by Jason Fagone
with a burgundy binding Giambattista della Porta, De furtivis literarum notis, vulgo de Ziferis (Naples, 1563; forgery, London, 1591), Item 119, WFF Collection.
156 “He came up to me one morning” WFF, “Communications Intelligence and Security,” 9.
American University in 1929 ESF’s graduate-school course sheets, box 4, folder 23, ESF Collection.
his copy of the Voynich Manuscript Bauer, Unsolved! 83–86, includes a great account of the Voynich study group that WFF started at NSA in 1944 and his attempts to make sense of the weird manuscript using NSA technology.
“worked on the cryptogram” WFF speech to NSA, 1958, box 8, folder 4, ESF Collection.
157 “for my work in the FBI” FBI, “The Hoover Legacy, 40 Years After: Part 2: His First Job and the FBI Files,” June 28, 2012, https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/copy_of_the-hoover-legacy-40-years-after.
a professor friend Sheldon, “The Friedman Collection: An Analytical Guide,” 434.
157 a crimson warrior swinging an axe This image is pasted inside almost every book in the WFF Collection.
158 her death in 1934 WFF and ESF, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (London: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 208.
“I have no facilities” Leroy Hennessey, “Twas Bill! Nay, Bacon! But Now E’en Fabyan Knows Not Who Did Shakespeare,” Chicago Evening American (January 1922): box 14, “The Ideal Scrap Book,” NYPL.
called Yardley an “ass” George Fabyan to WFF, September 16, 1931, Item 734, WFF Collection.
Fabyan seemed glum and tired Ibid., May 10, 1934.
159 complained of a hernia Ibid., May 31, 1935.
“Always the same old, GF” Ibid.
age of sixty-nine Richard Munson, George Fabyan: The Tycoon Who Broke Ciphers, Ended Wars, Manipulated Sound, Built a Levitation Machine, and Organized the Modern Research Center (North Charleston, SC: Porter Books, 2013), 141–42.
a letter from an old Riverbank colleague Cora Jensen to WFF and ESF, May 29, 1936, box 7, folder 18, ESF Collection.
It went dark Munson, George Fabyan, 141–42.
far less money Jensen to WFF and ESF.
$175,000 to his widow “Will of Col. Fabyan Filed Tuesday Leaves $175,000 to Widow,” 1936 newspaper clipping from Jensen, box 7, folder 18, ESF Collection.
Nelle died John W. Kopec, The Sabines at Riverbank: Their Role in the Science of Architectural Acoustics (Woodbury, NY: Acoustical Society of America, 1997), 56.
Cumming was killed Ibid.
$70,500 “Buy $800,000 Fabyan Estate as Playground,” 1936 newspaper clipping from Jensen, box 7, folder 18, ESF Collection.
“hands it might fall into” George Fabyan to WFF, July 29, 1935, Item 734, WFF Collection.
160 wrote to his widow, Nelle WFF note in red pencil beginning “Colonel Fabyan’s last letter to me,” Item 734, WFF Collection.
ordered many records to be burned ESF interview with Valaki, transcribed January 12, 2012, 2–3.
prevent embarrassing revelations Ibid.
“A lie!” WFF, annotated copy of Herbert O. Yardley, The American Black Chamber (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931), Item 604, 43, WFF Collection.
“This is a patchwork” Ibid., 44.
“Lies, lies, lies” Ibid.
161 unable to find a new job Kahn, The Reader, 104.
161 “a glimpse behind the heavy curtains” Yardley, The American Black Chamber, Foreword.
there was no harm Ibid.
31,119 copies Kahn, The Reader, 131.
“A lovely girl dances” Yardley, The American Black Chamber, Foreword.
“the beautiful blonde woman” Ibid., 90–119.
“It did seem to me” Yardley, The American Black Chamber, 329.
searched her desk Ibid., 331.
162 “damned lie” WFF copy of ibid.
Yardley embellished Kahn, The Reader, 113.
compressed time, invented dialogue Ibid., 117.
startle adversaries WFF, “World War I Codes and Ciphers” (lecture, SCAMP, 1958), 22–23, NSA.
“A lie! Which can be so proved” WFF copy of Yardley, The American Black Chamber, 45.
163 four of his colleagues in the army Ibid., front matter.
Hollywood movies Kahn, The Reader, 173–86.
Congress passed a law T. M. Hannah, “The Many Lives of Herbert O. Yardley,” Cryptologic Spectrum 11, no. 4 (1981): 5–29.
“Widespread interest in the romantic stories” “Extract from R.I.P. No. 98,” April 5, 1943, 118–23, NSA.
“I’ll confess, Mrs. Friedman” ESF interview with Santry.
164 “I never thought of my job” Ibid.
from the glassed-in control room ESF autobiography, 76.
“Does the habit?” ESF interview with Santry.
165 preferred speaking with female reporters ESF autobiography, 71.
166 code books designed for Chinese merchants Chinese Telegraph Code book used in ESF’s Gordon Lim case, 342.3, WFF Collection.
“The whole deciphering science” ESF interview with Santry.
intercepted letters and telegrams U.S. Customs Service, memorandum about the Ezra case, Frederick S. Freed, supervising customs agent, June 8, 1933, box 11, folder 10, ESF Collection; see also Leah Stock Helmick, “Key Woman of the T-men,” Reader’s Digest (September 1937): 51–55.
Green Gang of criminal warlords ESF’s Ezra case files list “Paul A. Yip” as the Shanghai contact of the Ezra twins. For background on Yip, see Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen, Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug Trade (Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 159. The book describes Yip as “Green Gang member, opium trafficker, and double agent.” The Ezra case files are in box 6, folder 25, ESF Collection.
166 520 tins of smoking opium Freed memorandum, June 8, 1933.
EZRA GANG FALLS IN TRAP “Ezra Gang Falls in Trap of Woman Expert in Puzzles,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 28 or 29, 1933, box 18, folder 5, ESF Collection.
“supplied the Federals” Ibid.
167 “We have to keep our ideas secret” Ibid.
begged reporters to credit “Woman Jails Dope Runners,” Universal Service, box 18, folder 5, ESF Collection.
“The mystery-lure” ESF to F. E. Pollio, February 14, 1938, box 1, folder 9, ESF Collection.
“She is entrusted” Helmick,“Key Woman of the T-men.”
more than a million subscribers Trusted Media Brands, “Expansion (1930s–70s),” http://www.tmbi.com/history/.
“could lead to only one conclusion” “Extract from R.I.P. No. 98.”
stormed into William’s office Ronald Clark, The Man Who Broke Purple: Life of Colonel William F. Friedman, Who Deciphered the Japanese Code in World War II (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), 179.
168 “I lost my tongue completely” Ibid., 180.
Elizebeth flew to Vancouver ESF Vancouver trip log.
thirteen Luger pistols A. H. Williamson, “Woman Translates Code Jargon in Assizes at Trial of Five Chinese,” newspaper clipping, box 18, folder 6, ESF Collection.
that were translated into English Ibid.
“select fully Wat list” Ibid.
“hams,” “presses,” and “tails” “Woman Helps Canada Break Big Opium Ring,” New York Times, February 8, 1938.
169 CANADA SMASHES Staff Correspondent, “Canada Smashes Opium Ring with U.S. Woman’s Aid,” Christian Science Monitor, February 9, 1938.
WOMAN TRANSLATES CODE JARGON A. H. Williamson, “Woman Translates Code Jargon in Assizes at Trial of Five Chinese,” box 18, folder 6, ESF Collection.
“careers unusual for their sex” “These Women Make Their Hobbies Pay,” Look, February 15, 1938, 46.
printed fourteen pages James W. Booth, “Lady Manhunter,” Detective Fiction Weekly, September 28, 1940, 60–73.
a newspaper editor A list of Booth’s stories is available at the Crime, Mystery & Gangster Fiction Magazine Index maintained by Phil Stephenson-Payne, http://www.philsp.
com/homeville/cfi/s116.htm#A2001.
“PLEASE COOPERATE” Theodore Adams to ESF (telegram), box 6, folder 4, ESF Collection.
“Ad Absurdum!” Ibid.
169 she had taught her husband everything ESF autobiography, 73.
regale him with stories WFF to ESF, December 29, 1938.
“When people introduce me” Ibid.
170 never wanted to see her name ESF to Mrs. T. N. Alford, October 19 (no year given, 1938 or 1939), box 1, folder 9, ESF Collection.
Hawaii in October 1938 WFF, “Important Contributions to Communications Security, 1939–1945,” 1, NSA.
“highly secret communications” Ibid.
install and test them Rowlett, The Story of Magic, 142.
six bulky cipher machines WFF, “Important Contributions.”
books of essays and poetry WFF to ESF, January 6, 1939, ESF Collection.
Nazi mobs in a thousand German towns Martin Gilbert, “The Night of Broken Glass,” in Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 23–41.
hacked apart a grand piano Ibid., 47.
her sister was simply overworked Edna Dinieus to ESF, January 1, 1939, small blue binder.
171 sometimes able to sneak on WFF to ESF, January 6, 1939, ESF Collection.
got the sense his wife was struggling Ibid., December 21, 1938, large blue binder.
“I can almost forsee” Ibid.
a Christmas dance for passengers Ibid.
“simple personal habits” “Munich Cardinal Praises Hitler’s ‘Personal Habits,’ ” Washington Post, January 1, 1939.
“far-reaching consequences” Voices of the Manhattan Project, “Columbia University,” Atomic Heritage Foundation and Los Alamos Historical Society, http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/location/columbia-university.
172 the moon rose fat and white WFF to ESF, January 6, 1939, 26.
He played shuffleboard Ibid., November 29, 1938.
he sent to Milton Bradley Ibid.
ran to thirty pages Ibid.
“I hope these sheets” Ibid.
love poems by Tennyson Ibid., 21. The Tennyson poem he quoted was an erotic one, “The Miller’s Daughter”: “And I would be the necklace / and all day long to fall and rise / Upon her balmy bosom / With her laughter or her sighs.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/50267.
“shelter’d here upon a breast” William Makepeace Thackeray, “Song of the Violet,” in The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), 291.
172 “For I’ve known” WFF to ESF, January 6, 1939, 23.
173 stood at the top deck’s rail Ibid.
One night when it was hot Ibid.
“The ocean,” he said Ibid., 19.
CHAPTER 1: GRANDMOTHER DIED
177 “Lights out ’cause I can see in the dark” Fugazi, “Caustic Acrostic,” recorded March–September 1997 on End Hits, Dischord Records No. 110, compact disc.
At 4 P.M. on August 31, 1939 Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS, trans. Richard Barry (New York: Penguin, 2000), 260–66.
178 “Grossmutter gestorben” Ibid.
an excuse to start a war Ibid.
250,000 by 1939 “The SS (Schutzstaffel): Background and Overview,” Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-the-ss.
“the guillotine used” Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, 3.
“enveloped in the mysterious aura” Ibid., 1.
179 a forty-three-year-old Catholic farmer Bob Graham, “World War II’s First Victim,” Telegraph (London), August 29, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html.
“Attention, this is Gliwice” Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head, 260–66.
At dawn Steven M. Gillon, FDR Leads the Nation into War (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 8–9.
woke to a ringing phone Ibid.
“Well, Bill” Ibid.
Later that morning Franklin Delano Roosevelt press conference, September 1, 1939, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15798.
180 the possibility of direct Nazi attacks Richard L. McGaha, “The Politics of Espionage: Nazi Diplomats and Spies in Argentina, 1933–1945” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio University, 2009), 392–93.
destabilize foreign governments Ibid.
Roosevelt was convinced Ibid.
a 1940 speech to Congress Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress on Appropriations for National Defense,” speech, May 16, 1940, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15954.
181 within reach of Nazi bombing raids Frank Knox, “Our Heavy Responsibilities to the Nation,” speech to the St. Louis Conference of the United States Conference of Mayors, February 20, 1941, http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/1941-02-20a.html.
181 140,000 arriving Stefan Rinke, “German Migration to Latin America (1918–1933),” in Thomas Adam, ed., Germany and the Americas: O-Z (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 27–31.
A “bewildering abundance” Stefan Zweig, Brazil: Land of the Future, trans. Andrew St. James (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 82.
“The glare of the sun” Ibid.
“some gigantic building site” Ibid., 214.
182 open windows of brothels Waldo Frank, South of Us: The Characters of the Countries and the People of Central and South America (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1940), 113–14.
two hundred in Argentina alone “Interrogation of Edmund Von Thermann, German Ambassador to the Argentine from 1934 to 1942,” RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, Entry 188, box 26, NARA.
“a fair sale for German Bibles” U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Commerce Reports, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1915), 1011, https://books.google.com/books?id=1eA9AQAAMAAJ.
spoke only German “German Immigration to Brazil.”
“The German spirit” Stephen Bonsal, “Greater Germany in South America,” The North American Review 176 (January 1903): 58–67.
“this part of the world” “German Political Designs with Reference to Brazil,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 4 (November 1919): 586–610, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505875.
“complete subservience” Thermann interrogation.
uniforms of green Victoria González-Rivera and Karen Kampwirth, eds., Radical Women in Latin America: Left and Right (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 241–42.
183 “mustachioed like Hitler” David Sheinin and Lois Baer Barr, eds., The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America: New Studies on History and Literaure (New York: Garland Publishers, 1996), 210.
“Discipline, Hierarchy, Order” McGaha, “The Politics of Espionage,” 271.
Adolfo Hirohito Ibid., 272.
found much to admire Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina (London: Granta, 2003), 37–38.
found it “embarrassing” Thermann interrogation.
“Knowing that war was going” McGaha, “The Politics of Espionage,” 98–99.
183 “without much effort” Thermann interrogation.
184 course in espionage tradecraft George E. Sterling, “The History of the Radio Intelligence Division Before and During World War II,” unpublished manuscript, PDF file, http://www.w3df.com, 78–79.
actually looked like ink Hedwig Elisabeth Weigelmayer Sommer interrogation by Boyd V. Sheets, RG 65, Classification 64 (IWG), box 211, 57, NARA.
shrunk documents Ibid.
All This and Heaven Too Rachel Field, All This and Heaven Too (New York: Macmillan, 1939). For the ESF and Allied intelligence aspects of the book, see Sterling, “History of the Radio Intelligence Division,” 60, and Rose Mary Sheldon, “The Friedman Collection: An Analytical Guide,” rev. October 2013, Marshall Foundation, PDF file, 345–46.
185 fit in a suitcase Sterling, “The History of the Radio Intelligence Division,” 78–79.
t
wo kinds of suicide drugs Sommer interrogation, 57.
its most capable Funkmeister “Gustav Utzinger” is an alias—his birth name was Wolf Emil Franczok—but he was known in South America primarily as Gustav Utzinger, so I am using that name in the text. The bulk of the information about Utzinger’s career comes from a postwar interrogation at the Wannsee Internment Camp in Germany. See Robert Murphy, “Reporting the Interrogation of Wolf Emil Franczok, Alias Gustav Utzinger,” October 24, 1947, RG 65, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, box 18, 64-27116, NARA. There are two sections of numbered pages in this document: an opening section of enclosures containing sworn statements by Utzinger, followed by a report of an interrogation.
186 she freely shared anecdotes ESF speech to Mary Barteleme Club, Crystal Ballroom, Blackstone Hotel, Chicago, November 30, 1951, box 17, folder 10, ESF Collection.
“a vast dome of silence” Ibid.
her husband’s biographer ESF interview with Clark.
“the world began to pop” ESF interview with Pogue, 4.
were still with her ESF interview with R. Louis Benson, January 9, 1976, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from NSA; received October 2015; originally requested by G. Stuart Smith.
187 chomping on the pipe “Robert Gordon and Elizebeth S. Friedman at a Desk,” photograph, 1940, ESF Collection.
the cipher machines she kept “History of USCG Unit #387.”
reported to the chief ESF interview with Benson.
187 dread phone calls ESF autobiography, 78.
the unit began to analyze Ibid., 77.
188 first gunfight Bennett Lessmann, “The Story of the SS Arauca: A Wartime Saga in Broward County,” Broward Legacy 31, no. 1 (2011): 1–12.
“AM TRYING TO RUN” “Arauca messages,” box 6, folder 5, ESF Collection.
“THE CRUISER HAS TRAINED” Ibid.
“CRUISER NAMED ORION” Ibid.
“THREE AMERICAN ARMY PLANES” Ibid.