page_title: Judith Coplon
section_title: Detection
hierarchical_section_title: Judith Coplon / Career / Detection
caption_attribution_description: FBI arrested Judith Coplon on 4 march 1949. She became the first person prosecuted for espionage as a result of the successful «Venona» project’s detection of Soviet intelligence cable traffic.
context_page_description: Judith Coplon Socolov was a spy for the Soviet Union whose trials, convictions, and successful Constitutional appeals had a profound influence on espionage prosecutions during the Cold War.
  In 1949, three major cases against American communists started: that of Coplon, that of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, and that of the Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders.
context_section_description: She first came to the attention of the FBI as a result of a Venona message in late 1948. Coplon was known in both Soviet intelligence and the Venona files as "SIMA." She was the first person tried as a result of the Venona project, but for reasons of security, the Venona information was not revealed at her trial.
  FBI Special Agent Robert Lamphere testified at her trial that suspicion had fallen on Coplon because of information from a reliable "confidential informant." An extensive counterintelligence operation planted a secret document for her to pass to the Soviets. FBI agents arrested Coplon on March 4, 1949, in Manhattan, as she met with Valentin Gubitchev, a KGB official employed by the United Nations while she was carrying what she believed to be secret US government documents in her purse.
caption: FBI arrests Judith Coplon on March 4, 1949
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