One married couple was responsible for the foundations of modern code breaking, and the principles that gave the NSA a head start in cryptanalysis. Though the husband, William Friedman, is usually apportioned the lion’s share of the credit, his wife Elizebeth Friedman was in every way his equal. During World War II, both worked under total secrecy, and only now are we learning about Elizebeth’s critical work uncovering the secrets of Nazi spies—and cracking the codes of the notorious “Doll Lady” suspected of working for the Japanese.

Velvalee Dickinson whirled around on the two FBI men and tried to scratch out their eyes. It was January 21, 1944. The agents had staked out the vault at the Bank of New York, waiting for Dickinson to walk in and open her safe-deposit box, and as soon as she did, unlocking a drawer that contained $15,900 in cash, the FBI agents said they had a warrant for her arrest. Dickinson shouted that she didn’t know why. She was fifty years old, a widow, a frail-looking ninety-four pounds, with brunette hair. She made such a kicking commotion that the men had to pick her up by the armpits and carry her away.

From THE WOMAN WHO SMASHED CODES by Jason Fagone. Copyright © 2017 by Jason Fagone. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

The FBI arrested Dickinson because of five suspicious letters that had been previously intercepted by postal inspectors and forwarded to the bureau. The letters talked about dolls and the condition of dolls, some of which were damaged: “English dolls,” “foreign dolls,” a “doll hospital,” and a “Siamese dancer” doll “tore in middle.” The first of the five letters read in part, “You asked me to tell you about my collection. A month ago I had to give a talk to an art club, so I talked about my dolls and figurines. The only new dolls I have are these three lovely new Irish dolls. One of these three dolls is an old Fishermen with a Net over his back. Another is an old woman with wood on her back and the third is a little boy.” The letter had been addressed to Señora Inéz Lopez Molinari in Buenos Aires. No such person existed; the letter was returned to the address listed on the envelope, the address of one of Dickinson’s customers, a Mrs. Mary E. Wallace in Springfield, Ohio, who was confused to read the letter, as she had not written it.

Dickinson owned a doll shop on Madison Avenue in New York and had developed a reputation for her artistry—she sold dolls for as much as $750 apiece—yet the bureau discovered that she had fallen into debt after the death of her husband, that she was a member of the Japanese-American Society, and she had visited the West Coast in January 1942, immediately after Pearl Harbor. The FBI tested the shapes of ink on the letters against Dickinson’s seized typewriter and confirmed a match; the bureau’s investigation also revealed social ties between Dickinson and Japanese consular officials.

After the agents arrested Dickinson in January 1944, a federal prosecutor took up the case: Edward C. Wallace, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Wallace had worked with Elizebeth Smith Friedman in the smuggling days and hoped to get her opinion on the Doll Lady’s letters, but first he called the supervisor of the FBI’s New York office and asked if the bureau had any objection to showing Elizebeth the letters.

Within the FBI, the prosecutor’s request provoked a remarkable exchange of at least eight phone calls, teletype messages, and memos that traveled up the chain from the FBI’s New York office to Washington and ultimately to the desk of J. Edgar Hoover. The gist of these communications was that the prosecutor, Edward Wallace, wanted Elizebeth and spoke highly of her—“According to Mr. Wallace,” an FBI agent in Washington wrote in a memo to Hoover’s deputy, “Mrs. Friedman and her husband, who is a cryptographer for the Army, are recognized as the leading authorities in the country and have written numerous books on the subject”—but FBI agents worried that Elizebeth would siphon publicity from the bureau, stealing its spotlight. The agents seemed reluctant to speak of Elizebeth as an independent analyst separate from her husband. Although no one had ever discussed involving William in the case, the supervisor of the FBI’s New York office fretted that the Friedmans, plural, “might, in the event of a successful espionage prosecution, attempt to lay claim for any work that they might have performed in this connection.”

The New York office sent Hoover a teletype on March 18, 1944: “advise as to submission questioned letters to Elizabeth Friedman for examination.” Hoover responded with a dismissive shrug of a memo: “Concerning the project to submit the documents to Mrs. Friedman...There appears no point is to be gained by multiplying the number of examiners.” But he posed no formal objection, so U.S. Attorney Wallace went ahead and sent Elizebeth the Doll Lady’s letters, and Elizebeth analyzed them and crystallized her thoughts into a five-page letter before traveling to New York at the feds’ expense to discuss the case with Wallace in person.