Codebreaker Mc
Heike Fallago
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From Rick and Nonnie Burnes
Narration: In WWI Friedman had trained the first team of codebreakers for the US military. During Prohibition she had taken on the most powerful gangsters in the country and brought down an international rum-running operation.
Amy Butler Greenfield, Writer: Her father was a Civil War veteran. He saw his youngest as a difficult child and their relationship absolutely was difficult. Her father did not support her going to college. He was against further education, particularly for women. She manages to talk him into this and he says she can have the money, but at 6% interest. She has to pay it all back.
After graduation, Elizebeth pursued one of the few careers available to women at the time and accepted a teaching job at a small Indiana school. She found the work uninspiring, and quit after just a year.
Jason Fagone, Author, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: George Fabyan had so much money that he could do essentially anything that he wanted. And what he wanted to do was to build a playground for science. He would go out and hire some of the leading scientists of the day, bring them to Riverbank, essentially collecting these scientists and he would set them loose and tell them to be spectacular. Tell them to make breakthroughs. Tell them to unlock the secrets of nature.
Narration: Fabyan assigned Elizebeth the job of ferreting out the secret message he believed Bacon had implanted in the text. Excited by the challenge, she first had to master a method of encoding messages invented by Francis Bacon in 1623.
Narration: Her work with the Shakespeare manuscripts would bring her together with the young man who was photographing and enlarging the Shakespeare texts, William Friedman. Genetics was his field of expertise. Photography was his hobby.
Amy Butler Greenfield, Writer: The two of them go ahead and despite the differences in their background, despite the family opposition, despite the lack of money, despite all the many reasons why they should not get married, they do.
Jason Fagone, Author, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: The invention of radio completely transformed the value of code breaking. So it put an incredible premium on cryptography, on strong codes and ciphers because now that those messages were flying through the air they had to be protected. The problem for America is that on the eve of World War I the United States was completely unprepared to break codes in the war.
David Hatch, Senior Historian, NSA: Prior to the publications at Riverbank from Elizebeth and William, cryptology had been thought of as a field for linguists, for people with knowledge about foreign cultural areas and perhaps math might be a tool. But the Riverbank Laboratories publications turned cryptology from language to statistics.
Technological innovations were fueling a global race to create evermore advanced devices for making and breaking codes. The post-war world was still a dangerous place. In 1921, William went to work for the Army Signal Corps developing new cipher machines.
Barbara Osteika, Federal Law Enforcement Historian: She was able to explain basically to the US government and all of its federal law enforcement agencies what organized crime looked like, how they were doing their job and how to stop them. And that is really visionary...
Barbara Osteika: They had the network from the manufacturer of the liquor to the final distribution of that liquor to speakeasies and nightclubs. When the government went after CONEXCO it would be like the government going after Walmart today.
Jason Fagone, Author, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: And whenever Elizebeth tried to explain how she solved the messages these six lawyers, men, would often stand up and object and say that it was some kind of witchcraft, that code breaking was not science, that Elizebeth was just making a guess.
Jason Fagone, Author, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: She got so fed up with the repeated objections of the defense attorneys that she asked a judge if she could have access to a blackboard. And Elizebeth proceeded to give a class in code breaking. And by the time she was finished the defense attorneys had nothing else to say.
Jason Fagone, Author, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: William at that point was still the main breadwinner in the household. He made much more money than Elizebeth did. And so the fact of him being in the psych ward, the uncertainty about his future created a much bigger uncertainty about both of their lives.
Amy Butler Greenfield, Writer: If we could miss something as big as Elizebeth, who is crucial in two world wars, who fights crime, who fights the mob, if we missed her, who else are we missing?
Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristina McMorris will love this gripping historical novel based on the true story of the woman who used her codebreaking skills to bring down Prohibition gangsters and WWII Nazis, and who ultimately helped found the present-day CIA.
"Lady Codebreaker is a refreshing and brilliant standout addition to the library of historical fiction. Based on a true story, K.D. Alden masterfully tells the sweeping story of codebreaker Grace Feldman, a woman ahead of her time whose tireless daring helped defeat the likes of Al Capone and Adolf Hitler, but whose gifts were mostly overlooked due to her gender. This isn't just another war story, but also a tale of love and sacrifice along with fascinating historical anecdotes and characters to add richness to an already compelling narrative. Alden's meticulous research brings Feldman's story to life making this an emotionally gripping and utterly satisfying novel."
The attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago set in motion a series of battles in the Pacific between the Japanese and the United States. The turning point in the Pacific came in June 1942, when the U.S. surprised and defeated the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway.
That victory was possible, in large part, because of the work of a little-known naval codebreaker named Joe Rochefort. Rochefort, responsible for the Pacific Fleet's radio intelligence unit at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, felt immense guilt at his failure to predict it.
NPR's Neal Conan speaks with journalist and historian Elliot Carlson, whose book, Joe Rochefort's War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway, gives an in-depth account of Rochefort's life and career in the Navy, his unsuccessful efforts to find the Japanese fleet before Pearl Harbor and, ultimately, his redemption at Midway.
"The fact of the matter is you can't track ships that do not emit signals. And the Japanese striking force that left the Kure Isles on Nov. 25 emitted no signals. Rochefort was not asleep at the switch. He was watching the situation in the South China Sea where a totally different Japanese force was assembling to move down to Malaya, Singapore and points south, Borneo and so forth.
"And some of the work was also being done in Washington on a research basis but not reading current traffic. By Dec. 7, JN25 consisted of 50,000 code groups. And by Dec. 7th, about 2,000 had been compromised, by no means enough to read any messages."
"The people who knew Rochefort just hated that characterization. They said it was totally false, that Rochefort was not the loudmouthed, wisecracking, cigar-chomping, sloppy guy who wandered around Pearl Harbor in a smoking jacket. Rochefort, in fact, was a total aristocratic, quiet, soft-spoken guy who did have a very acerbic wit, a withering sense of humor that he would direct at those who were his adversaries. But he wasn't the loudmouthed redneck we see Hal Holbrook play. And they resented that characterization very strongly, that it didn't do him justice. He was, in fact, a very different kind of gentleman."
"King [denied the award] on the recommendation of his staff. His staff was made up of people who knew Rochefort and actually despised him for all kinds of different reasons. ... He did not suffer fools lightly. And the chief of staff for King was a guy named Russell Wilson, who Rochefort encountered on the battleship Pennsylvania many years earlier. And Rochefort thought he was a stuffed shirt, and he conveyed this to him in various ways. Now, Rochefort's friends warned him that you can't talk to people that way. These people are going to be pretty important someday, and they turned out to be pretty important someday.
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