Sleeping With the FBI: Sex, Booze, Russians and the Saga of an American Counterspy Who Couldn't

Sleeping With the FBI: Sex, Booze, Russians and the Saga of an American Counterspy Who Couldn't by Howe, Russell Warren. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780915765621.

Sleeping with the FBI is a spellbinding drama which takes you inside the risky and seductive world of double agents, double-dealing and international intrigue. This is the true story of Richard Miller, a short, fat, middle-aged FBI agent with an affinity for sex in his government car. Miller badly needed to redeem a mediocre career highlighted by suspensions for "unacceptable obesity," selling Amway products out of the tailgate of his FBI car, stealing candy from 7-Eleven, leaving the keys of the FBI office in the door all night and losing the agencys credit card. Working on his own, rarely advising his colleagues of his undercover work, Miller positioned himself for what he believed would be the break of his career: becoming the first agent to penetrate the KGBs spy network as a double agent. Richard Miller embraced, as his penetration agent of the KGB and in bed, Svetlana Ogorodnikova, an alcoholic FBI informant. Aleksandr Grishin, the shrewd 36-year-old superspy, masterminded KGB activities on the West Coast. Miller, consigned to the agencys Los Angeles pasture for his failures, like most of his comrades on the Russian squad, could neither speak nor read Russian. Grishin set Miller up for the sting of his life, creating damaging evidence that the FBI used against its own agent. Shortly after Miller and Svetlana were arrested for espionage, there was a cork-popping celebration at KGB offices in San Francisco to toast Grishin, whose victory earned him a lofty promotion in Moscow. Sleeping with the FBI, the all-too-human drama of espionage, deceit, sex and ineptitude in the final days of the Cold War, illustrates the continuing need for a Congressional investigation of a system that still largely relies on untrained sleuths like Richard William Miller.