THE CODEBREAKERS

by DAVID KAHN

  As an example, Mrs. Friedman gave a series of intercepts sent between a shore station and the rumrunner Bear Cat that were solved only much later. A 125-foot Coast Guard cutter was trailing Bear Cat, which, upon reporting this, was instructed to head for the open sea as if she were starting across the Atlantic. On September 22, 1930, Bear Cat wirelessed: Am now 120 miles south east Fire Island Light and still going. Advise. Replied the shore station: Keep on going. Cutter not likely to stay much longer. And indeed the next day the cutter, apparently convinced of Bear Cat’s legitimacy, now that she was 200 miles out, dropped the chase—whereupon Bear Cat promptly returned to her original rendezvous and made contact. “If the contents of the foregoing messages had been made known to the base to which the 125-footer belonged,” Mrs. Friedman wrote, “the latter would certainly have been ordered to stay with the Black indefinitely.”

  Mrs. Friedman consequently urged the establishment of a seven-man cryptanalytic section at headquarters, consisting of a cryptanalyst in charge at $4,000 a year, an assistant cryptanalyst in charge at $2,000, a senior cryptographic clerk at $2,000, a cryptographic clerk at $1,800, and three assistant cryptographic clerks at $1,620 each, for a total of $14,660. “Fuel maintenance alone of one destroyer amounts annually to a sum thousands of dollars in excess of the total cost of operating this central unit,” she wrote in her memorandum. “At the present time each Coast Guard vessel travels thousands and thousands of miles annually in a blind search over a given area. In the future, under such a plan as outlined, all such aimless activity could be eliminated and the mileage reduced to a very marked degree because the course and contact positions of any given rum-runner would be known.” These arguments convinced. The Coast Guard included money for this cryptanalytic section in its budget, Congress approved it, and on July 1, 1931, it came into being. The personnel were mostly Coast Guard radiomen.

  On April 7 and 8, 1932, it did just as Mrs. Friedman had foreseen. Radio-intelligence units solved messages from an offshore rumrunner saying that she was then alongside a collier and loading her with liquor. Since the name of the collier and its destination were unknown, the Coast Guard advised all units to search all colliers arriving in Atlantic ports within the next few days. On April 8, Maurice Tracy and Eastern Temple arrived in New York and were searched. Nothing was found on Eastern Temple, but after the cargo of coal was discharged from Maurice Tracy, inspectors found a large quantity of liquor concealed in a special compartment. Again, early in November, 1932, CG-214 intercepted and read messages from the Canadian rumrunner Amacita indicating that she would land liquor in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. The Coast Guard vessels coolly waited until Amacita steamed into the bay, then pounced and seized her with a full load of liquor. The penalty assessed was $107,661.

  More often, however, the radio-intelligence organization did not realize its optimistic expectations of being able to read current messages quickly enough to have them acted upon—perhaps because the Depression reduced bootlegging activity. Nevertheless, the cryptanalytic section at headquarters and the floating radio-intelligence units under Lieutenant Meals did furnish information that helped capture and convict one “rummy” after another. For example, the organization solved messages of the rumrunner John Manning long after they were of current value. A typical message was that sent at 5 p.m. on September 28, 1930, giving 4AR, a shore station, the location of CEE, the John Manning: CEE YIBOG NW WFYLO WFYJE WYDHO WYBEC WYBUG WYBFO ZABYS, meaning, John Manning’s position now 42 miles south by east Fire Island Lightvessel. A few months later, a message on February 24, 1931, told John Manning to Go to 25 miles east by south from Winter Quarter Light-vessel to meet a Bull Line ship at 11 p.m. there…. Though the message was solved too late to catch the two ships in the act of transferring liquor, the mention of the Bull Line caused the Coast Guard to undertake an investigation, and eventually to seize the Bull Line freighter Arlyn in New York. The cryptanalyzed evidence helped to convict its master and three others and to sentence them to a year and a day in jail for conspiracy to smuggle liquor into the United States, while Arlyn’s owners paid $10,000 to release the vessel.

  In addition, the five floating radio-intelligence cutters, plus some shore-bound interceptors, helped furnish information that led to one raid after another on shore stations, often leading to captures of the smugglers’ code-books. On December 15, 1930, for example, Coast Guard radiomen began picking up traffic from an unlicensed station. At 2:59 p.m. January 2, 1931, Radioman 1/c E. D. Bump in Brooklyn copied this message to 1FJ, one of the station’s call-signs, from 3JP, a rum ship: 1FJ DE 3JP R HW MSG CK25 AHOHR AFAZQ ACXED STOP AGATA AETCU AHGHM AFHCD AGYSE AHMMS AIALN AFMZC AGEBC STOP ABYTM WILL QRS AGATA AHIPY ACYJF TMW AM STOP AFXKY LATER AR AR. Triangulation soon located the station at 5671 Hudson Boulevard, North Bergen, New Jersey. Law-enforcement officers raided it on January 23, 1931, arresting Frank H. Brown and finding a codebook that ran from 00001 ABACT = again to 03108 AJLHI = bank, together with “two sheets of cipher alphabet.” With this aid the message of January 2 was read as: R HW [meaning unknown] Message check 25 [groups]. [We will] try lose cutter Stop Position is 12 miles southwest Fire Island Lightvessel 9 p.m. Stop Boat will wait position there daylight tomorrow morning Stop Password later. The doubled AR at the end may have been a signature. This and other messages were collected for use as evidence for a rumrunning prosecution.

  In another case, after almost two months of intercepting such messages as Z 5 GR 8 Q844 Q997 Q823 Q985 Q833 L394 T269 Q797 T239 AR AS, lawmen swooped down on 448 Highland Avenue, Newark, New Jersey. As the New York Journal put it in the supercharged style of the day: “Federal agents struck with a vicious hand today at the very vitals of a gigantic rum ring, raiding its $100,000 radio broadcasting station at Newark and silencing the unseen voice that guides its carriers of contraband into sheltered coves at night.” The entire top floor of a 14-room house was given over to a 500-watt radio station controlling a fleet of eight fast 125-fojot rum ships that carried 4,000 to 6,000 cases of liquor on each trip from Canadian ports. In addition, three codebooks were found, one of them an extract for ready reference of the larger basic code, a third using obscene language and apparently for the personal messages of the crew. They enabled Boatswain John M. Gray of the radio-intelligence unit to decode the Z 5 message to Do you believe we can load tonight around midnight. These messages too served as evidence.

  Mrs. Friedman, meanwhile, was solving not only rumrunners’ messages but those of other highly organized smuggling gangs that had adopted their methods. She went to Vancouver to testify in a trial of Gordon Lim and several other Chinese that their secret messages, cast in a complicated system involving Chinese, dealt with opium-smuggling. They were convicted and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. In San Francisco, the solution of such messages as Our shipment goes today. It consists of 520 tins of smoking opium and 20 tins sample, 70 ounces cocaine, 70 ounces morphine, 40 ounces heroin … induced dope-runners Israel and Juda Ezra to plead guilty. They were sentenced to twelve years in jail—“twelve years,” a Pacific Coast columnist wrote, “in which to try to devise a code that a woman couldn’t break.”

  The climax of her criminal work came, however, at the celebrated Consolidated Exporters Corporation trial in New Orleans. After taking over in the Pacific and establishing its large operation at Belize, British Honduras, this syndicate of crime spun a network of activities completely surrounding the United States. Its agents were not only in Mexico and Belize, they also infiltrated New Orleans, Miami, Havana, Nassau, and Montreal. Consolidated virtually monopolized rumrunning in the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. It became one of the largest liquor-smuggling outfits in the country.

  During all this time, the Coast Guard intelligence office in Mobile was intercepting hundreds of the outfit’s messages, and when law-enforcement agents swooped down on 2831 North Rampart Street, New Orleans, on April 11, 1932, they seized many more. In the same raid they found a large consignment of liquor and arrested many of the
bootleggers. The messages were sent to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington where the cryptanalytic unit, headed by Mrs. Friedman, broke them down. The messages directed the rumrunners Ouiatchouan, Rosita, Albert, and Concord to the vicinity of locations to which they had earlier been tracked by the Coast Guard, thus affording a positive link between the ringleaders and the actual operations of the smuggling vessels.

  After Mrs. Friedman related this vital evidence, the grand jury in November indicted 35 rumrunners for conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act. Part of the indictment charged

  (11) That a secret code or codes would be and were framed and constructed for use in sending and receiving messages over said radio apparatus from and to the premises and places aforesaid, and from and to the ships at sea, hereinbefore referred to as “rum-runners,” and more particularly, the ships hereinbefore described, and to a radio station located in Belize, British Honduras;

  (12) That said messages, transmitted, broadcasted and received, unlawfully as aforesaid, would have to do with the location and time of arrival of said “rum-runners,” and the smuggling and landing of large quantities of intoxicating liquors from said “rum-runners” into the United States by the means, the manner and methods aforesaid; that said radio messages in said secret code would be sent and received over said radio apparatus from the State of Louisiana to the stations and ships aforesaid, concerning the smuggling of intoxicating liquors into the United States.

  The trial began May 1, 1933, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, before Judge Charles B. Kennamer. The case was so important that the Justice Department sent Colonel Amos W. W. Woodcock, former Director of Prohibition, to prosecute it in person. He said in his opening statement that Albert M. Morrison, Nathan Goldberg, Merchant D. O’Neal, and the latter’s brother, Joseph O’Neal, were the “brains of the ring which purchased millions of dollars of contraband whisky from Canada and other foreign countries and smuggled it into points along the Gulf coast, from which it was distributed inland.” Mrs. Friedman took the stand after wireless technician Roy E. Kelly identified 32 messages intercepted from March 24 to April 10, 1931, between the rum ships and stations in New Orleans and in Belize. One, sent at 7:06 a.m. March 25, read:

  GD (HX) GM GA HX (GD) R GM OB BT HR CK 25 BT BERGS SUB SMOKE CAN CLUB BETEL BGIRA CLEY CORA STOP MORAL SIBYL SEDGE SASH (?) CONCOR WITTY FLECK SLING SMART SMOKE FLEET SMALL SMACK SLOPE SLOPE BT SA BACK TO THE WORD SLDGE its SEDGE INSTEAD OF SLEDGE HW

  Two days later, a message was picked up at 6:22 p.m.:

  HX (GD) HR CK 16 BT QUIDS SEEMS ROSE FLAKE GAUDY WHICH FRAIL SNEAK SNOWY SHEER SNIPE FRAME SNOUT SNORE SNEAK SNIPE AR HW

  After Mrs. Friedman had been sworn in, Woodcock qualified her as an expert in cryptanalysis by having her state that she had been doing that work since 1916, mostly with the United States government, and that she had been employed by the War, Navy, State, and Treasury departments. After a mild objection by the defense, Judge Kennamer ruled that “The witness is qualified.” Then, without describing her method of analysis or the system, Mrs. Friedman testified to her solutions of the Consolidated Exporters Corporation messages. The rummies had used a rather complex method. They had compiled their own vocabulary and assigned to its terms the five-letter English words that the Western Union Travelers’ Code Book, a 68-page pocket code given out free by that telegraph company, employed as codewords to represent such phrases as Detained here in Quarantine. But the rumrunners shifted these equivalents according to indicators. Thus, in a message beginning with the indicator BERGS, the plaintext number nine would be represented by the codeword SMART, whereas in a message beginning with indicator CABER, nine would be SMASH and SMART would now represent plaintext eight. There were nine of these indicators, including QUIDS, and hence nine sets of equivalents in the messages, making it a kind of code polyalphabetic system. The messages of 7:06 and 6:22 read (after eliminating the call-signs and abbreviations) : Substitute 50 Canadian Club balance Blue Grass for Corozal Stop Repeat Tuesday wire Concord go to latitude 29.50 longitude 87.44 and When Rosita is loaded proceed latitude 29.35 longitude 87.25.

  The defense objected to each of the solutions on the ground that the witness’s testimony “elicits a conclusion and it is opinion.” Mrs. Friedman made a statement that “This is not a matter of opinion. There are very few people in the United States, not many it is true, who understand the principle of this science. Any other experts in the United States would find, after proper study, the exact readings I have given these. It is not a matter of personal opinion—” at which point Woodcock cut in and said, “Well, never mind that.” Defense attorney Walter Gex, Sr., asked that “all that be excluded. I think it is very improper.” The judge ruled it out of the jury’s consideration.

  Gex cross-examined Mrs. Friedman, putting to her the usual questions that oversimplify the problem of cryptanalysis in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the solution. He evidently was unaware of the shifting nature of the code symbols; otherwise he would surely have capitalized on that difficulty—for each additional link in the complicated chain of cryptanalytical reasoning makes it less certain and therefore less incriminatory.

  Q How shall I address you, Madam or Miss?

  A I am Mrs. Friedman.

  Q Mrs. Friedman, I understand the symbols sent you, you know nothing at all about them, but you received a copy of the symbols, which they asked you to analyze and translate?

  A Yes.

  Q Before you could properly translate those symbols, somebody had to tell you it was symbols in reference to the liquor transportation?

  A Oh, no. I might receive symbols pertaining to murder or narcotics.

  Q Could the same symbols be used in a conspiracy in the Mann Act of bringing girls here from another country?

  A They could have, but it would be my business—

  Q Well—

  Mr. Woodcock: Let her answer.

  Mr. Gex: I thought she was through. Go ahead.

  A (witness continuing)_____Such symbols could be used for such purposes, but it would not be possible for me to say they referred to liquor when they actually referred to the Mann Act.

  Q Well, what symbols refer to liquor as a symbol itself?

  A This is a code. You cannot say that—I cannot tell you which symbol refers to liquor without going through the entire thing.

  Q It is not a standard code; a code these gentlemen may have made up themselves?

  A Yes.

  Q Then you had to take all the words and the whole correspondence to fit them in?

  A Yes. That is my business to analyze.

  Q You mean to tell this jury the same words could not have been used in a conspiracy to violate the Mann Act?

  A Not with the meaning that was given them here.

  Q I know; you gave them the meaning?

  A No, I did not give them the meaning. The meanings were not created by me and put alongside the code words. I obtained these meanings by scientific analysis. I did not obtain them by any guess work.

  Q Suppose I used the word CORA to mean whiskey and the Colonel here used the word AIM to mean whiskey, how would you analyze it?

  OBJECTION: Mr. Woodcock. That is not a fair question. I object.

  Mr. Gex: She is under cross-examination.

  The Court: Just explain.

  A If I did not receive anything except those two words, it would be impossible for me to state that one meant one thing and the other meant another thing, or that both meant the same thing. My business is to analyze material of which I have a sufficient amount to demonstrate with the scientific analysis applied. I do not state that I can solve anything. It depends upon the amount of material I have on the type of system used.

  Q You would not tell this jury that the same symbols these gentlemen used to mean what you say, whiskey, beer, position, could not have been made up by people in code for transportation of women from Europe?

  A Those symbols could have been
used for that purpose, yes.

  BY THE COURT!

  Q But you say that they were not used for that purpose in this case?

  A Yes.

  Q And you determined that from study of all symbols you used in their relation one to the other?

  A Certainly.

  After a five-day trial, Morrison, the two O’Neals, and two other smugglers were convicted, Goldberg and the others acquitted. Morrison, the ringleader, was sentenced to two years in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta and was fined $5,000 after his conviction was upheld by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. And on June 28, 1933, Woodcock wrote the Secretary of the Treasury: “I am taking the liberty to bring to your attention the unusual service rendered by Mrs. Elizebeth Smith Friedman in the trial of the largest smuggling case which the Bureau of Prohibition made during the last two years…. Mrs. Friedman was summoned as an expert witness to testify as to the meaning of certain intercepted radio code messages…. Without their translations, I do not believe that this very important case could have been won.”