Tainted Source

When his client went on trial for espionage in Washington last spring, lumpy little Archie Palmer had tried to save her with wild histrionics and indigestible tales of international romance in Manhattan's subways. Archie failed; Judy Coplon was convicted and sentenced to 40 months to ten years in prison (TIME, July 11). Last week, as Judy prepared to go on trial in Manhattan on an additional charge of conspiracy, Archie Palmer was still his corny, arm-waving self, but he had discovered a new angle. Teamed up with a shrewd Manhattan attorney named Abraham Pomerantz, Archie complained that the FBI had illegally tapped telephones and intercepted mail to get its evidence.

Federal Judge Sylvester Ryan turned to embarrassed U.S. attorneys for an explanation; the attorneys turned to the FBI. It was true, the FBI admitted reluctantly, that it had done so, and was, in fact, still intercepting the mail of Judy's codefendant, a suspended Russian U.N. employee named Valentin Gubichev. The FBI also had planted a microphone in the Justice Department office, where Judy worked as an analyst and, according to the Government, collected U.S. secrets for transmission to Gubichev.

The judge asked for transcripts of the wire-tapped talks. But it seemed the FBI had destroyed many of the records. The Government added hastily that the FBI had not gotten much from the wire taps, anyway; its case was based on other evidence. The Government's attorneys, plainly unhappy, wished that the judge would let the whole matter drop and get the trial started.

But Judge Ryan felt differently about it. He gave the Government until this week to produce sworn affidavits from the 23 FBI agents involved in the case and offered the defense a chance to cross-examine any or all of them if they desired. Unless the U.S. could prove that its indictment was built on other, untainted evidence, the spy trial would be crossed off the calendar.

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