F.B.L man jailed for life

Press, 16 July 1986, Page 10

F.B.L man jailed for life

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles The first F.B.L agent accused of espionage was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for passing a secret United States document to the Soviet Union.

Richard Miller, aged 49, who said he had an affair with a convicted Soviet

spy, Svetlana Ogorodnikova, to infiltrate the Soviet K.G.8., was also fined SUS6O,OOO. Federal Judge David Kenyon said that a man who had betrayed his country should not walk again in that country as a free man.

But a prosecutor said Miller, whose only profits from the escapade were a raincoat and a pair of tight-fitting shoes, could be eligible for parole after serving 18 years.

Miller was sentenced after a 15-week retrial. His first trial ended in a deadlocked jury.

He was convicted of giving an F.B.L counterintelligence document to an agent of a foreign Government, Ogorodnikova, and to the Soviet Union in return for promises of SUSSO,OOO in gold and SUSIS,OOO in cash. But according to evidence at his trial Miller, never received the cash or the gold, but only an expensive raincoat and a pair of burgundy shoes that were too tight for him.

He received two terms of life imprisonment, to run concurrently; two terms of 10 years in prison and two terms of 15 years in prison, which will run consecutively but together with ttw. life terms. *