The Woman Who Smashed Codes

by Jason Fagone

virtually untouchable until his death in 1972. It’s not quite true that history is written by the winners. It’s written by the best publicists on the winning team.

“I am never quite so gleeful as when I am doing something labeled as an ‘ought not.’ Why is it? Am I abnormal? Why should something with a risk in it give me an exuberant feeling inside me? I don’t know what it is unless it is that characteristic which makes so many people remark that I should have been born a man.”

There were two main animal kingdoms of cipher, “transposition” and “substitution.” A transposition cipher was like Scrabble, a jumbling of the same letters into a new order. A substitution cipher was a swapping of letters. Each kingdom contained a diverse multitude of beasts that had to be tamed in different ways, and there was always a time crunch, someone demanding a quick answer. Invention under pressure.

As a child he had seen his mother exhausted by her cleaning duties. “Home does not entail a spotless kitchen and a faultless parlor,” William wrote. “Home does entail the presence of hearts that beat in unison—whether the shelter be a hovel or a palace.” He was offering her the same freedom to pursue her intellectual ambitions that she had always extended to him—but did she really mean that? In her private heart did Elizebeth wish that her husband had more of a bank account and less of a brain? “Elsbeth, my Dearest, when you say that you want me to go on with my research work—blaze the trail and all that—do you realize that those chaps, poor fortunate-unfortunates, are usually not bank presidents? I should be happy, I think, with a fair share of the comforts and goods of this world, if I could continue with my studies, and unless I am seriously mistaken—and I don’t think I am—you are not the woman to be hankering after life’s luxuries and fineries. If you were, we would never have been attracted to one another.”

This our book we entrusted you a while-ago. Ti manaan apaclam-tz’a lo toon It not-being you-return-give it us Epahal ca-baat tumen ah-men Is-being-sharpened our-axe by the expert. On the wall of the library, to reinforce the message, William and Elizebeth hung an axe with a wooden handle and a black blade.

So this is where the CIA began—with J. Edgar Hoover telling the British to go to hell, and the British not appreciating it.

“Zionism is only one of many virulent forms of a detestable disease known as ‘nationalism,’ ” William wrote to Barbara. “The sooner we realize that we are all God’s children regardless of color, race, creed, nationality, etc., the better for all nations and the world as a whole.”

Elizebeth even went as far as admitting, “Vile creature that he was in many ways, George Fabyan really launched two or three things that were of vital importance to this country,” which was true. For all his malice and superstition, Fabyan threw enough money at actual scientists to accelerate the discovery of actual knowledge. He funded investigations of Nature with a fortune that other tycoons would have spent on yachts and jewels. He succeeded in creating the first real code-breaking institution in America, Riverbank Laboratories, an idea factory christened by wartime realities. It not only forged a new science of immense power; it also spawned a love affair that spread the science and ultimately sharpened it into an antifascist weapon. The modern-day universe of codes and ciphers began in a cottage on the prairie, with a pair of young lovers smiling at each other across a table and a rich man urging them to be spectacular.