- The work of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, America's first female cryptanalyst, brings down Al Capone, breaks up a Nazi spy ring in South America, and lays the foundation for the National Security Agency (NSA).
- The amazing story of ground-breaking crypto analyst Elizebeth Smith Friedman, whose work in decoding the messages of organized crime and America's enemies in World War II was instrumental in their defeat and was classified and completely unknown until recently.—llboll
- Elizabeth Smith Friedman developed cryptology during the first half of the 20th Century. Born the youngest of 10 children, she was anxious to develop her intellectual side in a manner that her mother never could because of the large family. Her father was not in favor of her going to college, however, she talked him into giving her a loan with 6% interest to attend school where she majored in English literature and Greek. She tried teaching for a year but headed for Chicago to look for work. While she was unsuccessful at finding a job, she did visit the Newberry Library on her last day. The librarian noticed her fascination with their 1623 copy of Shakespeare's First Folio. She connected Elizabeth to wealthy industrialist, George Fabyan. He was convinced that the Folio contained a secret message declaring Francis Bacon as the Folio's true author. He hired her to come to his Riverbank Estate near Geneva, Illinois, a center for ambitious scientists to "make breakthroughs". While there, Elizabeth worked closely with a geneticist, William Friedman, who made photo enlargements to analyze for a secret message. They found none. But they did take codebreaking from a guessing game to a statistical analysis of letter frequencies. When the U.S. entered WWI, they had no expertise in codes and intelligence. The advent of radio meant that messages were being aired such that almost anyone could intercept them. After the war, Elizabeth worked with the Coast Guard to determine when and where rum runners were bringing alcohol ashore during Prohibition. For WWII, Elizabeth had to work for a man who was much adept with the intricacies of new cipher machines. Finally, she got to exercise her cryptology leadership in fighting a ring of South American Nazi spies who were sending coordinates to U-boat wolf packs about the routes of supply ships bound from the U.S. to England in support of their war efforts. Because of an oath of secrecy, she never took credit for her work. J. Edgar Hoover did. It was only in 2008 when her role was declassified that the world learned of her heroic contributions.—Garon Smith
- Based on the book The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies, The Codebreaker reveals the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work to decode thousands of messages for the U.S. government would send infamous gangsters to prison in the 1930s and bring down a massive, near-invisible Nazi spy ring in WWII. Her remarkable contributions would come to light decades after her death, when secret government files were unsealed. But together with her husband, the legendary cryptologist William Friedman, Elizabeth helped develop the methods that led to the creation of the powerful new science of cryptology and laid the foundation for modern codebreaking today.—PBS
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