Agent Tells of His Fear for Lives of Spies

Richard T. Bretzing, head of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, testified at a federal court hearing Tuesday that he urged former agent Richard W. Miller to “confess” the details of his involvement with two accused Soviet spies because he feared that Miller had endangered the lives of U.S. intelligence operatives.

“I was concerned about the potential damage to the national security of the United States and the lives of U.S. agents who may have been compromised,” Bretzing said. “I wanted to convey to him the seriousness in which I held this matter.”

Miller, 48, the first FBI agent ever arrested for espionage, was taken into custody Oct. 2 on charges of providing secret FBI documents to accused Soviet spies Svetlana Ogorodnikova, 34, and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, 51.

Answers Charges

Bretzing, a Mormon bishop, took the witness stand on the fifth day of pretrial hearings in advance of Miller’s scheduled Feb. 12 spy trial to answer charges that he took unfair advantage of the former agent, an excommunicated Mormon, by urging Miller to consider the “spiritual” aspects of his situation and to “repent” any wrongful acts.

It was after Bretzing’s appeal to Miller on Sept. 29, that the former agent admitted giving FBI documents to Ogorodnikova.

Miller’s lawyers, Stanley Greenberg and Joel Levine, are seeking to have statements Miller made after the meeting with Bretzing ruled inadmissible as evidence on grounds that they were not made voluntarily, but in response to religious pressure.

Bretzing, who was ordained a Mormon bishop in 1980, said it was his recommendation to a team of Washington-based FBI agents--who were handling the five-day interrogation that preceded Miller’s arrest--that he appeal to the former agent’s sense of morality in an effort to “get the truth” out of him.

“I had no ecclesiastical authority over Mr. Miller,” Bretzing said. “I was appealing to any sense of right that might be left in him.”

Bretzing also testified that he was not surprised when Miller sought a meeting with P. Bryce Christensen, one of three assistant agents in charge of the Los Angeles office, on Sept. 27 to voluntarily inform Christensen that he was involved with the Ogorodnikovs in an effort to catch them as spies.

Miller has claimed in earlier testimony that he had been attempting since May, 1984, to infiltrate what he thought to be an active unit of the Soviet KGB, and that he had no knowledge prior to his Sept. 27 meeting with Christensen that he had been the subject of an FBI investigation, code-named Whipworm, for about a month.

“We were aware there were a number of rumors that an investigation was in progress within the office, and we anticipated that one of those rumors had reached Mr. Miller’s ears,” Bretzing said. “We knew Mr. Miller was under extensive surveillance and may have detected the surveillance, but we had no evidence that he had detected it.”

Described Arrest Bretzing also described the arrest of Miller at his home in Valley Center in northern San Diego County. Miller was escorted from the house in his pajamas and robe, and placed in an FBI car, where he was first informed that he had been fired from the FBI and then was personally placed under arrest by Bretzing.

Bretzing’s testimony was followed by questioning of FBI agent Larry E. Torrence, one of the two agents dispatched from Washington a month prior to the arrest of Miller to conduct the agency’s investigation.

Torrence disputed contentions by Miller’s attorneys that the agent did not have a clear understanding that he was a suspect in an espionage investigation during the five-day interrogation period that began Sept. 28 and ended Oct. 2.

“He made an early statement that he had intended to be a good guy, and that it ended up with him looking like a bad guy. I said, ‘That’s right,’ ” Torrence said. “He said he clearly understood it was an espionage investigation.”

Torrence also revealed that the code name, Whipworm, was the idea of FBI agent Graham Van Note, the other Washington-based agent who actually headed the Miller investigation. A whipworm is an internal parasite.