Элизабет Фридман: Жизнь и работа криптографа

American cryptanalyst and author (1892–1980)

Friedman was born in Huntington, Indiana, to John Marion Smith, a Quaker dairyman, banker, and politician, and Sophia Smith (née Strock). Friedman was the youngest of nine surviving children (a tenth died in infancy) and was raised on a farm. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi. 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 attended college.

Elizebeth Smith began working at Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois, in 1916. It was one of the first facilities in the U. S. established to study cryptography. Colonel George Fabyan, a wealthy textile merchant, owned Riverbank Laboratories and was interested in Shakespeare. Friedman was looking for a job and visited Chicago's Newberry Library, where she talked to a librarian who knew of Fabyan's interest. The librarian called Fabyan, who appeared in his limousine and invited Elizebeth to spend a night at Riverbank, where they discussed what life would be like at Fabyan's great estate located in Geneva, Illinois. Several U. S. government departments asked Riverbank Labs for help or sent personnel there for training. Among those was Agnes Meyer Driscoll, who came on behalf of the U. S. Navy. The Friedmans worked together for the next four years in what was the only cryptographic facility in the country, until Herbert Yardley's so called "Black Chamber" was established as MI8, the Army's Cipher Bureau, in 1919. In 1921, the Friedmans left Riverbank to work for the War Department in Washington, D. C. Their previous efforts to leave had been thwarted by Fabyan, who intercepted their mail. In response, the Coast Guard hired Elizebeth Friedman, who had quit her job in 1922, on a temporary basis to decode their backlog of messages. From 1927 to 1939, the unit, which was of critical importance, was folded into the U. S. Coast Guard. Friedman solved the bulk of intercepts collected by Coast Guard stations in San Francisco and Florida herself. In June 1928, she was sent to teach C. A. Housel, stationed with the Coordinator of the Pacific Coast Details, how to decrypt rumrunners' messages. Under her teaching, Housel was able to decode 3,300 messages within 21 months. In October and November 1929, she was then recruited in Houston, Texas, to solve 650 smuggling traffic cases that had been subpoenaed by the United States Attorney. In doing so, she decrypted 24 coding systems used by smugglers. Friedman's work was responsible for providing decoded information that resulted in the conviction of the narcotics smuggling Ezra Brothers. While working for the U. S. Coast Guard, the Bureau of Narcotics, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Bureau of Prohibition and Customs, and the Department of Justice, Friedman solved over 12,000 coded messages by hand in three years, resulting in 650 criminal prosecutions. One of the individuals Friedman helped to indict was Al Capone. In 1930, Friedman proposed creating a team of seven people to handle the increasing workload involved in decrypting messages. Her proposal was finally approved in 1931, and she was put in charge of the only codebreaking unit in America ever to be managed by a woman. The vessel was flying the Canadian flag when it was sunk by 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 Friedman indicated de facto U. S. ownership just as the U. S. had originally suspected. The true owners of the ship were identified and most of the Canadian claim was dismissed. The Canadian government sought Friedman's help in 1937 with an opium smuggling gang, and she 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. One turned out to be an unrelated Swiss network, but the other two were used by Johannes Siegfried Becker (codename: ’’Sargo’’), the SS agent who headed the operation, to communicate with Germany. Regarding Becker, biographer Jason Fagone states: “Elizebeth was his nemesis. She successfully tracked him where every other law enforcement agency and intelligence agencies failed. She did what the FBI could not do.” Known as the "Doll Woman," her antique doll shop was her cover as she corresponded with Japanese agents using the names of women from her business correspondence. Her messages contained encoded material addressing naval vessel status in Pearl Harbor. It won awards from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the American Shakespeare Theatre and Academy. In this book, the Friedmans dismissed Baconians such as Gallup and Ignatius Donnelly with such technical proficiency and finesse that the book won far more acclaim than did others that addressed the same topic. The work that Gallup had done earlier for Col. Fabyan at Riverbank operated on the assumption that Bacon wrote Shakespeare and used the bi literal cipher he invented in the original printed Shakespeare folios, employing "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. Ironically, it was the Riverbank effort to prove Bacon wrote Shakespeare that introduced the Friedmans to cryptology. Following her husband's death in 1969, Friedman devoted much of her retirement life to compiling a library and bibliography of his work. In 1971, she donated her own papers, which are now known as The Elizebeth Smith Friedman Collection at the Marshall Foundation. Friedman belonged to civic organizations such as the League of Women Voters and worked on behalf of statehood for the District of Columbia. She was also a respected public speaker. They had two children, Barbara Friedman Atchison (1923 2021), and John Ramsay Friedman (1926–2010). In the 1930s, William Friedman began to show signs of the depression that afflicted him for the rest of his life. Elizebeth supported him and began covering up for him.

Friedman's contributions received increasing recognition after her death. Friedman had signed an oath with the U. S. Navy promising to keep her role in World War II secret until her death, and she did so. It was not until 2008 that the documents were finally declassified. The NSA auditorium, which had been named after William in 1975, was renamed in 1999 the "William and Elizebeth Friedman Auditorium." On July 7, 2020, the U. S. Coast Guard announced that it was naming the 11th Legend Class National Security Cutter (NSC) in honor of Elizebeth Smith Friedman. According to the announcement, "Legend Class cutters honor women and men who have a legendary status in the Coast Guard's rich history." Construction began in May 2021 of the
The Codebreaker, an episode of the television documentary series American Experience about Elizebeth Smith Friedman's life, based on Fagone's biography plus archival letters and photographs, premiered on January 11, 2021. In October 2021, Amy Butler Greenfield published her biography The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life.

Friedman, William F. and Friedman, Elizebeth Smith Methods for the Reconstruction of Primary Alphabets, Riverbank Publication Number 21, 1917