The story easily reads like a James Bond novel: a hapless, middle-aged bureau agent is seduced by a bombshell blonde, who just happened to be a communist agent, and in post-coitus pillow talk, facilitates the promise of significant sums of money, revealing state secrets to her. Caught in flagranti, so to speak, and brought up on charges, he claims the prosecution has it exactly backwards, that his behavior was just a ruse: he was attempting to infiltrate the Soviet spy ring. But this was no Ian Fleming novel; or a Graham Greene one. The man was real enough, Richard Miller, and so was the act he was accused of.

On this day, October 2, in 1984, Richard Miller was arrested, along with his flame Svetlana Ogorodnikov and her husband Nikolai, and charged with espionage.

Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov, ostensibly refugees from communist Russia who came in search of a better life in the 1970s, were in the opinion of the court KGB agents. At least Svetlana was — Nikolai received a relatively light sentence, his role considered non-critical. The much younger Svetlana on the other hand, was found guilty to the fullest extent: dangling easy money as Miller was struggling to support his eight children, and her companionship when Miller was already expelled from the LDS church for infidelity.