The Woman Who Smashed Codes

by Jason Fagone

  The month after Elizebeth relocated to the Naval Annex, her husband left the country on his first big mission since his mental breakdown two years earlier. William Friedman traveled to Bletchley Park at the request of the army, which wanted him to negotiate an agreement to share information, expertise, and blueprints for building bombes. He succeeded, but his depression came back while he was overseas, manifesting as insomnia. He swallowed pink Amytal pills to knock himself out and in a personal diary of the trip he repeatedly mentioned sleep problems:

  TUESDAY APRIL 27 . . . Bed at 10:30 but too tired for good sleeping.

  SUNDAY MAY 2 . . . Poor sleeping for some reason or other, maybe tetanus shot still working.

  MONDAY, MAY 24TH . . . Got up at about 1 a.m. and took two small pills from Washington cache but didn’t do much good. Awoke early & not at all refreshed. Guess this work is very exhausting mentally & I hope to get through with it soon.

  MONDAY, MAY 24TH . . . I’ve noticed that on days when I am “tense” & have “heebeegeebees” I sleep well in night but when don’t have them, sleep not so good. —Haven’t had hbgbs for many days now. Wish I could solve this mystery of myself.

  Elizebeth didn’t see these diary entries but imagined that William must be under great stress, and she worried about his mental state. Throughout April and May, she wrote him constantly while he was gone, sending at least fourteen letters to the military attaché at the American embassy in London for delivery to his secret location. In the letters she focused on small details of life in Washington: their lawn that was cracked and dried from the spring sun; a party with some family friends where they all drank too many old-fashioneds and stayed up until 2 A.M. singing songs around the piano. “I will create pictures for you of the scenes and people present and so seem like a momentary return for you.” She mentioned a mutual friend, Colonel John McGrail of the signal corps, one of the intelligence professionals who had written critical annotations in William’s copy of The American Black Chamber. Like William, McGrail was brilliant, prone to depression, and kind; he sent Elizebeth a corsage of violets on Easter, “the dear sweet thing,” Elizebeth wrote to William, adding that McGrail “seemed more depressed than ever.” She said that William’s Telechron machine in the library, an electric clock, seemed to be ticking at faster-than-normal speed: “Even your telechron misses you. It is running crazily.”

  She mentioned that she had been skipping breakfast to stay slim and was smoking cigarettes in the evenings, a rare admission that she herself was stressed and overwhelmed by the mental strain of her job. One summer day, the temperature inside the Naval Annex reached 110 degrees, with no air conditioning. She was dripping sweat onto her worksheets. Everyone was. The navy commanders declined to send people home, saying that a war was on.

  There was a real danger that if Elizebeth relaxed, even for a week, her Cryptanalytic Unit might fall behind and never catch up. Throughout the summer of 1943, the Nazis rolled out extensive reforms of their crypto systems to improve security. The orders were issued by a respected Nazi cryptographer, Fritz Menzer, who led a staff of twenty-five cipher experts in the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Spies who were still relying on hand ciphers discarded their old methods for Oberinspektor Menzer’s new procedures, and the coast guard codebreakers had to adapt. They worked furiously to solve “Procedure 62,” a double transposition system based on a thirty-one-letter key phrase. In this one, the letters of the message were scrambled once and then scrambled again, and only unscrambled by means of a key phrase that was itself scrambled based on the number of the month.

  Clandestine circuits in Spanish-speaking countries began to use Procedure 62. Another new crypto system, “Procedure 40,” adopted by spies in Madrid and elsewhere, was a substitution method combined with double transposition, both steps sharing the same key phrase. In the substitution step, the phrase was written in a 5-by-5 square of letters. One such key phrase that Elizebeth’s team unearthed was the Spanish proverb donde menos se piensa salta la liebra. Written in the 5-by-5 square, skipping all repeated letters, it looked like this:

  D

  O

  N

  E

  M

  S

  P

  I

  A

  L

  T

  B

  R

  C

  F

  G

  H

  K

  Q

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  Literally the proverb means “Where least expected, the hare jumps,” though a better translation might be “Opportunity knocks where it is least expected.”

  And whatever else demanded her attention during the day, Elizebeth kept going back to Circuit 3-N, the link between Argentina and Berlin.

  She was more convinced than ever that Circuit 3-N was the most important circuit of all. The volume of traffic abruptly rose in April and continued to expand every week. Some days they sent as many as fifteen different messages to Berlin and just as many replies traveled in the opposite direction—an explosion of new leads for Elizebeth and her team to chase down, a deepening abyss of Nazi text.

  Germany seemed as hungry as ever for information about the United States, asking questions about U.S. weapons capabilities and political figures. (“Are there differences of opinion between Roosevelt and his Jewish advisers, above all Roseman, Morgenthau and Frankfurter?”) Berlin often sent requests to the spies in long numbered lists:

  1. The Fisher Co. in Detroit reportedly constructed a new anti-aircraft gun of about 12-centimeter caliber, which is fired by remote control. Urgent question: Construction, mode of action, performances.

  2. What is manufactured in [Henry] Ford’s shop in Iron Mountain? Size of the plant? Since when? Monthly production?

  3. The USA armor bombs: What caliber? Kind of the material? Cross section plan, explosive charge, quantity of (5 letters garbled) and detonator. Is “Explosive D” used?

  4. Details on new development and production of armor-piercing arms and in this, air bombs of USA and England in particular.

  5. Details and particular on development and introduction of rocket weapons . . .

  Such messages were concerning, of course, but they were also straightforward and familiar. Elizebeth had seen hundreds like them on other circuits. What was completely new and sinister about Circuit 3-N was the political intrigue shining through the plaintexts—a whole other level of conspiracy and malice. “Sargo” and “Luna” weren’t just two guys transmitting the shipping news anymore. They had friends across the continent, poised to act in the name of revolution. They were building a secret army.

  For one, it was clear to Elizebeth that the spies had forged an intimate working relationship with powerful Argentine figures. On June 4, 1943, a group of generals had occupied the presidente’s mansion in Buenos Aires, the Casa Rosada, deposing the old regime and installing a new presidente, Pedro Pablo Ramírez. The messages contained references to Ramírez (the Nazis called him “Godes”) and other coup figures, including Juan Perón and Captain Eduardo Aumann, code name “Moreno,” now a high official in the Argentine foreign ministry. Elizebeth noticed that a Nazi agent named “Boss” (Abwehr leader Hans Harnisch) was regularly meeting in secret with these men. “Another important conference with [Presidente] GODES revealed his willingness for energetic collaboration in the interests of the Axis powers,” “Boss” radioed to Berlin on July 24, 1943, adding later that Aumann and others were “ready in every respect to promote mutual interests,” and that “the USA is considered greatest enemy.”

  It wasn’t shocking for Elizebeth to learn that Argentina, a supposedly neutral country, was cooperating with Germany behind closed doors. But the scope of the cooperation was surprisingly extensive. She was seeing glimmers of incredible clandestine missions. “Boss” wrote in one message, “Through our efforts Argentine Government has established close contact with
nationalist groups in Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay; even with Brazil through V-men residing here.” Argentina alone was not enough for the Nazis: They were conspiring to overthrow the governments of Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Brazil. They were trying to run the table, to turn the continent fascist.

  “Sargo” appeared to be the man behind the scenes, the invisible agent traveling from country to country, meeting with revolutionaries, bringing money and information, linking them to one another. He told Berlin he had secured the cooperation of the Paraguayan air force chief, Stagni, who “is completely in our camp” and was glad to fly him around the continent on Paraguayan planes. “Sargo” said he was optimistic about the prospects for a military coup in Bolivia, where he had formed a cell of conspirators with the Bolivian minister of mines and an attaché named Elias Belmonte. And as “Sargo” schemed and plotted in the dark, working on the gritty details of revolution, his colleague “Boss” continued to meet with the Argentines and talk about the big picture. In late August “Boss” attended “a secret session of high officers and officials” of the Argentine government and radioed the following to Berlin:

  Final objective is said to be formation of a bloc of South American countries, which would itself protect its interests, without tutelage of others who pretend to do this. Bolivia must not only be freed from USA influence, but also establish social justice. Argentine can carry out this together with or even in spite of the Bolivian government. Great progress was achieved in negotiations with Chile and further improvement is to be expected. The days of the Rios government with its ambiguous leftist policy are numbered. Chilean military circles had prepared everything in order to follow Argentina’s example [i.e., to launch a coup] . . . haste is necessary . . . there is dissatisfaction with [Paraguayan president] Moringo. It was intimated that change in government there is not excluded . . .

  Perhaps boldest of all, the spies seemed to be arranging a secret weapons deal between Argentina and Nazi Germany. They were trying to figure out a way to get guns and bombs from Berlin to Buenos Aires without the Allies knowing.

  Elizebeth was able to follow every twist of the weapons deal in the plaintexts. The details, she discovered, would be negotiated in Berlin by an Argentine envoy, a local man who would sail from Buenos Aires under diplomatic cover. He had been promised meetings with Himmler and Hitler. “An agent will depart from Argentina to Germany,” one of the spies informed Berlin in July. “Name, rank, mission to follow.”

  In a subsequent message, Elizebeth learned the man’s name: Osmar Hellmuth.

  Donde menos se piensa salta la liebra. She heard a knock.

  Osmar Hellmuth had never felt so important before. He had never done anything quite this exciting. One minute you are at the German Club of Buenos Aires, having a nice conversation with some nice German fellows in riding boots, and the next minute you are back at your flat on the Calle Esmerelda with some different German fellows, discussing an international weapons deal, and you are introduced to a man with unusually long and curling fingernails and told that “this gentleman” will make all arrangements for you to sail across the world for a private audience with the Führer.

  Hellmuth—forty, not too bright, heavyset, with a red mustache and red hair combed straight back—was “easy prey” for the Nazi spy ring, British officials would later conclude. A low-ranking naval officer, he handled minor diplomatic duties for the Argentine government. His portfolio was not enough to make him powerful. But it was enough to afford the kinds of diplomatic protections that brought him to the notice of Siegfried Becker.

  It was the summer of 1943, and Becker’s ambition was growing with his power. He now lived in an upscale neighborhood of Buenos Aires, not far from the palatial home of Juan Perón, whose star had been rising after the coup.

  The two men spoke often, in secret, which is how Becker came to understand that the Argentines had a pressing desire for weapons. Fearing an invasion from Brazil, their enemy and main rival on the continent, they wanted Becker to help procure weapons from Berlin. This was a complicated request. At this stage of the war, weapons were hard to come by—Germany could not easily spare them—and Becker could not simply ask Berlin for weapons because the foreign ministry was controlled by a bureaucratic rival of SS foreign intelligence. The only way to get the weapons, then, was in secret, without “the embassy crowd” finding out.

  This is when Becker approached Osmar Hellmuth, the former insurance salesman, and made him an offer.

  Becker explained to the naive Argentine that the sale of weapons had to be negotiated in person. An envoy was needed, an intermediary. If Hellmuth agreed to accept the mission, Becker explained, he would board a ship in Buenos Aires, the Cabo de Hornos. The ship would sail to the port of Trinidad on the northern shore of the continent, where British officials searched all vessels bound for Europe, and then depart for Spain. Upon Hellmuth’s arrival in Bilbao, Spain, he should check into the Hotel Carlton and wait for an SS agent to approach and speak the words “Greetings from Siegfried Becker.” Hellmuth was to reply, “Ah! The Hauptstürmfuhrer!” The SS man in Bilbao would then arrange for Hellmuth to meet with Nazi leaders, including Himmler and Hitler, and after the deal was arranged, Hellmuth would be rewarded with a cushy consular job in Barcelona.

  “I had a marvellous opportunity to go to Europe,” Hellmuth explained later, “free of expense with a good salary, on an extremely interesting mission, and with good prospects.” He didn’t understand the risks. Becker did. Becker just assumed that if the mission failed, or if the Allies found out about it, no one would be able to trace its genesis back to him. In a brilliant espionage career, this may have been his one fatal mistake.

  Becker wasn’t alone in his miscalculations that summer. Gustav Utzinger, the ring’s radio expert, was also failing to grasp the danger of his position. The Americans—Elizebeth Friedman and her team—had broken his cipher machines and were now reading his every transmission, but for Utzinger, the prospect of a Yankee breaking an Enigma machine was beyond his comprehension.

  This wasn’t to say that he slept soundly at night; like any good radio expert, Utzinger lived in a fog of professional paranoia. He simply assumed that any breaches of his network must be the fault of his incompetent counterparts in Berlin, a consequence of their “dilettantism and lack of imagination,” in his words. They were always making stupid mistakes. They stayed on the airwaves for too long and repeated messages. One evening in July, the radio operator in Berlin transmitted the same message, “OK HELLO,” for fifteen straight minutes over the same frequency. Utzinger scolded Berlin: “The enemy has such an easy time!”

  Gradually, Utzinger’s mood improved. By November 1943, the network seemed poised for a string of terrific successes. Becker assured him that it was almost time for the plotters in Bolivia and elsewhere to activate, the coups to be attempted. That month, Becker befriended a Chilean gunnery sergeant who had just returned from the United States after completing a one-year weapons course offered by the U.S. Navy. The Chilean’s descriptions of U.S. naval capabilities and tactics, relayed to Berlin over the radio, amounted to a detailed American game plan against Nazi ships and U-boats:

  In day fighting, the heavy artillery is said to use the following manner of ranging fire: salvos every 7 seconds. The first salvo 300 yards over the distance, measured by radar. The second salvo the radar distance. The fifth and sixth salvos 200 yards shorter or longer than the fourth salvo. In night fighting, the ranging is carried out by ladder and radar . . . Each shell contains aniline compound which produces intensive coloring of the water, so that the location of the fire can be observed . . . Depth charges [against U-boats] resemble English Vickers [depth charges]. Models with 300 and 600 lb. of TNT charge. The fuze contains 3.25 lbs. of granular TNT . . . exterior depth setting for 30, 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 feet . . .

  The spies wrote this message and the others with their Enigma, ALCSA JYFMK JFNVH KYOIM, transmitting the letters in Morse, dot-dash (A), dot-dash-dot-
dot (L), dash-dot-dash-dot (C), not suspecting that in Washington, an American woman was sitting at a loom, spinning these ugly loops of letters into a sensible fabric of plaintext.

  Becker and Utzinger thought they had everything wrapped up tightly. As far as they could see, there was only one major loose thread in their system, one element beyond their control: Osmar Hellmuth, the former insurance salesman, about to become a diplomat abroad.

  During the final days of September, Becker handed Hellmuth a letter detailing some precision radio instruments they wanted him to purchase and bring back. He also gave Hellmuth several trunks containing sixty kilograms of gifts for friends in Germany. He radioed to Berlin that Hellmuth was on his way. “HELLMUTH enjoys the absolute confidence of the Argentine Government,” Becker wrote. “He is going to bring you lists of the government’s wishes . . . The Argentine Government demands strictest secrecy about the mission.” One last time, in Buenos Aires, the Hauptsturmführer wished his man luck, and on October 2, 1943, Osmar Hellmuth sailed into a faultless blue sea.