espionage. His attorneys tried to exclude his confession on the grounds that he made it involuntarily, tortured by non secular guilt. Testifying in January 1985, Miller claimed that his supervisor’s “non secular lecture” chilled him with the specter of eternal separation from his loved ones.

“What first got right here to my suggestions became as soon as that I am shedding my family,” Miller stated. “I’m now no longer going to the Celestial Kingdom … the identical of going to hell.”

Robert Bonner, the ragged U.S. attorney who prosecuted Miller, beneficial The Cases in a present interview that the “non secular lecture” could presumably possess had an raise out, but the raise out became as soon as to induce Miller to enlighten the truth.

“The demand is, ‘Used to be that a coerced confession?’” Bonner stated. “I’d narrate baloney. This isn’t the rubber hose.”

Bonner stated that Miller’s myriad flaws made him inclined to enemy overtures: “He had financial problems. He had zipper problems. His disorders were known to the KGB, and he became as soon as focused. He became as soon as attracted to having intercourse with Svetlana.”

In subsequent focus on scandals, FBI agent Robert Hanssen and CIA officer Aldrich Ames did a lot higher damage to American interests by betraying the identification of Russians spying for The United States. The doc Miller admitted to leaking became as soon as quite unimportant.

“It wasn’t going to voice down the republic,” Bonner stated. “It wasn’t earth-shaking as a classified doc.” The KGB’s approach became as soon as to compromise him. “One classified doc, and he’s finished. They possess him. He’s gonna work for them.”

Inserting over the case became as soon as the demand of why an agent widely even handed incompetent became as soon as allowed to aid his job. An FBI official would testify that he tried to fireplace the “unkempt” Miller, but that a Mormon supervisor had protected him. Bonner’s focus on is that the FBI became as soon as hoping to let Miller total his profession ready where he would now no longer produce damage.

“The easy route is now no longer to fireplace them, on yarn of you’re gonna to find sued,” Bonner stated. L.A. became as soon as even handed a little stage for spycraft, and contributors of the counterespionage squad “weren’t superstars treasure the agents in San Francisco and New York and Washington.”

So the Russia Squad regarded treasure a safe plot to dump an agent en route to retirement. “They were making an strive to bury the particular person,” Bonner stated, “and it truly got right here abet to bite them.”

Miller’s attorney, Joel Levine, beneficial The Cases that the FBI threw the book at his client as an overreaction to its mistake in conserving him employed. “They were embarrassed,” Levine stated. “The response to their embarrassment became as soon as to achieve down on him as laborious as they would presumably perhaps, to compensate for the undeniable truth that they weren’t looking at him.”

Levine added: “What he became as soon as making an strive to provide became as soon as by hook or by crook creep to his bosses and narrate, ‘Guess what? I became as soon as able to flip this lady around and to find recordsdata from her, and now I’ll be a mountainous hero in the bureau.’ It became as soon as a cockamamie notion, but he maintained he became as soon as enraged about it. A quantity of issues that Richard did in his life weren’t well thought-out.”

Miller’s first trial resulted in a mistrial, and his second trial resulted in a conviction that became as soon as overturned. The government went to court a third time, with Adam Schiff — then an assistant U.S. attorney, now a California senator — serving as lead prosecutor. Miller became as soon as convicted of espionage and got a 20-year penal advanced term. He served about half of that time and became as soon as granted early open in 1994. He moved to Utah, remarried and died a free man in his 70s.

His ex-wife, Hill, now 83, is a retired junior highschool teacher residing in Saratoga Springs, Utah. She stated she believes that Miller became as soon as harmless of espionage, and that he truly became as soon as making an strive to infiltrate the KGB.

In a present interview, she described him as “a lousy agent,” “a shocking husband” and “a mediocre father,” but stated she didn’t harbor bitterness against him.

“He became as soon as a outmoded man, but he wasn’t a spoiled man, and he absolutely wasn’t a focus on,” she stated. She added: “I knew he became as soon as sad at dwelling. I wasn’t the dinky candy espresso-tea-or-me wife. We quarreled loads.” She became as soon as raising eight teenagers. “9, in case you count Richard.”

And the Russian focus on who seduced Miller? Ogorodnikova, alongside alongside with her then-husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, pleaded responsible to espionage and got penal advanced sentences of 18 and eight years, respectively.

Even so, she beneficial “60 Minutes,” “I’m now no longer a focus on. I’m now no longer Mata Hari. I’m now no longer sexual maniac treasure of us narrate about me. Enact I focus on treasure I’m a sexual maniac?”

Locked up at a federal penal advanced in Alameda County that on the time housed ladies and males, she met Bruce Perlowin, a convicted drug smuggler, and romance blossomed. He adored her excessive cheekbones and damaged English. He stated she became as soon as an unreconstructed communist who loved Josef Stalin and drank intently.

“She stated she became as soon as lieutenant colonel in the GRU,” Perlowin, now 74, beneficial The Cases, referring to the Soviet Union’s militia intelligence company. He stated she also claimed to be the daughter of ragged Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. “This all shall be alcoholic made-up tales. But in penal advanced she wasn’t drinking. It became as soon as very consistent, and it never changed…. She became as soon as very furious that she bought caught. She hated to lose.”

At the identical time, she denied being a focus on. “She would narrate, ‘I’m now no longer focus on.’ That became as soon as share of her adorable accent.”

Peaceful, when they snuck off to a room to possess intercourse for the first time in penal advanced, he recounted, she inserted a pair of toothbrushes in the door to live guards from getting into. “She knew all these dinky suggestions,” he stated. “She’s pronouncing, ‘I’m now no longer focus on,’ but how produce you know this?”

They married in penal advanced, and she or he went free in 1995, after 11 years in custody. They traveled the country and by hook or by crook divorced. But Perlowin stated he took care of her in her closing years in Arizona, where she died of what he known as an alcohol-connected illness. “She became as soon as comely as a button,” he stated.