This PBS documentary about Elizebeth Smith Friedman (yes, her first name is spelled like that, not Elizabeth) showed up in my YouTube feed, so I decided to watch it. Considering my YouTube feed is mostly cooking, homesteading, prepper and craft/needlework stuff, I have no idea why this video showed up, but I found it fascinating.
Friedman and her husband developed many of the principles of cryptology during WWI. During the prohibition years she was recruited to help with encrypted messages used by organized crime and international smuggling operations. In WWII she was called back into action to help fight the Germans. She and her team were the primary codebreakers for the South American threat, where the Germans were very active – targeting American ships and working to topple the governments in South American countries.
It’s always fascinating where people sometimes end up when they venture off the beaten path. She did a year of teaching school after college and hated it, so was looking for a job. How she got involved in cryptography sounds surreal. An eccentric rich guy, George Fabyan, had set up a facility, Riverbank Laboratories at his estate to study cryptography. One of Fabyan’s pet projects was he believed that the works of Shakespeare were really written by Sir Francis Bacon and contained encrypted messages. Friedman had majored in English literature in college and studied Latin, Greek and German. Fabyan hired her to work with two other researchers and search for encrypted codes in Shakespeare, which they did not find. She met her husband, William F. Friedman, who was working on cryptography at Riverbank too. Wikipedia states:
“Riverbank gathered historical information on secret writing. Military cryptography had been deemphasized after the Civil War to the point that there were only three or four people in the United States who knew anything about the subject. Two of those people were Elizebeth and William Friedman.[1]: 67 When the United States entered World War I, Fabyan established a new Riverbank Department of Ciphers, with the Friedmans in charge, and offered their services to the government,”
That quote contains an important lesson about America – we have too often let down our guard and national defense readiness after wars and crises. After the Civil War, no one cared about intelligence work. We also didn’t really work to have a professional standing army until after WWI. Somewhere there’s got to be a balance between maintaining readiness and being dangerously unprepared. America was woefully unprepared for WWI. We didn’t even have an army capable of deploying to fight on the Western Front. Here’s a bit from an article, World War I: Building the American military, from the US Army website:
“On April 6, the U.S. Army was a constabulary force of 127,151 soldiers. The National Guard had 181,620 members. Both the country and the Army were absolutely unprepared for what was going to happen.”
“The United States had no process in place to build a mass army, supply it, transport it and fight it. Continental European powers had a universal military service program in place, and when war broke out, reservists — already trained — went to their mobilization points and joined their units.”
Elizebeth Smith Friedman was never recognized for her work during both world wars and she had signed an oath to never speak about her wartime work. Years after her death she was inducted to the NSA Hall of Honor, according to Wikipedia. It’s become rather trendy to distrust and rail about the CIA and NSA and while I do support limits on government surveillance activities, I think it’s important to also remember there have been thousands upon thousands of Americans, who have devoted their lives to working quietly doing intelligence and military work that keeps us safe. This was one lady with unique skills who stepped up to the plate whenever her country asked her to help and she never received any awards or accolades; she just did her duty as an American.
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