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Work Cited

Greenfield, Amy Butler. The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life. Random House Children's Books, 2021.

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Elizebeth's home life was an entire story on it's own. Elizebeth's father John Marion had served in the Union Army as a teenager, he marched with General Sherman during the Civil War. This experience had soured him. As a result he did not think much of women, "Home was a tense place because Elizebeth and her father did not get along" (9). Due to Elizebeth's poor relationship with her father home wasn't exactly her ideal place to be.

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Due to Elizebeth's Father's view on women he saw no point in Elizebeth pursuing a higher level of education. Her father refused to pay even a penny towards Elizebeth going to college leaving her no choice but to apply for scholarships, "Elizebeth applied for a scholarship to Wellesley. She also applied to Swarthomore, and perhaps Earlham, another Quaker college, as well.... But she knew that her father came from Quaker stock, and that he was proud of his forebears. If she could get into a Quaker college, she hoped his pride would prompt him to help pay her costs." (10). Elizebeth's father was a proud Quaker, she used this important piece of information to try and get him to pay for her education. though her plans fell apart, this led her to subtract a year off of her age pretending it never happened. However later she was accepted to the College of Wooster which had no Quaker roots. Yet Elizebeth convinced her father to give her a loan for the college. Though she found herself switching colleges on multiple occasions.

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Elizebeth Smith Friedman--wife, mother, writer, Shakespeare enthusiast, cryptanalyst, and pioneer in U.S. cryptology--died on 31 October 1980 in Plainfield, New Jersey, at the age of 88. Although she is often referred to as the wife of William Friedman, she enjoyed many successes in cryptology in her own right and has been dubbed "America's first female cryptanalyst." In fact, although her husband is credited with numerous contributions to cryptology, it was Mrs. Friedman who introduced him to the field.

Born in 1892 to John M. Smith--a Quaker dairyman, banker, and politician--and Sopha Strock Smith, Mrs. Friedman was the youngest of nine children. The special spelling of her name is attributed to her mother, who held a strong passion against Elizebeth ever being called "Eliza." Elizebeth was energetic, impatient, and at best strongly opinionated, with a disdain for stupidity. She is known to have been a hairdresser, seamstress, and fashion consultant whose talents were often exploited by her friends.

After briefly attending Wooster College in Ohio, she graduated from Hillsdale College in Michigan with a major in English literature. Having exhibited her interest in languages, she had also studied Latin, Greek, and German, and minored "in a great many other things." Only she and one other sibling were privileged to attend college.

Prior to her employment with the Newberry Research Library in Chicago, she was a high school principal for at least a year. A great Shakespeare enthusiast, she was probably attracted to Newberry because of an "original Shakespeare folio" known to be there. In 1916, while working at Newberry, she was recruited by George Fabyan to work on his 500-acre estate at Riverbank, his private "think tank."

The librarian who interviewed Mrs. Friedman on her first day is credited with having made a phone call to Colonel Fabyan that would change the then Miss Smith's life forever.

The librarian conveyed in her telephone conversation Smith's love for Shakespeare, among other things. Colonel Fabyan, a wealthy textile merchant, soon met Miss Smith, and they discussed what life would be like at Riverbank, Fabyan's great estate located in Geneva, Illinois. He told Miss Smith she would assist a Boston woman, Elizabeth Wells Gallup, and her sister with Gallup's attempt to prove that Sir Francis Bacon had authored Shakespeare's plays and sonnets using a cipher that was supposed to have been contained within.

At Riverbank Miss Smith joined a versatile and distinguished staff. There were typists, translators, a graduate student in genetics, and professionals specializing in acoustics engineering. Riverbank was one of the first such facilities to promote cryptology and other subjects. Through the work of the Friedmans, much historical information on secret writing was gathered. Up until the creation of the Army's Cipher Bureau, Riverbank was the only facility capable of exploiting and solving enciphered messages.

Counted among the staff of fifteen at Riverbank was the man Miss Smith would marry in May 1917, William Friedman. The newlyweds worked together for the next four years or so in the only cryptologic laboratory in the country at the time. In 1921 Mr. and Mrs. Friedman moved to Washington, DC, to work for the War Department.

Mrs. Friedman's employment as a cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy followed in 1923, which led to her subsequent positions with the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Prohibition and Bureau of Customs. The net result of her career is quite significant and embraces cryptology against international smuggling and drug running in various parts of the world. The smugglers and runners resorted to radio and encoded messages to conduct their operations, presumably with a great sense of security. This, however, became a mistaken notion after Mrs. Friedman came to Washington. A more detailed account of her cryptologic contributions has been presented in a previous Almanac article.

During the post-World War Two period, Mrs. Friedman became a consultant to and created communications security systems for the International Monetary Fund.

Longtime Shakespeare enthusiasts, Mrs. Friedman and her husband, after retirement from government service, collaborated on a book entitled "The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined." It won awards from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the American Shakespeare Theater and Academy. In this book, the Friedmans dismissed Baconians such as Mrs. Gallup and Ignatius Connelly with such technical proficiency and finesse that the book won far more acclaim than others addressing the same topic. The work that Gallup had done earlier operated on two assumptions. One was that Bacon invented a biliteral cipher and that the cipher used in the original printed Shakespeare folios employed "an odd variety of typefaces." The Friedmans, however, "in a classic demonstration of their life's work," buried a hidden Baconian cipher on a page in their publication. It was an italicized phrase which, using the different type faces, expressed their final assessment of the controversy: "I did not write the plays. F. Bacon." Their book is regarded as the definitive work, if not the final word, on the subject.

Following her husband's death in 1969, Mrs. Friedman devoted much of retirement life to compiling a library and bibliography of William's work. This "most extensive private collection of cryptologic material in the world" would finally be prepared for the George C. Marshall Research Library in Lexington, Virginia.

Elizebeth Smith Friedman, as evidenced by the life she led, was truly a legend in her own time.

"Our office doesn't make 'em, we only break 'em," uttered Elizebeth Smith Friedman to a representative of a code-building company who came to sell his wares and to tout their precious worth. And "break 'em" she did many times over for many years against many targets. Quite admirably, she did all this without the aid of calculators or computers and with only a basic background in mathematics. Her successes led to the conviction of many violators of the Volstead Act during Prohibition years.

While the Eighteenth Amendment of 1919 forbade the manufacture, sale, import, or export of intoxicating liquors, the Volstead Act forbade the consumption of such beverages. Prevailing conditions during those days, however, encouraged illegal activity.

Further, as radio equipment became less cumbersome, less conspicuous, and more sophisticated, it afforded the criminal element another means to circumvent the law. To avoid taxes, etc., criminals smuggled liquor and, to a lesser degree, narcotics, perfume, jewels, and even pinto beans. Related enciphered communications were passed by persistent anti-prohibitionists to protect their operations.

Anti-prohibitionists provided Mrs. Friedman and her team of cryptanalysts with innumerable opportunities to hone their cryptanalytic/codebreaking skills during her employment with the U.S. Treasury Department. She led the cryptanalytic effort against international smuggling and drug-running radio and encoded messages, which the runners began to use extensively to conduct their illegal operations. Even though early codes were very basic, their subsequent change in complexity and resistance to solution was predicated on the financial success and growth of the operation. The extent of sophistication seemed to pose no problem for Mrs. Friedman; she still mounted successful attacks against both the simple substitutions and transpositions and the more complex enciphered codes which eventually came into use. While working for the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Foreign Control during the Prohibition era, she solved over 12,000 rum-runners' messages.

Mrs. Friedman also perceived the need for a more dedicated effort against suspected communications. By 1931 she had convinced Congress of the need to create a headquartered, seven-man cryptanalytic section for this purpose. As her cryptanalytic responsibilities began to mount, Mrs. Friedman sensed the need to teach other analysts cryptanalytic fundamentals, including deciphering techniques. This allowed her ample time to attack the more atypical new systems as they cropped up and expedited the entire process from initial analysis through to solution. It also allowed her to stay one step ahead of the smugglers.

In addition to her cryptanalytic successes, she was often called to testify in cases against accused parties. The messages that she deciphered and decoded enabled her to implicate several smugglers operating in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Pacific Coast. She subsequently testified in cases in Galveston and Houston, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Her efforts in 1933 resulted in convictions against thirty-five bootlegging ringleaders who were found to have violated the Volstead Act. Ringleaders were directly linked with suspected vessels as a result of the information arising out of her analysis.

The next year she played a major role in settling a dispute between the Canadian and U.S. governments over the true ownership of a sailing vessel called the _I'm Alone_. It was flying the Canadian flag when it was sunk by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter for failing to heed a "heave to and be searched" signal. The Canadian government filed a $350,000 suit against the U.S., but the intelligence gleaned from the twenty-three messages decoded by Mrs. Friedman indicated U.S. ownership just as the U.S. had originally suspected. As a consequence, the owner of the ship was identified and captured.

Obviously impressed with her work, the Canadian government sought Mrs. Friedman's help in 1937 with an opium dealer problem which evolved into an outstanding case. She complied and eventually testified in the trial of Gordon Lim and several other Chinese. Her solution to a complicated unknown Chinese enciphered code, in spite of her unfamiliarity with the language, was key to the successful convictions.

Finally, Mrs. Friedman left her mark on the life of one of espionage's most notorious spies, Velvalee Dickinson, whose path to and role in espionage are noteworthy. Following high school and some college, she married the head of a brokerage firm that had Japanese-American clients. The Dickinson's interest in Japan grew so much that they joined the Japanese-American Society, where they began to rub shoulders with members of the Japanese consulate. When the brokerage firm's success suffered a downturn, so too did the Dickinson's role as proponents of good Japanese-American relations. At some point, the couple became spies for Japan. Velvalee became a major player, and her successful doll shop was a cover for her espionage. Known as the "Doll Woman," she corresponded with Japanese agents using the names of women she found in her business correspondence.

This would be her downfall. Her correspondence, which contained encoded material addressing significant naval vessel movement in Pearl Harbor, was analyzed and solved by Mrs. Friedman. This analysis resulted in a guilty verdict against Mrs. Dickinson.

Although Mrs. Friedman worked closely with her husband William as part of a team, many of her contributions to cryptology were unique. She deciphered many encoded messages throughout the Prohibition years and solved many notable cases single-handedly, including some codes which were written in Mandarin Chinese. As has been determined, the complexity or difficulty mattered not. After fifty years at her business, Elizebeth Smith Friedman had indeed proved to be a pioneer in code breaking.

To further commemorate the contributions of the Friedmans, NSA's OPS1 building was dedicated as the William and Elizebeth Friedman Building during the Agency's 50th Anniversary Commemoration in 2002.

Related Links:

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Elizebeth Smith Friedman--wife, mother, writer, Shakespeare enthusiast, cryptanalyst, and pioneer in U.S. cryptology--died on 31 October 1980 in Plainfield, New Jersey, at the age of 88. Although she is often referred to as the wife of William Friedman, she enjoyed many successes in cryptology in her own right and has been dubbed "America's first female cryptanalyst."

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Once Elizebeth finished college she had to start repaying the loan from her father. "As soon as Elizebeth finished college, she had to start repaying the loan from her father." (13). The amount totaled 600 dollars, which might not seem like a lot but it was 1915 at the time. If you're wondering it would be roughly 18,435 dollars and 21 cents. Elizebeth couldn't go a day without feeling the weight of this debt on her shoulders. This meant that she needed to get a job right away.

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In 1916 Chicago was a world-famous city and by far the biggest in the mid west. Yet even in Chicago finding jobs for women were hard, Elizebeth was no exception to this. Elizebeth found herself staying with friends on the South Side soon going to an agency asking for openings, she thought this job would suit her better than teaching. She thought that she would be sitting down at a desk yet was disappointed to find out nothing of the sort was available at the agency. The agency then suggested she try the Newberry Library, "Decades later, when Elizebeth was asked to talk about her life, she often started with the day she arrived at the Newberry. She felt that the library was where her life truly began." (16). Elizebeth had such a deep connection with Newberry Library and it was a tale she relished retelling.

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I have long acknowledged the importance of libraries in my life, but I doubt Elizebeth Smith was aware of the life-changing effect a trip to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1916 would have on the course of her life and that of our nation's history.

Born in Huntington, Indiana in 1892 to Quaker parents, Elizebeth was number ten of ten children. Her mother was worn out, her father considered her a difficult child, and as a bookish child who wrote poetry, she always felt out of place. After high school, she persevered and finally convinced her father to allow her to attend college, agreeing to pay him back every penny at 4% interest. Though she longed for an adventurous life, after college she accepted one of the only positions available to women in those days, that of an elementary school teacher.

Elizebeth taught for one year in a small Indiana school, but knew it wasn't her calling. She quit her job and moved back in with her parents. She quickly remembered how challenging it was to live at home and in June of 1916 she forced herself to be brave and took the train to Chicago. Staying with a friend, she spent her days searching for a job, hopefully in literature or research.

After a week with no leads, no money and no connections, she begrudgingly agreed to return home, a promise she had negotiated with her father. Before boarding the train, she decided to make a stop at the Newberry Library which owned a rare copy of the First Folio of William Shakespeare. The book had intrigued her when she first learned of it during her college years because it was rumored to contain secret codes. A young woman librarian noticed how enthralled Elizebeth was with the book and asked if she was interested in Shakespeare. The two got to talking and realized they had much in common. The librarian had grown up in Richmond, Indiana, not far from Elizebeth's hometown. The conversation was comfortable enough that Elizabeth mentioned she was looking for a job.

Enter George Fabyan, a wealthy Chicago businessman who visited the library often to examine the First Folio. The librarian was familiar with his obsession. She also knew he was looking to hire an assistant. She contacted Fabyan who came directly to the library where he stunned Elizebeth when he inquired, "Will you come to Riverbank and spend the night with me?" Despite being taken aback by his question, she decided to trust this stranger.

Elizebeth did not use her return train ticket to Indiana. Instead, she accompanied Fabyan to Riverbank Estate in Geneva, Illinois. He had used his great wealth to create an eccentric kingdom, a playground for scientists. At Riverbank, Elizebeth worked on a project involving looking for the secret messages supposedly hidden in the plays of Shakespeare, written in cipher.

In a bit of kismet, William Friedman, a Jewish geneticist from Pittsburgh, worked with Elizebeth on the project. They married within a year, forming a strong life-long bond. Quite simply, throughout their life together everyone thought they were made for each other.

It didn't take the couple long to figure out that Fabyan's theory that Sir Francis Bacon had actually written Shakespeare's plays was crazy and that Fabyan was crazy too. But their work would become invaluable. Computers hadn't been invented yet but working with graph paper and pencils and drawing on each other's strengths, they discovered methods that became the basis for modern cryptanalysis and none too soon.

When America went to war in 1917, there was no intelligence community and very few people in the entire nation knew anything about code breaking. Elizebeth and William were two of them. George Fabyan saw an opportunity and offered their services to the U. S. government. William eventually served in France, but Elizebeth spent the war years at Riverbank, providing invaluable service solving messages that had been intercepted from Germany and Mexico.

After World War I, the Friedmans, weary of Fabyan and the oddities his vast wealth allowed him to indulge, left for Washington D.C. There William went to work for the government while Elizebeth stayed home, raising their two children and thinking about writing children's books. That is, until government agents began showing up on her doorstep asking her to break codes, refusing to take no for an answer. She eventually launched and headed a new code breaking unit within the Coast Guard, initially trying to enforce Prohibition. Liquor smugglers may have been gangsters, but they were smart gangsters. They used sophisticated codes and ciphers to hide their operations, until Elizebeth broke these codes. She subsequently testified in court cases against gangsters, including three Al Capone lieutenants. During the trial, she grew impatient with the attacks on the validity of her science, requested a black board for the courtroom and clearly and expertly demonstrated the code breaking system. Through all this, she was mostly unaware of the squad of plain clothes agents deployed to protect her.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Elizebeth left the Coast Guard to work for the U.S. Navy Department. Due to the misogyny rampant at that time and despite her vastly superior skills and experience, she was assigned to work under an inferior uniformed male officer. Elizebeth did not allow it to deter her.

Her target now became the Nazi spy network in South America, where a large influx of German immigrants supported fascist regimes who were working to open a new front in the war. In one instance, Elizebeth's code breaking saved the Queen Mary ocean liner and the 8,000 men on board. Due to her perseverance in unlocking the Nazi transmissions, the captain was able to maneuver the ship out of the path of German U-boats. Recognized as the FBI's secret weapon, she was pushed aside by its egotistical director, J. Edgar Hoover, who stole full credit for all the work done by Elizebeth and her team. He further designated all the decrypts the property of the FBI, effectively erasing her and her team from the official record. Her records were stamped "TOP SECRET ULTRA" and classified for 50 years. Elizebeth, like so many of her female counterparts, was told that as a patriot, she should go home and keep her lips zipped or face perdition.

After all that the Friedmans had sacrificed for their country over the decades, the government did little to reward their dedication. The forced secrecy was hard on their marriage and William suffered from chronic, long term, serious depression. Although William was closely involved in the early days of the National Security Agency, when he began to question that perhaps it was becoming a bit too secretive, the agency turned on him. In 1958 they sent agents to the Friedmans' home on Capitol Hill and confiscated dozens of papers from their library, some so old they went back to World War I, leaving them angry and humiliated that the government would treat them as security risks after they had spent their careers serving their country.

Elizebeth died in 1980 at age 88. Her files were not declassified until 2008, requiring her to honor her Navy oath and take her secret life to her grave. In 1999, she was inducted into the National Security Agency's Cryptologic Hall of Honor, as "a pioneer in code breaking."

Just as she belongs in that Hall of Honor, she belongs of my Women of Consequence list. I marvel at how from a young age Elizebeth, a young Quaker girl from small town Indiana, found the courage within herself to expand her horizons. Without higher math training or the assistance of technology, she helped win both world wars by breaking enemy codes, while laying the foundation of American cryptanalysis and raising two children. She was certainly a Woman of Consequence for William, caring for him through years of mental distress until his death in 1969.

And she is certainly a Woman of Consequence for the 8,000-member crew of the Queen Mary and their descendants. Her amazing story makes me wonder - how many other extraordinary female heroes have been buried by secrecy and sexism. Hers is a story I will share with my granddaughters, including my granddaughter who shares her name - Elizabeth Smith. I want them to know her story because while things are better for women than they have been historically, women have yet to achieve true equality and our world suffers for it. I hope when (and if) my granddaughters have granddaughters, this will no longer be true.

If you want to know more about this fascinating woman, you can check out The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone or tune into the amazing PBS, American Experience, The Codebreaker.

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Women of Consequence - Elizebeth Smith Friedman

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I have long acknowledged the importance of libraries in my life, but I doubt Elizebeth Smith was aware of the life-changing effect a trip to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1916 would have on the course of her life and that of our nation's history.

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A man came into Newberry library and asked Elizebeth a question that would change her life forever. The man in question was George Fayban and the question was, "Will you go out to Riverbank and spend the night with me?"'(17). Now the reason this question would change her life forever is because she did in fact go with him. This decision led to her learning about decoding and codes in general. Now George Fayban was no ordinary person, he was a millionaire. Riverbank was his estate about an hour away from Chicago. He founded a research center that was held there and he also had a pet project that was run by a woman which was not considered normal during the time.

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Gallup was studying the first folio and the variations of it's letters. She was convinced that these variations had some sort of purpose, that they were a cipher possibly carrying secret messages. "Gallup believed that Shakespeare's First Folio contained secret messages written in this cipher. The messages were from Bacon, she said, and they revealed the true author of Shakespeare's plays. According to Gallup, this was Bacon himself." (24). Yet she needed a new assistant and Elizebeth got the job. Elizebeth loved Shakespeare, learning more about poets, and also codes and ciphers.

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I've never read such a gripping book about spies that opens with the hopeful words: "This is a love story."

Over the course of its hundreds of pages, The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone is damned-near impossible to put down. The book has everything: thrills, chills, kills, love, crypto, and a hopeful sense that a nearly forgotten American genius, Elizebeth Smith Friedman, is finally being given her due.

In the book's opening pages, Fagone, a journalist now at the San Francisco Chronicle, describes how he came upon a trove of Friedman's papers in a Virginia library that contained not only technical notes, but "love letters. Letters to her kids written in code. Handwritten diaries. A partial, unpublished autobiography."

The book triumphantly tells the story of how Friedman, born Elizebeth Smith in a small town in Indiana, arrived as a young adult in Chicago, looking for work. Within a few years, she'd essentially taught herself the nascent field of cryptanalysis. By 1917, a few years later, she and her husband, William Friedman, became the powerhouse duo in the field. They literally wrote the book on modern cryptographic practices.

The two were pressed into service for the Great War, but, due to sexism, Elizebeth was overshadowed by her better-known husband and egotistical "powerful men" who "left her out of it." Fagone is her 21st-century champion.

Riverbank

Those of us who aren't huge nerds may think of Alan Turing's efforts to defeat the Nazi Enigma machine as being the real modern mathematical triumph of the 20th century. Turns out, though, modern cryptanalysis was founded decades earlier by a pair of bright-eyed and eager Americans on a bizarre quasi-academic colony in Geneva, Illinois.

In the opening pages, George Fabyan comes across as a strange, early 20th-century hybrid of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, and Willie Wonka. This mustachioed man, whom Fagone describes as having "blazing blue eyes," essentially plucked a 24-year-old Elizebeth from a historic Chicago library where she had been examining an original Shakespeare folio simply out of curiosity. He curtly demanded to her: "Will you come to Riverbank and spend the night with me?"

Astonishingly, this young Indiana Quaker woman said yes-even though she had no idea who he was or what Riverbank was. Fabyan whisked her away to the train station and told her that she couldn't even send a telegram to her family to tell them where she was. As creepy as this all sounded, Elizebeth agreed and boarded a train to an unknown destination with this older man.

He confronted her on the train and said, inches from her face, "Well, WHAT IN HELL DO YOU KNOW?" Her reply: "That remains, sir, for you to find out."

It turned out that Fabyan was something of an eccentric local benefactor who ran his own private research facility known as Riverbank Laboratories. One of his pet projects was to pay for ongoing research led by another woman, Elizabeth Wells Gallup, who was obsessed with finding hidden insight in the works of Shakespeare written by Sir Francis Bacon.

Gallup apparently "needed an assistant with youthful energy and sharp eyes." A 24-year-old college-educated woman who once sought out a Shakespeare folio in Chicago was apparently qualification enough.

Elizebeth Smith was then put to work amongst this "community of thinkers" in order to prove this Baconian theory. There, amongst an idyllic campus of sorts, she met William Friedman, a young biologist about her age who was living in a windmill on the campus.

Together, as their relationship blossomed, they began to realize that their patron, Fabyan, was a bit crazy and that this entire Bacon theory was a wild goose chase.

"CG Decryption"

In the beginning of 1917, the encoded Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted by British intelligence, showing that Germany was proposing an alliance with Mexico if the United States entered World War I. America's signals intelligence capability was non-existent, but Fabyan-ever the braggart and showman-wrote to government officials, declaring the "Riverbank Department of Ciphers open for business."

Smith and Friedman were quickly pressed into service as the proto-National Security Agency. Working side by side with pencil and paper, they learned cryptanalysis as they went and decoded all kinds of intercepted messages from numerous government agencies.

Eventually, after World War I, they were hired by the United States Army: he as a lieutenant in the reserves, and she as a civilian. She was paid half what he made. While William Friedman was busy working on military matters-and after they'd had children and made a home for themselves in northwest Washington, DC-Elizebeth received a knock on the door from a United States Coast Guard officer named Captain Charles Root.

Captain Root wanted her help specifically with breaking codes used by rum-runners-1927 was, after all, the peak of Prohibition. She accepted, so long as she was allowed to work at home. Root agreed, and she began to accept regular stacks of encrypted radio telegrams and decode them at home. By 1930, she had solved 12,000 rum messages involving touched activities all around the coastal waters of North America and the Caribbean.

Eventually, The Woman Who Smashed Codes reaches its obvious climax: World War II. All that practice both at Riverbank and for the Coast Guard made a huge difference in defeating the Nazis. Elizebeth vs. the Axis comprises a notable portion of the book; we won't spoil it for you.

Fagone writes:

During the Second World War, an American woman figured out how to sweep the globe of undercover Nazis... The proof was on paper: 4,000 typed decryption of clandestine Nazi messages that her team shared with the global intelligence community. She had conquered at least 48 different clandestine radio circuits and three Enigma machines to get these plaintexts. The pages found their way to the navy and to the army. To FBI headquarters in Washington and bureaus around the world. To Britain. There was no mistaking their origin. Each sheet said "CG Decryption" at the bottom, in black ink. These pieces of paper saved lives.

Friedman, sworn to secrecy, could not talk publicly about the work that she'd done on behalf of her country-J. Edgar Hoover, meanwhile, appeared in propaganda films showing how America's spies won the war. Eventually, Elizebeth Friedman received a modicum of recognition after her 1980 death: the NSA's OPS1 building was dedicated as the William and Elizebeth Friedman Building during the commemoration of the NSA's 50th anniversary in 2002.

Fifteen years later, however, Elizebeth Friedman is being newly championed. We can't wait for the film version of The Woman Who Smashed Codes.

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The Woman Who Smashed Codes: Your new winter reading assignment

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Review: Bow down to Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the mother of American cryptography.

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Elizebeth was having a hard time confirming the secret messages that Elizabeth claimed she was seeing. At First Elizebeth was feeling like a failure for this small detail, but soon she began to have doubts about Elizabeth's claims. She began to wonder if she was seeing messages that weren't really there at all, "When Gallup tried to divide these variations into only two groups, she was seeing patterns that didn't exist." (29) .For a while she kept these doubts to herself due to the fact Fayban had a temper and didn't like to be crossed. Elizebeth could not afford to lose her job. But she soon found herself confiding in another Riverbank employee, A young scientist named William Friedman.

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Elizebeth never forgot the moment she met William. On her first evening when she arrived at Riverbank, she was waiting for dinner when William arrived, '"I was sitting there on a bannister or something. And I saw him come up the steps," she said over half a century later." (32). Elizebeth was the person responsible for William taking an interest in cryptology, but that wasn't the only interest he had. He also had an interest in Elizebeth, and a relationship would bloom between the two where they would become lifelong passions. The more the two saw of the Shakespeare project the more convinced they were that it was nonsense. Once they told Fayban he was furious with the two. Fayban then decided that he had bigger issues to worry about, he then ordered them to set up a department of cyphers at riverbank. Fayban also offered their services to the army, just as America was entering WW1. At the time the united states had hardly any good code-breakers. They ended up taking up the offer. They also ended up creating the army's main code-breaking school right out of Riverbank.

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William F. Friedman and Elizebeth S. Friedman (respectively, born September 24, 1891, Chisinau, Russia [now in Moldova]-died November 2, 1969, Washington, D.C., U.S.; born 1892, Huntington, Indiana, U.S.-died October 31, 1980, Plainfield, New Jersey) were American cryptologists who helped decipher enemy codes from World War I to World War II.

William Friedman was still an infant when his family immigrated to the United States; he studied genetics at Cornell University (B.S., 1914). Elizebeth Smith majored in English at Hillsdale (Michigan) College (B.A., 1915). They met at the Riverbank Laboratories (Geneva, Illinois), where they both eventually became involved in cryptology, working often for the government in decoding diplomatic messages. In 1917-18 William served in the U.S. Army, partly in France, analyzing German code books.

After the war, in 1921, the Friedmans (they had married in May 1917) moved to Washington, D.C., where, over the years, Elizebeth Friedman worked for several government departments, notably cracking the codes used by rumrunners and other smugglers, and where William Friedman, in the War Department, became the chief cryptoanalyst in the Signal Intelligence Service, notably leading the teams that broke various Japanese codes, including ultimately the Purple machine cipher initiated by Japan in 1939. After World War II, William Friedman worked awhile for the National Security Agency, and Elizebeth Friedman for the International Monetary Fund.

William Friedman wrote The Index of Coincidence and Its Applications in Cryptography (1922), one of the standard works in the nomenclature and classification of ciphers. Together, the Friedmans wrote The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (1957), in which they denied Francis Bacon's purported authorship of the William Shakespeare plays and sonnets.

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william f. friedman and elizebeth s. friedman

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William F. Friedman and Elizebeth S. Friedman | Codebreakers, Cryptanalysis, Intelligence

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William F. Friedman and Elizebeth S. Friedman were American cryptologists who helped decipher enemy codes from World War I to World War II. William Friedman was still an infant when his family immigrated to the United States; he studied genetics at Cornell University (B.S., 1914). Elizebeth Smith

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By the end of the war William was seen as a code-breaking genius, and he really was one. Soon he was writing papers that would transform the foundations of cryptology. In recent times it's been argued that Elizebeth was a secret co-author to many of these pages and there is strong evidence that she helped with the earliest ones. But it's also clear that the latest and most remarkable pages came from William alone. While William was in France dealing with some of the most difucult codes Elizebeth was back in Indiana cooking and scrubbing floors for her father. There as she later put it she began to realize what it meant to be a champion swimmer stranded in the Sahara.

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During the war William was sent out into the front lines to serve as a code breaker for France. During the time Women were not allowed to serve as code-breakers outside of the US, this left Elizebeth no choice but to stay and just wait for William to come back while she did her code-breaking in the US. While alone at Riverbank she was harassed by Fayban, who also prevented her from getting a code-breaking job elsewhere. Fayban insisted that Elizebeth should return to the Shakespeare project. Elizebeth took the only option left to her and chose to return home to look after her widowed father. "By then, Elizebeth had already flown, heading home to Indiana in early September. Moving back in with her farther was no treat, but it was better than being cornered by Fabyan." (66).

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By the end of the War Elizebeths code-breaking skills had atrophied and she was known mostly as William's Wife. Meanwhile William's code-breaking skills had only improved and he was now seen as a genius when it came to code-breaking. Once Elizebeth and William were reunited after the war had ended they were both overjoyed to see each other. William came home from France in 1919. Elizebeth soon realized that when it came to code-breaking she had fallen behind him and didn't see how she could ever catch up.

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At the end of 1920 The war department offered both Elizebeth and William jobs. Yet the position offered to Elizebeth was essentially Williams assistant for half the pay. After working this job for a year Elizebeth decided to quit. There has been some speculation about why but the reason why was because she had hope for having a child. During the time this is what many women did when they wanted to have children.

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Elizebeth resigned from her job as Williams assistant because she had hope that she would have a baby, which was seen as normal during the time. When the hope for a baby didn't materalize she took a job with an Eden only to fall ill almost immediately with severe morning sickness. This would be the first sign of what would be a very complicated pregnancy. Though she had to give up the job, Elizebeth and the baby survived.

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Over the next few years Elizebeth not only had another baby, but she also continued to endure periods of ill health. All of this led to Elizebeth undertaking Jobs she could do at home. She did some private code work and also drafted a book on code-breaking for teams. By doing all of this she kept a foot in the door.

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Eventually Elizebeth went back to full-time code-breaking. What pulled her back in was prohibition, but to be more precise the coast guard's battle to enforce it. Elizebeth was not anti-alcohol, but she believed the law was the law. Like many Americans she was shocked by the links between rum running organized crime, gangsters had quickly taken over the ramrani racket. By 1924 some 500 million dollars a year in illegal booze was entering the U.S. The profits made it easy to run rings around law enforcement.

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The Coast-Guard found themselves out-manned and out-gunned by the rum runners, this left them with no other hope to outsmart them by decrypting their radio messages. Now these messages revealed when and where the illegal car goes were being transferred and landed. Yet the gangs radio networks were vast, with many channels and code types. The Coast Guard knew it needed a top-notch cryptographer to be able to solve the case. This led them to offer the job to Elizebeth because they believed that William her husband would help her with this work. At the time they had no idea that Elizabeth would be enough for the job, yet they would soon find out.

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Over the next three years while she was working almost entirely on her own Elizebeth solved a staggering 12,000 secret messages for the coast-guard and its allies. This gave the coast guard a big and new advantage.But the gangsters fought back by hiring some of the best photographers in the business at about four times Elizebeth's salary. By late 2930 Elizebeth estimated she had seen nearly 50 distinct systems of secret communication, and she cracked them all. This was a remarkable feat, only to see more challenging ones take their place. This led to her being forced to grapple with them alone day after day. It was demanding work and at times it seemed nearly impossible, but it was the making of her. Just like how her husband William's skills had grown by leaps and bounds while he was overseas in France, Elizebeth's talents were now undergoing a similar transformation.

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Once the government started using Elizebeth as an expert witness in run-runner trials she became famous. Though what really put her in the public eye was a case in which a lawyer for the capone family repeatedly questioned her about her expertise. Though Elizebeth turned to the judge and said " your honor is there a blackboard available to the court?". When a blackboard was brought forward Elizebeth gave everybody a lesson in the basics of cryptanalysis. This story set the press on fire leading to articles about Elizebeth appearing all over the country with bold headlines and photos. Throughout the 1930's the interest continued.

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After Prohibition ended crime bosses began to smuggle drugs instead of rum. This didn't stop Elizebeth from keeping up the chase. Her biggest code-breaking challenge came in 1937 and involved a set of secret messages that were seized from a Vancouver shop owned by a millionaire named Gordon Lim. The Canadian mounties suspected Lim of drug smuggling, yet they had no proof. So when they couldn't crack the messages they passed them to Elizebeth. The 17 messages were all very short and written in five letter combinations. The mounties suspected the plain text, the original message.

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In the middle of WWII strange letters came to attention, they were all addressed to the same person in Argentina and all sounded alike yet they all came from different American women. Each letter was about dolls, "The FBI kept digging for clues. The four women lived in different cities and didn't know each other, but it turned out they had something in common. All of them were long-distance customers of a doll shop at 718 Madison Avenue in New York City." (2). The person had to know the women well enough to copy their handwriting perfectly. That's when Elizebeth came in and decoded the letters solving the case and finding out who was behind the letters.

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After making it clear that this was not the usual sort of cryptanalysis that she did, that this was only her opinion, Elizebeth went on to discuss what the Doll Lady was really talking about when she talked about dolls.

The letters, she said, were a textbook example of "open code," a way of communicating secretly out in the open, without necessarily arousing suspicion. "Granddaughter's doll" in one letter might refer to a U.S. ship that had been damaged at Pearl Harbor and was being repaired. "Family" meant the Japanese fleet. "English dolls" meant three classes of English ships, such as a battleship, battlecruiser, or destroyer. Where Dickinson wrote, "One of these three dolls is an old Fishermen with a Net over his back" and "another is an old woman with wood on her back and the third is a little boy," she probably meant, "One of these three war- ships is a minesweeper, and another is a warship with superstructure, and the third is a small warship." ("Destroyer?" Elizebeth guessed. "Torpedo boat? Auxiliary warship?")

Elizebeth also pointed out that the street number of the address in the five letters-Señora Inéz, O'Higgins Street, Buenos Aires-was given as five different numbers (1414 O'Higgins, 2563 O'Higgins, etc.), suggesting that the messages were never meant to reach their destination and were intended to be intercepted en route, in an airline pouch or a censorship office, by a friendly Axis confederate.

Elizebeth's letter shows her analytical brilliance; it also shows her native cautiousness, her reluctance to say anything that couldn't absolutely be proven. Words in an open code can have multiple meanings. She didn't want to testify in court for this reason. Hoover saw it differently. To him, the vagueness of an open code was an advantage, not a disadvantage, enabling his agents "to give the more extended estimates and alternative possibilities" during cross-examination.

The FBI had gathered other damning evidence against Dickinson, including the unexplained cash and her relations with Japanese officials, and the government charged Dickinson with espionage, as a spy for the imperial Japanese government. The charge carried the death penalty. As far as anyone knew, Dickinson was the first woman to be accused of espionage on American soil since World War II's start. "So far," wrote the Washington Sunday Star, "on this side of the water, Mrs. Dickinson is the woman spy of this war." During her first court appearance in New York in May 1944, Dickinson looked subdued, wore a black hat pinned with imitation white flowers, and twisted a handkerchief behind her back with black-gloved hands, glancing around the courtroom at the FBI agents and prosecutors and reporters: "Who are all these people?" she said. When the prosecutor spoke, "She even yawned, decorously behind a hand," the Washington Times- Herald reported.

Dickinson pleaded guilty. At her sentencing three months later she denied that she was a spy, breaking down in court and swearing that she didn't know a "battleship from any other ship except that it's larger." She ended up with ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

All through these proceedings, Elizebeth stayed out of the public eye. When the Doll Lady case was over, the conviction won, the FBI, as always, informed the press of its heroism, feeding the dramatic details of "the War's No. 1 Woman Spy" to reporters. "What made her become a Japanese spy?" asked the Star. "One FBI man who questioned her advanced the idea that she was an introvert, embittered by life, the frustration of childlessness." Elizebeth was not mentioned in the coverage. The articles said variously that the code had been cracked by "FBI cryptographers" or "a check with the Navy." Hoover himself wrote about the Doll Lady in The American Magazine, calling her "one of the cleverest woman operators I have encountered. Cultured, businesslike, cunning, and, despite her 45 years of age, most attractive, she presented one of the most difficult problems in detection the FBI has tackled in this war."

And while readers learned of the Doll Lady's treachery from Hoover, the woman who analyzed the Doll Lady's letters in her spare time, quietly, as a side project, returned to her primary task of hunting Nazi spies.

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The Most Awesome Codebreaker in World War II Was a Woman | Backchannel

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The World War II-era FBI may have taken credit, but it was really the work of Elizebeth Smith Friedman.