Secret Weapons

To the untutored eye, the photograph, on the library wall in a quiet brick house on Capitol Hill looks like any other sentimental memento of World War I--a double rank of Army officers seeming foolishly dated in their choked collars. But, like virtually everything else surrounding slight, modest, 64-year-old William Frederick Friedman, there is more to the picture than meets the eye. "Note," he says, pointing with enthusiasm to his old colleagues, "some of the faces are slightly turned. That's because the picture is actually a sentence in biliteral code." Its message: "Knowledge is power."

Few men know about the power that lies in William Friedman's uncanny knowledge of such things as biliteral codes and complicated ciphers, but even a hint as to his accomplishments has been enough to make many a thoughtful citizen gasp in awe and respect. As the nation's top cryptanalyst, i.e., breaker of secret codes, William Friedman is one of very few men in U.S. history to receive both the Medal for Merit and the National Security Medal. In 1944, he was awarded the prized War Department Commendation for Exceptional Civilian Service. Last week, with only a vague idea of what it was rewarding him for but with no doubt whatever of the merits, the U.S. Senate passed a special bill voting William Friedman $100,000 for services rendered.

Listening to Chitchat. What had he done? Mostly listened with a sharper and more discerning ear than anyone else to the chitchat of the enemies of the U.S. ever since the beginning of World War I. According to World War II Chief of Staff George Marshall, the cracking of the famed Japanese "purple" code, for which Friedman was principally responsible, led to vital foreknowledge of Hitler's intentions in Europe and gave the U.S. Navy a priceless advantage in intelligence that led to such critical victories as Coral Sea, Midway and subsequent bold carrier strikes. Friedman himself gently declines to take so much credit. "There is no single person," he once said, "to whom the major share of credit should go. It represents an achievement of the Army cryptanalytic bureau." But the fact is that, more than any other, it was Friedman who raised the science of cryptanalysis to its present high standard.

Raising Hell. A Russian immigrant who came to America with his parents at the age of 1 i 1/2, Cryptanalyst Friedman developed an early interest in ciphers. Like many another schoolboy, he caught the bug by reading Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug. But he put his new-found knowledge to no nobler use than that of exchanging cryptic love notes with a winsome classmate. After trying his hand in an ironworks after graduation from high school, young Friedman at last decided to work his way through agricultural college and become a farmer. Graduating close to the top of his class at Cornell, he was offered a job by one Colonel George Fabyan, a wealthy Chicago eccentric and dry-goods tycoon with a 500-acre estate near Geneva. "What do you do on your estate?" asked Friedman. "I raise hell," said the colonel.

With the aid of a large staff of assistants, the colonel passed his time conducting vast experiments in genetics, buying up old lots of abandoned express packages on the chance that they might contain something interesting, filling his house with furniture that hung on chains from the ceiling, and--from a special chair suspended from a huge tree before a great, open-air fireplace--delivering daily the hell he promised. Mrs. Fabyan contented herself with the relatively quieter companionship of a free-roving chimpanzee and a small private zoo of bears, wolves and coyotes.

A Slight Odor. Setting up bachelor quarters in a windmill, Friedman went to work and in time was put in charge of a project by which the colonel, among others, hoped to prove by cipher that Sir Francis Bacon had written the entire works of Shakespeare (see FOREIGN NEWS). After achieving this lofty honor, Friedman married one of the colonel's as sistant cipher clerks, Elizabeth Smith. As World War I loomed on the European horizon, the impulsive colonel learned with a start that the U.S. Government had no cryptologists whatever. With scarcely a by-your-leave, he offered the services of his entire crew, including Friedman. From then on for nearly two years, much of the Government's cryptological effort was located at the Fabyan farm. Said William Friedman of the change: "I was seduced from an honorable profession to one with a slight octor."

In 1921, after a brief return to the colonel, Friedman left his old employer for good to join the War Department. The six months for which he originally signed up stretched imperceptibly to a period lasting almost 35 years, during most of which his work was shrouded in the deepest silence. Some of the elaborate decoding machines that he invented were even too secret to be patented or marketed, and it was for these that the Government rewarded him last week. But as William Friedman and his ever-growing army of assistants worked in the darkness, their knowledge grew and with it the power of the U.S.

Now in retirement after three heart attacks, but still an ardent cryptanalyst, William spends happy hours with his wife Elizabeth working at their hobby. They will soon publish a book, intended to prove, by cryptanalysis, that the works of Shakespeare were written by Shakespeare.

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