The Woman All Spies Fear: Chapters 19–25

Neat as a pin in his dapper suit, he stood in the grimy, tomblike
 room and turned solemnly to the young men.

They mistrusted his taste for the high life, with Elizebeth calling him downright “unsavory.”

For years, William had been charged with protecting Army communications. That mission continued, but now he had a new one: breaking into the secret messages of foreign powers whenever American security required it. For William, who liked to be aboveboard in everything, this posed ethical dilemmas.

Desperate for money, he wrote The American Black Chamber, a sensational account of his exploits there.

She was appalled by lurid stories like “How the G-2 Woman Trapped the Dope Ring,” which portrayed her as a femme fatale.

In sprightly fashion, it covered Elizebeth’s many triumphs, including her victory over the Conexco smugglers.

After the article appeared in print, however, top Army and Navy officials were livid.

Helmick had identified William as the head of the SIS, and she had coyly suggested that the agency was breaking foreign codes.

William believed these fears were overblown. His bosses, however, were adamant that the article amounted to a security breach.

In view of the present situation in the Far East, I know definitely that to mention that we have ever solved a message in Japanese or Chinese will bring down upon the Coast Guard, the certain anathema of the Navy Department, and possibly of the State and War Departments.

Elizebeth reached her limit when the Treasury forwarded a telegram from the editor of the American Magazine. It was a long litany of nosy questions:
WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES LED TO YOU BECOMING THE GOVERNMENT'S CRYPTANALYST? FOR WHAT DEPARTMENTS DO YOU DECIPHER MESSAGES? HOW MANY HAVE YOU DONE? WHAT TYPES? HOW DO THEY FALL INTO YOUR HANDS?

Despite these pressures—or perhaps because of them—they threw themselves into giving a dinner party that no one would ever forget. William called it the “Circuitous Cryptanalytic Comestible Contest,” and it took place all over town.

But it was the Coast Guard that was best primed to detect so-called clandestine communication, or spy talk.

Elizebeth, by contrast, had spent her career cracking a wide variety of messages. Written in a plethora of encryption systems, they ranged from the absurdly easy to the virtually watertight.

Bombarded with thousands of intercepts a year, she was used to creating order out of cacophony.

But he had a history of taking over territories he considered German, and he and his ambassadors believed that people of German heritage owed “complete subservience” to their “home country.”

Yet Elizebeth remained unruffled, approaching the job with her trademark energy and élan.

In June 1940, when she went on a long-awaited trip to Mexico, William’s letters were doleful but discreet. “Read until 1 a.m. + listened to war news,” he wrote. “Have not been feeling any too chipper these days, mostly on account of the news and lack of progress on my problems at the office. But I guess that is only to be expected in these days of time and trial.”

In his debonair suits, two-toned shoes, and stylish ties, William did not look like a warrior.

Then the United States intercepted a sudden burst of Purple messages. The reason for the leap in activity was ominous: Japan, Germany, and Italy were signing an alliance pact.

“[H]eebeegeebees” or “hbgbs” was his shorthand for it. By this, he meant a feeling of “nervousness, depression, even despondency,” combined with extreme insomnia.

Even before he had met Elizebeth, he had sometimes struggled with what he called “dark moods.” In 1920, when they were trapped at Riverbank, he had grown thin and listless under the strain.

Some of the sharpest reprimands he ever received were from General George Strong, a man who made antisemitic jokes in private, and who pushed Roosevelt to clamp down on “militant” Jews.

In stinging rebukes, Strong questioned William’s loyalty and friendships, and at one point limited his contact with British officers.

At a time when mental illness carried a deep and almost ineradicable stigma, Elizebeth refused to let it create a chasm between her and her husband.

At a time when mental illness carried a deep and almost ineradicable stigma, Elizebeth refused to let it create a chasm between her and her husband.

Her “indomitable spirit helped me climb up out of a psychological morass that was pretty deep and distressing,” he later told their son.

Her “indomitable spirit helped me climb up out of a psychological morass that was pretty deep and distressing,” he later told their son.

Bill Donovan and James Roosevelt kept demanding the impossible, and she felt they condescended to her. Both were fond of high society and preferred to spend time with the social elite—a category that didn’t include Elizebeth.

While code breaking was Elizebeth’s forte, she was also a top-notch code builder.

At a time when women were a rarity at the Navy, Driscoll’s career flourished.

Elizebeth had probably heard how far Driscoll’s star had fallen. While she had never warmed to Driscoll herself, it was not a story that boded well for any woman who worked for the Navy.

In 1943, the Navy moved Elizebeth’s unit into a “grubby, ramshackle temporary building with [a] flat roof and thin walls.”

She and her team put in full days at their tables and desks, breaking codes in the stifling heat.

Noting William’s rapport with his British counterparts, the Army made him a point man in U.S.–U.K. intelligence relations, twice sending him on long trips overseas.

Taken literally, the ban included Elizebeth herself, since she worked for the Navy. Although the order was soon rescinded, its sting lingered.

Like her father, she also suffered from bouts of insomnia and anxiety.

Via radio, Sargo and his recruits often disclosed plans for fascist uprisings and coups to their Nazi masters.

They also passed along embassy gossip and whatever secrets they could glean about the American war effort, such as the number of bombers U.S. factories were producing and how many planes the U.S. had in total.

She and her team were incensed, and so was their boss. The trigger-happy FBI had just made their job much more difficult.