My husband and I watched a documentary on PBS recently with a great deal of interest. It was called The Woman Who Smashed Codes. It told the story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman who, along with her husband William, played important roles in breaking and making codes during World War I, Prohibition and World War II. How was it possible that we had never heard of this brilliant couple and their critical work for the US Government? When the credits rolled at the end of the program, we saw that the film was based on The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies (#962) by Jason Fagone.
How on earth did a Quaker girl from an Indiana farm wind up becoming one of the world's leading cryptologists? Mr. Fagone's engaging biography tells Elizebeth's story from the time she determined to escape from the strictures of that farm and burst onto the wider world at a moment when Europe was embroiled in World War I. She never set out to crack codes, but rather fell into it under the influence of one of the most extraordinary personalities of the day: George Fabyan. A chance inquiry about a job at a Chicago library turned into the pursuit of a lifetime of service, along with her husband William, whom she met at George Fabyan's colony at Riverbank. Two brilliant minds who meshed and persisted in creating what we now know as the science of cryptology. Working almost entirely behind the scenes (The secrecy oaths they swore forced them to silence for the rest of their lives and careers.) they were able to break codes in multiple languages. William literally wrote the books that the American and foreign governments used as the basis of their own code and cipher programs. He eventually developed the core program which would become today's NSA and received some public acknowledgement for his work, but Elizebeth never did. In fact, codes that she cracked to bust rum-runners during Prohibition and crucial work she did dismantling the Nazi network which the Reich tried to establish in South America, were later publicly claimed by J. Edgar Hoover. Because of her oath, Elizebeth was never able to dispute his claims, nor did she really care, except for how it affected the world's perception of William's work. Many who knew them both thought that Elizebeth was the more brilliant of the two, but for the couple themselves it was no contest; they worked as equals.
This book was absolutely fascinating. When it talks about William's work during WWII at Arlington Hall in Virginia, training women recruited from the "Seven Sisters" colleges to code break, I knew I had read about this before: in Code Girls by Liza Mundy (See my post of 12/1/17.) However, I don't remember even a single mention of Elizebeth Smith Friedman in that book. Of course, she was working for the Coast Guard in the Department of the Defense at the time, but you would have thought she would have merited at least a mention! At least the NSA did rename their auditorium to honor not just William, but Elizebeth as well, so she has some vindication.
