Russian Spy Ends Jail Term But Faces Deportation Fight

ONCE A "FEMME FATALE" who lured her FBI agent-lover to betray his country, Svetlana Ogorodnikova is hardly recognizable after 11 years in prison. -----------------------------------------------------------------

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Once asked to describe his former lover, ex-FBI agent and convicted spy Richard W. Miller replied that Svetlana Ogorodnikova was "charming, outgoing, vivacious" and that she spoke atrocious English.

After 11 years in prison on espionage charges, Ogorodnikova still speaks fractured English. But the charm and vivacity are little in evidence. It takes imagination to see any of that in this faded, exhausted woman - the "femme fatale" convicted of seducing Miller so he would pass government secrets to the Russians.

That, she admits, is something of a blessing. "Thank God, nobody recognizes me now," she said as she paced her husband's sweltering apartment after her Sept. 13 release from an immigration holding facility.

Though she and her husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikova, pleaded guilty to espionage conspiracy charges a decade ago, they insist they are innocent and are fighting efforts to deport them.

"We want try to bring justice. Bring justice not only for us, for my son, even for, ahh, syssttem, you know?" Svetlana Ogorodnikova said.

The system, for its part, remains very interested in her. No sooner had she finished her federal prison sentence in April than she was taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which has orders to deport the Ogorodnikovas because of their convictions.

The problem is, the INS can't find a place to send them.

Russia, the successor state to the now dissolved Soviet Union, their homeland, says the two relinquished their Soviet citizenship when they emigrated to the United States in the early 1970s. Russia therefore won't issue travel documents unless the Ogorodnikovas ask for them - something they have refused to do.

Nikolai, who served five years in prison and lost an appeal of his deportation order, must report monthly to immigration authorities, who say he is liable to criminal prosecution if he does not cooperate in his deportation.

Svetlana, who was released from the INS facility after posting a $10,000 bond, is appealing her deportation order.

Meantime, Svetlana says she wants to spend time with their son, who lives in Petaluma, Calif.

She also wouldn't mind "just little bit rest."

"I'm very tired," sighed Svetlana, 46, who says she has cancer of the vocal cords.

"She has changed greatly," noted Donald Spatny, who met Svetlana nearly a decade ago when both were inmates at the Dublin, Calif., federal prison. "The difference between her present `bag-lady' look and demeanor and her earlier glamorous persona is startling."

Spatny is among a small band of supporters who have taken up the Ogorodnikovas' cause.

He has asked the U.S. Attorney General's office to open an inquiry and has written members of the California congressional delegation - so far to no avail.

"When I saw this case it smelled to high heaven," said Spatny, who, like her other advocates, portrays Svetlana as the victim of an overblown prosecution, the naive pawn of Miller's bumbling attempt to infiltrate Soviet intelligence.

The Ogorodnikovas contend that they were browbeaten into pleading guilty by warnings that Svetlana would be sent to prison for life if she was convicted.

Although she confessed in the early stages of the case that she had received documents from Miller, she later recanted. In the second of Miller's three trials, she tearfully testified that he was an innocent man who had simply recruited her to help him with his unorthodox efforts to penetrate the Soviet spy network.

Miller admitted having an affair with Svetlana but maintained his innocence. He was convicted of espionage and was released from prison last year after serving two-thirds of his 13-year sentence.

Despite her years in prison for a crime she says she did not commit, Svetlana professes no bitterness.

With a sweep worthy of the Russian steppes, she declared, "I never have against nobody nothing. I forgive everybody."