Convicted of Spying, He Tries to Repair Shattered Life

He scrounges for a living, making it on $97 a month worth of food stamps and some welfare cash for other living expenses.

His beat-up 15-year-old Toyota, bought at a bargain basement price of $300, needed mechanical work that cost more than the car.

He lives in a frayed, one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, where he pays $306 a month rent.

His new job, driving a passenger van for a hotel, pays $5.50 an hour.

Former friends and acquaintances turn on their heels when they see him on the street or in local markets. A garage mechanic recently yelled “Spy!” to his face upon recognizing him.

Isolated and bitter, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, 58, a diminutive Russian from Kiev, acknowledged before a federal judge five years ago that he participated in a spy plot against the United States. He served five years of an eight-year sentence in a federal prison.

Still, he persists, he was never a Russian spy.

Released last February, Ogorodnikov is attempting to pick up the pieces of his shattered life and has resettled in Los Angeles’ Westside Russian community--in the very same apartment where he was arrested by FBI agents on the evening of Oct. 2, 1984.

“There is a pain inside me every single day,” he said with a thick Russian accent during a recent interview. “I (am) tortured inside. Every minute (it’s) coming back to (me). Every time you are in touch with people, you have to explain you are not guilty.”

Ogorodnikov, along with his wife, Svetlana, pleaded guilty in June, 1985, to conspiracy to commit espionage in connection with the sensational spy case of former FBI Agent Richard W. Miller. Svetlana, 40, is still in a federal prison in Northern California, serving an 18-year sentence.

Miller, 52, was accused of passing documents to Svetlana, 40, in exchange for sex and a promised $65,000 in gold and cash.

Their guilty pleas, Nikolai said, came only after he became concerned that his wife could receive a life sentence if found guilty by a jury. He made clear that he still felt warmly toward her and does not believe she was manipulated by the KGB.

Ogorodnikov’s predicament, though, generates little sympathy from residents of Los Angeles’ sizable Russian immigrant community. They believe that he is reaping his just reward.

A source familiar with his predicament, who requested anonymity, said Ogorodnikov’s conviction “was a black mark against him in the community.”

“I know how the people felt,” said a source close to the investigation. “That Russian community around Fairfax is very tight. There isn’t the rally or support when the charge is espionage.”

Lilia Sokolov, assistant publisher of the community’s largest Russian-language weekly, Almanac Panorama, believes that the locals are justified in ostracizing him.

“I thinks he deserves it and so do many people,” she said.

The community consensus when he was sentenced, she said, was that “America gave you shelter, took you in. So what are you giving America? That’s how you’re repaying it? I don’t think he can expect anything else.”

Before Ogorodnikov could savor freedom, he found himself facing an immigration judge who ordered him deported. The order was then blocked by U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi in Los Angeles, who will preside over Miller’s third espionage trial, scheduled for August. Ogorodnikov has been subpoenaed by Miller’s lawyers as a possible witness at that trial.

Miller’s first espionage trial ended in a hung jury in 1985. The following year, however, he was found guilty.

By that time, Miller had acknowledged having an affair with Svetlana. He claimed he was not a spy but was trying to revive his crumbling FBI career by attempting to penetrate the Soviet Union’s KGB.

Miller’s conviction, however, was overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in April, 1989, and he was released from a federal prison on $337,000 bail last October.

Nikolai Ogorodnikov, an elf-like man, stands about 5-feet, 4-inches tall. He has wispy white hair, flashing blue eyes and a volatile personality. He simply cannot sit still when discussing the Miller case and the spy accusations.

Waving his arms and pacing the floor, he laughs and, sometimes, cries. He is not an educated person, and he does not appear to understand very well American society and its values.

He made clear that he has enjoyed living in America--”I really like this country,” he said--but that the tug of Mother Russia is strong. He wants to go home.

“I want to die in Kiev,” he said.

It is easy to feel sorry for him. Undoubtedly, he has led a difficult life. In fact, as he tells it, he’s lucky to have lived beyond his youth.

An only child, Ogorodnikov was barely a teen-ager when he volunteered to become a Soviet army helper in the closing days of World War II. Captured by a German unit--”I remember it like it was yesterday”--he said that, along with other imprisoned Russian soldiers, he was forced to face a terrifying brace of machine guns in the prison yard.

Still, he said, he didn’t panic.

“Maybe (at age 13) you never believe you can die,” he said. “You not accept this.” For whatever reason, the Nazi commander decided against executing prisoners that day.

“If he knew I was from a Jewish family, I would never survive,” Ogorodnikov reflected.

He said he escaped and was sheltered by a German family for the duration of the war, after which he found his way back to Kiev, which had been devastated by the war and the Nazi occupation.

Ogorodnikov said he later fell in with “bad friends.” One day, he was caught stealing government property. He was sentenced to three years in a Siberian gulag, from which he was released in 1953.

During the rest of that decade and the next, Ogorodnikov said, he scratched out a living driving cabs and buses in Kiev. He also married, had a daughter and was divorced.

In 1960, he said, he met Svetlana, and they married about eight years later. The marriage produced a son, Matvei, now 18, who is about to enter a university in Kiev where he plans to study languages.

The year Matvei was born, 1972, the family emigrated to Los Angeles, where Ogorodnikov had an uncle.

Again, it was a difficult life, complicated by the fact that Nikolai and Svetlana had little education, meager financial resources and didn’t speak English. Nikolai put bread on the table by working in local factories. An attempt to import and show Russian films in Los Angeles was a flop.

The couple’s obscurity suddenly ended in October, 1984, when they were arrested along with Miller and accused of conspiring with the FBI agent to pass secret government documents to the Soviet Union.

He recalls being devastated when, after his arrest, his son visited him at the federal prison facility at Terminal Island.

“What happened?” the 12-year-old boy asked.

“I wanted to cry,” Ogorodnikov said, recalling the scene.

Rather than face the prospect of foster care for his son, he made arrangements for a distant nephew from New York to help Matvei return to Kiev and live with Ogorodnikov’s mother, who died last year.

Just before his release from prison last February, Ogorodnikov said he was confronted by four FBI agents. He said the agents proposed a deal: If he rolled over on Miller, the FBI would put in a good word for him to prevent his deportation.

Ogorodnikov said he suddenly rose and shouted: “I can’t testify! I never knew Miller!”

An FBI spokesman in Los Angeles declined to comment on the account.

Until recently, Ogorodnikov had another dilemma. Because he had been ordered deported, the government had not returned his immigration “green card” so that he could show potential employers he had been a legal resident. But last week, he said, immigration officials gave him a temporary work permit so he could continue to drive a van for the hotel.

“It’s very difficult,” he reiterated. “But I am surviving.”