"Your Witness, Mr. Kelley"

For four days in Washington's Federal Court, hammy little Attorney Archie Palmer had led his client, Judith Coplon, through her intricate story. "Judy," he concluded lugubriously, "you started with the glamour of your job and ended with the dirt and degradation of a trial." Then, turning a contemptuous look on the Government lawyers, Archie announced: "Your witness, Mr. Kelley."

U.S. Attorney John Kelley Jr.--the man who prosecuted Axis Sally--didn't even bother to stand up. Quietly, almost sympathetically, he began cross-examining the 28-year-old Barnard honor graduate, onetime employee in the Department of Justice, who is on trial for espionage.

Jan. 7 et seq. Little Judy relaxed. Her defense rested on this story: her pocketbook happened to be crammed with FBI secret papers on March 4, when she was arrested in New York, because she was going to study them for a civil service examination; some of the papers were her own notes for a novel she was going to write; she had made the tryst that winter night with Valentin Gubichev, Russian engineer employee of U.N., because she was in love with him and not for any purposes of espionage. Kelley questioned her about a previous meeting she had had with Gubichev on Jan. 14. "You must have been deeply in love with him, weren't you?" Kelley asked softly. "Yes," Judy assured the courtroom.

Kelley's voice hardened. "Isn't it the truth that you and Gubichev never were in love? . . . Is it not the truth that just one week prior to Jan. 14 you spent the night in the Southern Hotel in Baltimore while registered with a man under the name of Mr. & Mrs. H. P. Shapiro?"

Judy's ever-restless hands stopped waving. "It's a damn lie," she screamed. Little Archie was on his feet yelling his objections. From the courtroom, the voice of Judy's mother rose in a piercing wail. Judge Albert Reeves threatened to have Mrs. Rebecca Coplon removed and warned her to keep quiet. Kelley's flat voice persisted. Didn't Judy also spend the night of Jan. 8 with Shapiro in Philadelphia? Didn't she spend New Year's Eve with Shapiro "in fornication in an apartment of a friend of his in the city?", nights with him in February? Judy was ashen-faced. Yes, she had spent those nights with Mr. Shapiro, she said. Bellowed Archie: "Fornication has nothing to do with espionage."

"It has something to do with love," snapped Kelley. How could Judy's story of platonic love for Gubichev be taken seriously in the light of this evidence?

"I Have Been Framed." Judy's hands began to move. Hour after hour she tried to explain. She had not slept with Shapiro, a young lawyer in the Department of Justice. He was just a friend in the office. They had gone to Baltimore to buy Judy a tailored suit. They had gone to Philadelphia still looking for a tailored suit. They had gone to Philadelphia to see a show. She had been sick on New Year's Eve. She had gone to the apartment to be sick and sleep. "You branded me as a spy and now you are trying to brand me as a harlot," she cried.

Archie bobbed round Kelley, accusing: "He springs at her as if he was a jaguar."

It was a frame-up, Judy cried.

Did Judy think that Kelley was framing her?

"You have participated in asking me some of the lowest questions that I have ever heard."

"You had some strange doings, madam," Kelley replied.

"But why did you follow me to New York?" she screamed. She was almost incoherent with rage. Her small body shook. "The whole case is so fishy it smells to high heaven . . . I had no idea who in the heck was following me. For all I knew the NKVD was running around there . . . How did the F.B.I, know? What through --tapped phone wires or because Gubichev was some sort of plant or counter-espionage agent? I don't understand this whole case. All I know is I have been framed."

"I give you back your witness," said Kelley.

"Thank you very much," said Archie.

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