William Friedman, has become a revered figure to intelligence historians. He is called “the world’s greatest cryptologist” by the eminent chronicler of secret writing David Kahn: “Singlehandedly,” Kahn writes, “he made his country preeminent in his field.” William Friedman is also widely considered to be the father of the National Security Agency, the part of the U.S. government that intercepts foreign communications and sifts them for information—“signals intelligence.” He wrote the definitive textbooks that trained generations of NSA analysts who are still working today.
