He was divorced from his wife, Paula Miller, in late 1988. In early 1984, the LDS Church excommunicated Miller for adultery. Miller also ran auto-registration checks and searched FBI criminal indexes for a local private investigator at $500 per search. He was alleged to have cheated his own uncle by selling a muscle-relaxant device he'd patented, and skimmed cash from bureau coffers meant for one of his informants. According to news accounts, Miller occasionally took three-hour "lunches" at the 7-Eleven near his Los Angeles office, gorging himself on stolen candy bars while reading comic books. It was later alleged that Svetlana Ogorodnikov had been in touch with a KGB case officer working out of the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco and had made arrangements for Miller to meet with the KGB in Vienna.Īfter his arrest, a fuller portrait emerged of Miller. Miller, who had eight children and was faced with financial difficulties, was having an affair with the married Svetlana Ogorodnikov, and was preparing to travel with her to Vienna at the time of his arrest. Miller was alleged to have provided classified documents, including an FBI Counterintelligence manual, to the Ogorodnikovs after demanding $50,000 in gold and $15,000 cash in return. On October 3, 1984, Miller was arrested with Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov, Russian immigrants who had moved to Los Angeles in 1973 to seek refuge, but who were actually access agents of the Soviet KGB. And in 1982, a psychologist examined Miller and told the FBI that he was emotionally unstable and should be nurtured along in some harmless post until retirement.ĭuring a September, 1986 segment for the CBS news program 60 Minutes, colleagues interviewed on camera observed that Miller had been such a sub-par performer that he had at one time lost his gun and FBI credentials. His superiors had repeatedly admonished him to control his ballooning weight. Īdditionally, according to a Washington Monthly article by Matthew Miller (no relation), Miller was described in this fashion:Īfter 20 years with the bureau, Miller had a personnel file filled with doubts about his job performance. The management should have watched Miller more carefully. But how Miller avoided losing his job for being one of the dumbest, most unkempt, most unpopular misfits the agency had ever hired was not a mystery. How he even got through the FBI Academy was a big mystery. Most agents assigned to Los Angeles during that time who knew Miller would probably agree that he should never have been hired in the first place. Former FBI Special Agent and author Gary Aldrich described Miller in this manner: The last description referred to his unkempt appearance, and the fact that he often was observed with food crumbs and stains on his clothing. He was a 1963 graduate of Brigham Young University, and a 20-year veteran of the FBI at the time of his arrest.Ĭolleagues who knew Miller described him as "bumbling", "inept", and "lunchy". He completed a two-year Mormon mission to Latino communities in Texas, and then attended Compton Junior College. He graduated from high school in Lynwood, California. Richard William Miller was born in Wilmington, California, on December 13, 1936. In 1991, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was freed after serving fewer than three years. Miller (Decem– October 16, 2013) was an American FBI agent who was the first FBI agent indicted and convicted of espionage.
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