Three decades before he railed against the Trump campaign, Adam Schiff prosecuted an FBI agent who was seduced by a Soviet spy
Zach Dorfman is a senior staff writer at the Aspen Institute’s Cyber & Technology Program and senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
And the man who would finally secure Miller’s conviction in 1990—after three trials over the course of six years—was a young U.S. attorney in Los Angeles: Adam Schiff. At left: FBI Special Agent Richard W. Miller. At right: Miller's Lynwood, California, home, where authorities found classified FBI documents. | Bettman/Getty Images
According to contemporaneous reporting and recent interviews with former FBI officials, Miller was slovenly and overweight, which earned him sanctions from his FBI superiors, designed to induce him into getting into shape. He was chastised by his bosses for selling Amway products out of the trunk of his car. He was known to pilfer comic books and candy bars from 7-Eleven, and consume them with abandon.
Miller came to the Soviet squad with no background in Russian language or culture, and no prior experience in counterintelligence. Many of the Bureau’s senior-most officials in Los Angeles, however, were important figures in the local Mormon community; re-assigning Miller to the Soviet squad was, ironically, part of an effort to keep an eye on him—to bring him back “into the FBI fold, and the Mormon fold,” Libby recalls.
Ogorodnikov served as a sort of clearinghouse for information about members of the Soviet émigré community in Los Angeles, which she passed on to her to consular contacts. According to the, she was once dispatched by Soviet consular personnel in San Francisco to help quash a mutiny of Soviet sailors at the Port of Los Angeles
Ogorodnikov wasn’t a trained spy, but U.S. officials believed her work showed she was acting as a Soviet intelligence asset. The trip set off, for the Bureau, the counterintelligence equivalent of a five-alarm fire. Miller’s bosses in Los Angeles and FBI officials in San Francisco had not been aware of Miller and Ogorodnikov’s dalliance—let alone his potential recruitment—but the San Francisco FBI officials quickly pieced the picture together. “Everything in the Soviet consulate was bugged,” recalls the second former FBI agent. “You couldn’t go into the bathroom there without us knowing about it.
Miller, however, fought on. His first prosecution, which ended in November 1985, concluded in a mistrial, devastating the FBI. In 1986, at his second trial, he was convicted and given two consecutive life terms, plus an extra 50 years. But the conviction was later reversed on appeal; a higher court ruled that his polygraphs, which prosecutors drew on, were inadmissible as evidence.
This time, Miller had waived his right to a jury trial, hoping the new judge overseeing the case, who was known for his pro-defense views, might impose less jail time, or perhaps even acquit him entirely. Schiff and Libby, meanwhile, sought to ensure a life sentence for Miller, given what they perceived as the seriousness of his crimes.
Svetlana Ogorodnikov was also released from prison in 1994. She later moved to Mexico and married a convicted drug trafficker she had met in prison, re-entered the United States illegally in 1999, and was later a witness in a bizarre torture and murder case, according to the Associated Press. Nikolay Ogorodnikov was released from prison in 1990.
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