FBI Man Says Miller Admitted Passing Data

After five days of tough interrogation and lie detector tests, Richard Miller finally admitted that he had shown the Soviet Union classified material found at his home, an FBI polygraph expert testified Thursday in the former agent’s Los Angeles federal court trial.

James Murphy said Miller, the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage, made the damaging comments after days of insisting that he had done nothing wrong.

“He said he was aware that the bureau was interested in two areas,” Murphy recalled, “an incident of espionage . . . and a damage assessment.

“And he wanted to assure us he had given the Soviets nothing from his desk at the field office and said the damage was limited to the material found at his Lynwood home,” Murphy said.

He added that Miller acknowledged that one of the documents in his home was a classified FBI reporting guide on foreign intelligence--a document that he is charged with passing to the Soviet Union.

Those comments, Murphy said, came Oct. 2, 1984, just hours before Miller’s arrest as the fired agent talked of getting legal counsel. Miller had been under intensive questioning since Sept. 28, the day after he walked into his supervisor’s office and blurted out details of his affair with Soviet spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova.

Told He Was Lying

Murphy, who was ordered in from the FBI’s Washington headquarters to quiz Miller, said the defendant was told repeatedly that he was lying and was failing polygraph tests.

“He denied withholding any information and maintained he was telling the truth,” Murphy said of the first days Miller was quizzed.

Defense attorneys argued earlier in the day to keep testimony about the polygraph test out of the trial, but U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon admitted it. He instructed the jury, however, that the test results are not scientifically reliable and cannot be considered in determining Miller’s innocence or guilt.

Miller, 48, is charged with conspiring with his Russian lover to pass classified material to the Soviets in return for $65,000 in cash and gold.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

During cross-examination, Miller’s attorney suggested that the former agent had been harassed into making inaccurate statements.

Boxes of Papers Found

“Did you find it easy to kind of push him around?” asked attorney Stanley Greenberg.

“Not at all, sir,” Murphy replied.

At the start of Miller’s five-day interrogation, Murphy said Miller denied having taken classified documents home. Then, when the FBI searched his Lynwood house and found boxes of classified papers, Murphy confronted him with the results.

“I asked him how they got there,” Murphy said. “He said he didn’t remember bringing any classified information home. . . . I told him that was ridiculous. He said he may have taken it home to work on but being a procrastinator he never got to it.”

Murphy, under direct examination by U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner, said Miller also insisted from the start that he had planned to infiltrate the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service, for the FBI.

“I asked him specifically . . . what he planned to do with his contact with Svetlana,” Murphy said. “He said he intended to infiltrate the KGB somehow.”

Ogorodnikova and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, pleaded guilty in the midst of their earlier trial on the same charges. They received prison terms.