Judith Coplon was arrested in March 1949 with her Russian boyfriend, former United Nations employee Valentin Gubitchev. FBI agents had been following them when they rendezvoused in various places in Washington, D.C. Coplon was a political analyst for the Department of Justice. Both were charged with passing secrets to the Soviet Union. The FBI had planted "barium meal" documents inside Judith's pocketbook. This was heavily persuasive evidence in court during her 1949 federal trial in New York. Coplon and Gubitchev were tried together in another trial that occurred in 1950.