Historical Document · 2015
The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll (Special Series vol. 10)
Full NSA biography of Driscoll: Riverbank 1920, CM device, Red/Blue Book, M-1, JN-25, Enigma, trainer of Navy officers
Historical Document · 2015
Full NSA biography of Driscoll: Riverbank 1920, CM device, Red/Blue Book, M-1, JN-25, Enigma, trainer of Navy officers
Center for Cryptologic History Special Series Volume 10 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll Kevin Wade Johnson went from being one of NSA’s premier product reporters to becoming a historian in the Center for Cryptologic History. In his over 30 years of government service, he became proficient in four languages; certified as adjunct faculty for nine different courses; created over 100 web pages, over 80 entries on the blog Write Right, more than 40 training videos, and numerous brown bags and workshops; and created a National Cryptologic School course (two more are under consideration). The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll Kevin Wade Johnson National Security Agency Center for Cryptologic History 2015 The Giant The Person I: 1889-1918 Although Agnes May Meyer, later Agnes May Driscoll,* was the Navy’s While 1918 was the beginning for principal cryptanalyst of many years, Agnes Meyer Driscoll’s calling, her perspent over 40 years in cryptology, sonal beginning was when she was born became a member of the Cryptologic in Geneseo, Illinois, on 24 July 1889, to Hall of Honor, and has principal credit Fig. 1. Agnes May Meyer, German immigrant Dr. Gustav Meyer age 21; her Cryptologic for personally breaking two major codes/ and his wife, Lucy Andrews Meyer.1 The Hall of Honor photograph ciphers, she was curiously neglected durthird child of eight—after George Isaac ing her career and after. Meyer and Lucy Carolina Meyer, and Never credited with as much as she believed was before Gustav Freckmann Meyer, Margaret Eliza her due, never promoted in grade with her peers, Meyer, Mary Randall Meyer, Otto (no middle name even now she is not always ranked with those she or unavailable), and Joseph Lawrence2—she was a regarded as peers. Although considered one of the direct descendant of Rhode Island founder Roger giants of American cryptology, she is nevertheless Williams through her maternal grandfather, George rarely mentioned in the same breath as a William W. Shaw3 (d. 20 February 1912,4 when Agnes would Friedman or a Laurance Safford, even though she have been 22 years old). The family was reportedly began her code and cipher work in 1918, contemsevere, demanding obedience.5 porary with Friedman. Should she be ranked with The family moved from Geneseo to Westerville, them? Has she been neglected by history? We will Ohio, in time for Agnes to attend one of the Westerville consider exactly that. public schools6 and for 110 E. College Ave., Westerville, to be her address of record when she enlisted in the Navy.7 But, although she, like many others enlist*Because she achieved historical significance both ing, was fresh from school when she enlisted, it was as as Agnes Meyer and after her marriage, as Agnes a teacher, not a recent graduate. Driscoll, historians have referred to her as Agnes MeyAfter the Westerville public schools, she attender Driscoll. However, there is no evidence this author ed Business School (high school) in Amarillo, Texas can discover that she ever used that name herself; all (dates unknown), Otterbein University in Westerville her postmarriage personnel forms are as Agnes May from 1907 to 1909, then Ohio State University from Driscoll. This paper will refer hereafter to her as Meyer 1910 to 1911, graduating with an A.B.8 before her marriage and Driscoll after. 3 3 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll She was then employed at Lowrey-Phillips Military School in Amarillo from 1912 to 1915 as director of music—in 1912, at a school recital, she played Dvorak’s Humoreske (Humoresque) in a piano solo.9 After that she was in charge of the Math Department at Amarillo High School from 1915 to 1918.10 A woman with six years’ experience in stenography, bookkeeping, typing, clerical work, teaching, French, and German,11 a Presbyterian a month short of her 29th birthday, Meyer enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on 22 June 1918.*12 Her world would change as a result; later, she would change the world. The World of Agnes May Meyer The world that Agnes Meyer grew up in was very different from the world of today. Understanding her world is necessary to understand her. For example: • The U.S. had thirty-eight states when she was born (she would be seventy years old, and retired, when the fiftieth state, Hawaii, joined). • She might have remembered the Maine; the Spanish-American War started when she was almost nine. • She would have understood Victorian values; she was eleven years old when Queen Victoria died. • When she looked up in the sky as a child, she would have seen only birds and clouds: she was 14 when the Wright brothers made their first flight. • Moving pictures would have been a novelty as well; the landmark film The Great Train *Unfortunately, queries in 1987 to the Westerville City Schools, the Ohio State University, Ohio Historical Society, Dallas Historical Society, City of Amarillo Public Library, and Texas State Library yielded no information on Meyer. (Letters in NSA Archives Accession 49511, Box CCH36, Folder 10) 4 Robbery, all twelve minutes of it, came out that same year, 1903. • She was a teenager when U.S. homes began receiving electricity. • She undoubtedly knew how to ride a horse or would have ridden in a horse-drawn vehicle. She would have been about twentyfour when the first Model Ts rolled off the new Ford assembly lines in 1913. • She joined the Navy at twenty-eight, only about a year after the Navy began accepting women … in clerical positions only. • Her perspective on women’s rights and feminism would certainly have a different starting point than ours. She would not have the right to vote until 1920, the year she turned 31. • Finally, she grew up in a time when, in general, only clerical, teaching, nursing, and domestic or service jobs were open to women. Yeoman (F): 1918-1919 Agnes May Meyer enrolled in the Naval Reserve on 22 June 1918 as a Yeoman 1st Class (F)†, a month before her 29th birthday, at the Naval Recruiting Station in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was assigned Service Number 1749818. She was promptly directed to report, on active duty, to the commandant of the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, for assignment. She was then reassigned on 24 June to the Bureau of Navigation. Within the next three months, she must have been assigned to the Office of the Chief Cable † Yeoman is an enlisted rating denoting a sailor whose duties are administrative or clerical; “Yeoman (F)” was a World War I-era designation of female Yeomen. In Agnes May Meyer’s records, her rank and service are also sometimes listed as “Yeo.1c, USNRF,” where the (F) has been moved from the rank to the end of the abbreviation, without parentheses. Yeoman (F): 1918-1919 Fig. 2: The Meyer siblings, approx. 1890; Lucy Carolina (left), probably age 2; Agnes (center), probably age 1; and George, probably age 3 Fig. 3: Agnes, George, and Lucy Meyer Fig. 5. Meyer sisters Lucy (l) and Agnes Fig. 4. The Meyer family: (front) Lucy, Agnes, and George; (back) Lucy (mother) and Gustav (father) Fig. 6. June 1903: Agnes (l) and Lucy Meyer 5 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll Fig. 7. Agnes Meyer, age 20 Censor, but evidently sought another assignment soon thereafter: • On 14 September, the 12 September request for her disenrollment, “if the services of the above-named yeoman [Meyer] can be spared from the office of the Chief of Cable Censor [sic],” was disapproved, and she was not “used as a statistician in the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts.” • Also on 14 September, another 12 September request for disenrollment—if she “could be spared” from the Censor office and assigned to the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts paymaster—was disapproved. • Eventually she and the Navy found where she fit, lifting her out of clerical work and beginning her lifelong calling for cryptology: a leave form of 18 June 1919 has her assigned to the Code & Signal Section.13 She did relatively well in the Censor’s office; that office noted on 25 April 1919: “… Miss Agnes M. Meyer worked … in the Office of the Chief Cable Censor … for upwards of one year ending March, 1919. During most of this time, Miss Meyer had charge of the receipt, segregation, indexing, filing and forwarding of incoming and outgoing tele- 6 Fig. 8. Agnes Meyer, probably age 10 grams. … One quality that stands forth prominently in Miss Meyer is her unfailing conscientiousness, which is coupled with a serious interest in whatever she is given to do.”14 She always received solid performance scores of 3.5 to 3.7 for proficiency on a 4-point scale (and straight 4s for sobriety and obedience). Such qualities were undoubtedly the reason for her raise in grade to Chief Yeoman on 1 February 191915 while still assigned to the Office of the Chief Cable Censor.16 Although she was engaged in cryptologic work by June 1919, she was not breaking codes yet. “Father of Naval Cryptology” Captain Laurance Safford, USN, ret., years later said (lightly edited for capitalization): … Miss Agnes Meyer had been transferred over from Censorship to Naval Communications under Cdr. [William] Gresham or Cdr. [Milo] Draemel [see Appendix II], whichever came first. She stayed on with us, A Glass Ceiling? Fig. 9. Yeoman 1st Class F Agnes Meyer, far right; others unidentified not attempting any foreign [code or cipher] solutions, but studying our own systems and particularly solving all manner of machine ciphers submitted to the Navy Department for adoption. She solved them all and none of them were taken.17 After the war ended, she stayed on active duty until 31 July 1919, and in the reserves until honorably discharged at her request on 5 February 1920. She was hired as a civilian the day after leaving active duty. She didn’t have much choice about leaving active duty, but she may have had reasons to prefer civilian service in any case. A Glass Ceiling? Agnes Driscoll left nothing in writing at NSA to help historians to understand her motivations and reasoning.* Until a full-scale biographical effort can be mounted with a search for her papers and correspondence, we can only speculate. So although we know she left active duty and then the Reserves, we don’t know why. Factors that might have influenced her include these: • The Yeomen (F) were demobilized with all reservists at war’s end; this might have con*Although there might be papers in the National Archives, or with members of the extended Meyer family, there are none in the NSA Archives or CCH holdings. 7 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll vinced her that the Navy had little in the way of a future role for female reservists. • She had already risen to the highest rank a woman could attain at that time. • The veterans’ preference would be advantageous to continue work as a civilian. • Finally, it is highly unlikely that she wanted to continue doing “tedious” clerical work,18 given the trajectory her career followed as a civilian. “This Was the Beginning”: 1919-1923 Agnes May Meyer largely launched herself onto her career trajectory to being a cryptologic prodigy. Commander John W. McClaran, OP-20-G,* summarized the organization’s history in a memorandum on 23 September 1935. The first three paragraphs are as follows, emphasis as in the original, quoted in full: 1. The Research Section is a natural growth that developed more by accident than design. 2. Prior to 1918 we had no means of secret communication. During the Mexican trouble, 1914, and Dominican trouble, 1916, the Secretary of the Navy actually used for secret communications the Western Union Code with the Larabee Cipher (procurable at bookstores for ten cents). Our ‘Sig Code’ and the State Department Code, both of which had about as much security as the Western Union Code, were also used. 3. In 1916 the Code and Signal Section was established and an officer placed in charge. *The Navy’s office where cryptanalysis was performed had a number of designators over the period of its existence. It will be referred to as “OP-20-G” throughout this paper. 8 In 1918 our first modern codes were issued. They were copied after British codes used by us during the war. After the Armistice that year an intelligent [sic] clerk from the Cable Censor’s Office was transferred to the Code and Signal Section for research work in the development of code and ciphers. This was the beginning. … Captain Jack Holtwick, USN, ret., provided the memo in his “Naval Security Group History to World War II,”19 along with the reported comment by Captain Laurance Safford, USN, “the father of U.S. Navy cryptology,” that this clerk who began the U.S. Navy’s first real efforts in cryptography was Agnes May Meyer, “better known by her married name of Mrs. Agnes Driscoll.” As noted above, she did move from the Office of the Chief Cable Censor to the Code and Signal Section, but she did not begin the Navy’s cryptanalytic efforts for intelligence purposes. She was studying the Navy’s own codes and ciphers: cryptography, not cryptanalysis, although she applied cryptanalytic techniques to the codes and ciphers to determine their weaknesses. So, where did she learn cryptanalysis, once she became a U.S. Navy civilian employee, albeit on a temporary basis,20 on 1 August 1919? The short answer is, wherever she could. She evidently started with MI-8, the “American Black Chamber,” in New York City, the only U.S. governmental entity engaged in cryptanalytic intelligence work at the time. Likely this was 1919;† not only was she documented elsewhere during the first half of 1920, as the next paragraph relates, but Cdr. Draemel sent her a letter on 27 October 1919 congratulating †Holtwick gives 1920 as the year: “Capt. Hooper’s 1931 memo states that Mrs. Agnes Driscoll (nee Miss Meyer), Navy cryptanalyst, was attached to the (Yardley’s) New York office for five months in 1920”; SRH355, Part I, 29, and Part II, 16. Rise of the Machines I her on solving a submitted cipher and cautioning her against overwork. The letter is addressed to her at 3 East 38th Street, New York City.21 She continued with Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois, where the “father of American cryptology” William F. Friedman had trained military officers in cryptology during World War I, before himself departing with a commission. She was trained for work in the cipher department in 1920.22 Also, a 26 February 1920 letter from the head of OP-20-G, Cdr. Draemel, to Riverbank owner George Fabyan began arrangements for Meyer to spend time at Riverbank as soon as her Civil Service status was determined. A 20 May letter from Fabyan to Draemel makes clear that Meyer had arrived by then,* since she was “coming along first rate.”23 She completed the course “on or about” 20 June.24 Her temporary appointment in OP-20-G of 1 August 1919 had already been made permanent on 1 March 1920.25 She herself documented the training in both organizations, for example on her 11 January 1943 Application for Federal Employment (an apparently annual requirement then), under education and training, “Course in Cryptanalytics in NYC, and one in Chicago [Riverbank].”26 Dates were not requested, and she would not have been able to give more details at the unclassified level at that time. So she got herself taught to be a codebreaker, to be a better code maker. She had to start near the bottom, though. In 1919 OP-20-G was small: six sections, with one officer for each. There were no nonclerical enlisted personnel or civilians—a total of five officers, one chief yeoman, and eighteen other clerical staff. Three of the clerks and two stenographers were paid $1,400 a year and the rest $1,200 each.27 *Although Early Background of the U.S. Cryptologic Community by George F. Howe, historian, NSA, October 1970, NSA Archives ACC49106, 8, sets the year of the Riverbank training as 1922. Where did Agnes May Meyer fit in? As one of the two “senior” stenographers—but not for long. She soon became one of the higher-grade civilian clerks, as her positions, promotions, and pay increases from 1919 to 1923 show (see Appendix III): • She was appointed to one of the $1,400a-year stenographer positions on 1 August 1919, • Then appointed as a clerk† at the same $1,400 annually on 17 March 1920, and • Appointed as a clerk at $1,600 a year on 16 January 1922. • She resigned, however, without “delinquency or misconduct,” from that same clerk position on 15 January 1923.28 Why did she resign? According to Safford, it was “upon the advice and recommendation of, I think it was Gresham,”29 possibly meaning the head of OP20-G at the time. (Lt. Cdr. Donald Goodwin was in charge in January 1923; see Appendix II, “OP-20-G Commanders.”) The advice and recommendation don’t appear to have been recorded anywhere, leaving the question, why would he recommend that a star performer leave? Rise of the Machines I Again, we cannot be certain, but several factors, taken together, suggest why she may have resigned: • She was a clerk at the time, making $1,600 a year ($22,278 in 2014 dollars; see Appendix III); her prospects of significant advancement right then may have been nil. †She may have needed to be reclassified from stenographer to be able to go to Riverbank; this may be what Draemel was referring to about “definitely determining” her civilian status in the 26 February 1920 letter to Fabyan, above. 9 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll Fig. 10. Inventor Edward Hebern In 1919 the only positions above the clerical were held by naval officers. • Edward Hebern had submitted a cipher machine to the Navy. Although Meyer solved it,30 and the machine was rejected, the Navy was interested and put it through trials for some time.31 Gresham may well have wanted his best “clerk” to learn more about cipher machines. • If, in the process, Meyer could make the Hebern Cipher Machine cryptographically secure, and the Navy could accept it, the Navy would benefit as well. It is worth noting that Meyer did not just solve the cipher machines submitted in the early 1920s. She also helped to invent one: called variously the Communication Machine, Cipher Machine, or CM. Gresham invented the machine itself, using a cryptographic principle devised by Meyer. Four units were initially issued, with instructions, on 16 January 1923 (the day after her resignation took effect), and later more units were produced and issued to each major ship and station, staying in use until 1938. Holtwick described the machine as follows: 10 … consisted of a metal frame with metal slides, in which printed paper alphabets were inserted, were moved with a stylus to encipher code groups or plain text, but in addition to the interrupters built into the NCB [Navy Cipher Box32], movement of a CM strip caused motion to be transmitted through a gear train to other strips, thereby creating, in effect, a “stepping” somewhat analogous to the stepping of the rotors in an electrical cipher machine. The length of the cycle of the CM was, in consequence, many times that of the NCB, and it was considered to have a cryptographic security several orders of magnitude greater, since it also produced what was in effect a route transposition of the variable length segments of text.33 Superior to the NCB or not, the CM was difficult to use due to engineering shortcomings. Made of brass and consequently heavy, its concentric shafts were unreliable, and daily settings were difficult to put in place.34 Shortcomings aside, it was used for enough years that, after Gresham’s death in 1935, his widow put in a claim for compensation; the 75th Congress, in response, passed Private Act 267, splitting $15,000 between Meyer (by then, Driscoll) and Gresham’s widow. Agnes Driscoll’s share was some $6,00035— more than she earned in a year at that time (see Appendix III). A third factor is the “Case of the Mysterious Radio Mechanism.” Included in her Civilian Record is an undated newspaper article: U.S. Perfects Gun With Deadly Aim To Locate Planes The War Department has perfected an antiaircraft gun that locates planes and shoots them out of the air with deadly accuracy, the United Press said last night in a copyright [sic] story. Private Industry: 1923-1924 At least, “technical adviser” is what she later listed as her title and undoubtedly what she regarded as her role. Hebern might have had other ideas, however; in a 25 April 1923 letter, the Hebern Electric Code A weapon of this type, Company secretary notified Meyer experts pointed out, would that she had been elected assistant secbe of inestimable value as a retary, and thus could sign stock cerdefensive weapon in time tificates. A follow-up letter of the of war, especially in prosame date, from Hebern himself, tecting densely populated explained that she could sign areas and the National them herself, once she received Capital from air invasion. money for the shares. He went further into detail about the Existence of the gun was shares, such as the $5 per share disclosed after publication price. (A third letter of 25 April of reports that Germany notified Meyer that she was the had developed a similar recipient of 200 shares, with weapon. Hebern’s promise to buy them Fig. 11. The Hebern Company logo The radio mechanism back at $1,000 a year later.) was developed by the late Navy Commander Did Hebern intend for her to spend time on clerWilliam F. Gresham and a Mrs. Agnes M. ical work? Or sales? Possibly. But he did not ignore Driscoll.36 the technical side completely with her. Hebern did, in that second letter, It is difficult to know what to make of this account spend a paragraph on technical matters. except that Driscoll and Gresham invented more To Meyer’s unrecorded complaint of the than just the CM, or that its principles were applied machine being “static,” probably meanto, presumably, radar. Either way, development of the ing that it lacked interrupters or irregular stepping, CM may have led her to believe that crypto-machines he noted that the Engineering Department had not were her future. foreseen the consequences of this, and that only a Whatever her reason, Agnes May Meyer resigned perforated tape (key tape) would be the solution.38 effective 15 January 1923, seeing how green were the Sadly, Hebern’s plans were based on getting sigpastures of private industry. nificant federal contracts, and he had built a large factory before any such contracts were in place. In the Private Industry: 1923-1924 spring of 1924, the company defaulted on the mortMeyer had already examined whether the grass was gage interest, Hebern was subsequently removed as greener in the public school system, the Navy enlisted president, and a state investigation showed that the ranks, or the Navy civil service. Starting in February shares were only legally authorized to be sold at $1 1923, at age 33, she tried private industry, as techniper share.39 cal adviser for the Hebern Electric Code Company of Oakland, California, in Washington, DC.37 Department officials would not discuss the gun but said it operates on a sound wave-electrical principle and aims automatically. 11 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll However green the grass might have seemed in industry, it had turned brown pretty quickly. Meyer resigned in July 1924 and was back working for the Navy the following month.40 Back with the Navy: 1924-1930 Agnes May Meyer was back at her old job— clerk—on 1 August 1924, at age 35, but not at her old pay. She took a 17.5 percent pay cut in returning (see Appendix III). Even so, her departure had caused tremendous change, and her return would cause even more, over the course of her career. Departure and Change On 1 January that year, Lt. Laurance Safford became the head of a brand-new element in OP20-G: the Research Desk. There he established the Navy’s initial cryptanalytic effort and was so successful that he has been called “the father of U.S. Navy cryptology,”41 without overstatement. All the Navy’s subsequent successes can be laid at his feet. Safford himself, though, laid some of his own role and success at Meyer’s feet; although the Navy had brought in the illustrious Elizebeth Friedman for five months:42 That [Meyer’s 1923 resignation] left a hole in the section; this was before they got Bogel [Claus Bogel, an MI-8 veteran], and this body decided not to rely on the civilian expert, but to get a commissioned officer of the Navy to undertake the study and so that wherever he went he could be replaced and he could not go unless the [Navy] Department wanted to let him. Upon the recommendation of several classmates … I was selected for the job. … Safford affirmed that Meyer’s departure was thus one of the reasons he was brought to Washington.43 It is an overstatement to say that all the Navy’s subsequent successes can be attributed to Agnes May Meyer. Yet her departure was the catalyst for the Navy 12 to realize how badly it needed cryptologic expertise. Had she never joined the Navy, had she never joined OP-20-G, events would have demonstrated the need at some point. But her departure, leading to Safford’s arrival, coupled with her return, ensured that the U.S. Navy had expertise in advance of events, not in belated reaction to them. Now that she had returned, she and Safford had cryptologic work facing them, work that might not challenge them but would prepare them for the serious challenges that would follow. The Red Book In the 1920s and especially 1930s, the U.S. Navy could see that its most likely foe in the future would be Japan. The island of Japan did not have the natural resources that a world power would need, then or now; Tokyo saw its only acceptable option then as conquest. Ships needed iron to be built, and coal or oil to fuel them. Aircraft needed rubber for tires. Japan began asserting some influence in Manchuria after the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. Its efforts gained impetus in the late 1920s, culminating in invasion in the early 1930s. Washington opposed Japanese expansion, not least because the U.S. territories of the Philippines and Guam were such nearby, tempting targets. But Japan showed no sign of backing off. The U.S. Navy began to make ready. One way the Navy began making ready was to learn to read Japanese codes. The Navy started early, in 1920, and in the oldest-fashioned way: stealing. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) apparently found out that there was a copy of the Japanese Navy’s operational fleet code in the Japanese Consul General’s custody in New York. ONI operatives broke into the safe it was in and photographed every page. Instant book-breaking; now all they needed was to translate it from the Japanese. ONI did so through the services of retired missionary Emerson Haworth (sometimes spelled Haaworth), and he took until about 1926 to finish the translation. In late 1924, when Safford and The Red Book Meyer’s Research Desk was still in its infancy in the Navy Building’s * Room 1645, their office was organizationally under the Director of Naval Communications (DNC; see Appendix I). Physically, it was almost directly below where Haworth and ONI were working on the translation, in Room 2646. Haworth’s translation was kept in a red binder, and thus the Imperial Japanese Navy Secret Operations Code 1918 was known to the Navy and since to history as the “Red Book.”44 (See also Appendix V.) The Red Book contained a total of 97,336 entries—letters, numbers, words, or phrases—and had three different code equivalents for each: a 5-digit number, an expression in Roman letters, and a threecharacter Kana (syllabic script representing particles, numbers, place-names, among others45) group. The Research Desk never encountered anything but the Kana form. The code book had a geographical section, ship section by country, and other sections. Some entries had variants, evidently for the user’s convenience since the variants were always found nearby. The instructions in the photographed copy called for a simple substitution or additive superencipherment, but the Research Desk only encountered transposition. Driscoll was responsible for the first superencipherment solution, made in 1926, of a transposition scheme, or “key,” that remained in effect for several weeks. Succeeding keys were more complex, but the Research Desk stayed on top of them. By the autumn of 1930 four different keys were in simultaneous use.46 With the code book and the first break into the superencipherment schemes, Safford and Meyer might have seemed set for easy success. But Safford was gone in 1926, relieved by Lt. (later Capt.) *The Main Navy and Munitions Building, built near the end of World War I and torn down in 1970 for part of the National Mall. Fig. 12. Agnes Driscoll, probably mid-1920s Joseph Rochefort (see Appendix II). Starting that year, Driscoll, as she was known since her 1925 marriage, and Rochefort still had to deal with any superencipherment of messages using the Red Book code.† This involved a periodically changing transposition cipher, relatively primitive; Driscoll solved the initial one and most of the fourteen changes. She and the officers in training were the only ones capable of doing so.47 †See Appendix V for a list of terms for Japanese interwar codes and ciphers. 13 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll Thompson was a Radioman Second Class Thompson, the accomplice of a cashiered Navy officer named John S. Farnsworth, who was convicted of conspiracy to violate the espionage act for passing engineering and gunnery secrets to the Japanese. Driscoll’s decryption and others were used, albeit indirectly, to build up evidence against “Agent K” Farnsworth and “Tomimura.”48 Training Not all of her time was spent breaking the latest transposition scheme used to superencipher the encoded messages. Much of it was spent helping to train a succession of junior officers brought in to learn cryptology, given the Navy’s need to have a pool of talent to dip into in a future conflict. She trained them primarily because, as previously noted, there was no one else, although they trained themselves to some extent on the course Safford put together ca. 1925.49 Clearly she trained well: She trained most of the Navy cryptanalysts who would become shining lights in, and after, World War II.50 Two examples include: Fig. 13. Driscoll in the mid-1920s Driscoll showed her mettle in 1926 when she approached then-Lt. Layton, needing linguist help; she had two (or more) possible decipherments for a message. Layton advised her that the first could not be Japanese, but the second, “Tomimura,” could be a name. She couldn’t use that either, but Layton said Tomimura could be rendered Tomison or Thompson. She thanked Layton for helping her; the name was indeed Thompson. 14 • Rochefort himself: “When I first came in contact with Mrs. Driscoll in 1925 in Washington, she was exceptionally capable, very capable. I considered her sort of a teacher to me,” although he gave Safford greater credit as his teacher.51 • Captain Thomas Dyer, looking back, noted that Bogel had been the teacher until let go in 1925, but after that, the “absolutely brilliant” Driscoll was the one who helped him with cryptanalysis while he was head of the Desk52 (in 1932-33; see Appendix II). Layton states that Rochefort and Safford learned Driscoll’s code-breaking skills53 as well; he does not say whether from working with her or in a training situation. Given Driscoll’s background as a teacher, it seems likely she would have wanted to raise their skills if she could. The Person and Her 1930s World The Person II The Trainer Most of the extant material on her personality during this period comes from the people she helped train and presumably refers to her as a trainer. Rochefort, aside from remarking on how capable and talented she was, noted her habit of turning pages with the eraser end of a pencil.54 Dyer characterized her as eccentric along with brilliant.55 Some noted her startling ability to curse like a sailor,56 including Layton, who, in addition to describing her as “enigmatic but brilliant” … “patrician” … “tall, slender, quiet, and extremely dedicated,” said: I had been warned not to patronize “Madame X,” as her colleagues sometimes referred to her, because she was sensitive to her role as a woman in a man’s world. Because of this she kept to herself as much as possible and none of us was ever invited to socialize with her and her lawyer husband. While she could be warm and friendly, she usually affected an air of intense detachment, which was heightened by her tailored clothes and shunning of makeup. It was surprising to hear Miss Aggie curse, which she frequently did—as fluently as any sailor whom I have ever heard.57 Being talented or brilliant is subjective, and thus testimony must suffice as evidence, lacking personal acquaintance; detailed information about her appearance is in Appendix VI. Married Woman Michael Bernard Driscoll was born in Cairo, Illinois, on 6 December 1890, thus being a little more than a year younger than Agnes, and was a lawyer for the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). They were married on 12 August 1925 in Washington, DC.58 She was 36 years old. According to family, “Brownie” was a very bright man, and Driscoll considered him one of the smartest men she knew. This was just as well, since she had no patience for “dumb” people. He had been a captain in the Army, on the punitive expedition against Pancho Villa, and with the American Expeditionary Forces in France in World War I, and had a “fine” military mind. He had become a hearing examiner for the ICC and traveled from city to city hearing cases. A sentimental man, he wrote Driscoll poems. They accumulated property, including seven acres in Tyson’s Corner;59 along with the other real estate Brownie accumulated in Washington, it was worth a fortune at her death.60 But her personal and professional lives did not intersect. She did not socialize with her co-workers61 and did not talk about her work at home.62 The Person and Her 1930s World: An Examination So, who was this “tall” and “patrician” woman, sometimes called “Miss Aggie” and sometimes “Madame X,”63 who wasn’t notably tall for her time period (see Appendix VI), came from immigrant stock, and could curse like a sailor, perhaps from her time in the Navy enlisted ranks? Schoolteachers, parents, and others of superior knowledge often appear taller than they are, which could explain the perception of Driscoll’s height. As to being patrician, or even remote, perhaps Layton had the key phrase: “a woman in a man’s world.” What was the “man’s world” of the U.S. Navy at this time? For one thing, it was two worlds: sea duty and shore. Sea duty was what made officers’ careers and got them promoted. “Don’t give up the ship” and “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” weren’t coined by someone ashore. The Navy was all about ships and the sea. Cryptanalysis was not performed at sea, except against the most primitive tactical ciphers. Officers trained in cryptology needed to turn their back on codes and ciphers if they wanted to be promoted. 15 The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll They needed to spend time helming the ship or plotting its course, not looking for letter patterns on graph paper. And ships had no billets for civilians. Shore duty, by contrast, was a reward after sea duty. While civilians had their place, if it was a place a naval officer could occupy … that was denying some deserving officer his reward.64 So some resentment of the civilian taking an officer’s place would have been only natural; there was resentment enough between officers. When that civilian had superior knowledge and ability, it would have put an edge on the resentment. And when the civilian was a thirty-something woman among junior, male officers, that would have added an entirely new dimension. “A woman in a man’s world” simply does not apply to today’s U.S. Navy—or the Navy of a decade or two ago. But the U.S. Navy of the 1920s and 1930s? Simply put, she could expect to be patronized, condescended to, and, probably, sexually harassed to an extent a woman of today would find shocking. It was only in 1920 that the U.S. Constitution was amended to recognize that women had enough judgment to vote. Jokes about “women drivers” and “blondes” would still be told decades afterward. Women were still widely viewed during the time in question as inferior to men. And, if they were inferior to men, how much more must they be inferior to officers and gentlemen, the proud graduates of the Naval Academy? Given the prejudice of the time against officers who had not been to Annapolis, any opportunity that arose to patronize Driscoll would likely have been taken, without thinking. As to sexual harassment, it was not even a recognized concept in those days. Any woman working in the Navy would come under suspicion of being there solely to snag a husband, as that was seen as a woman’s primary goal. Even “unattractive” women would draw such behavior; attractive ones much more so. And the fair, blue-eyed65 Driscoll, even after she turned 40 in 1929, would probably have been considered an attractive woman. 16 Agnes Driscoll wasn’t the first woman in the workplace to face the choice between looking attractive and attracting unwanted looks. But there simply weren’t that many women in the workplace at all when she began her cryptologic career. There would have been no mentors, no peers to model herself after, to look up to. However, she would have had one source for rolemodeling: herself, her previous self, if you will—herself and her fellow teachers in Amarillo, Texas, from 1912 to 1918. West Texas was not that far removed from its “cowboy” days, then. Driscoll began teaching there the year she turned 23; she would undoubtedly have had to learn quickly how to deal with the stereotype of the “pretty young schoolmarm.” So it should be no surprise that the forty-ish Driscoll was remote with the young, male officers she worked with and trained. It makes sense that she would not wear makeup or be so unfeminine as to curse and swear. It would not have been easy for her to get the naval officers to take her seriously, even though they unquestionably needed her and her expertise. Orange in Blue: 1930-1937 The stock market crash of 1929 would have still reverberated in the Navy the following year. Such an economic dislocation could not bode well for Navy budgets. Nevertheless, OP-20-G probably felt a bigger shock of its own in 1930. Orange The shock showed no signs of coming in the early and middle parts of the year; Driscoll and the others were solving the messages intercepted from the Japanese Grand Fleet Maneuvers in the summer of 1930. The maneuvers turned out to be extremely significant; they were not only an exercise to counter the U.S. Navy, but the “U.S. Navy” units in the exercise were following the U.S. Orange War Plan.66 “Orange” was the term in U.S. war plans for Japan;67 the fact that the Japanese were exercising against the U.S. war plan meant that, for one, Tokyo “This Is a New Code” had known or at least predicted how the U.S. Navy planned to fight and, for another, if it did come to that, Japan would have an immense advantage.68 Knowing what your enemy plans, while keeping the enemy in the dark as to your own intentions, strategy, and tactics, is priceless, as World War II would soon show, at first for Japan and later for the U.S. “This Is a New Code” But even Japan’s apparent foreknowledge was not likely the greatest shock of these years for OP-20-G. In 1931 Dyer had arrived, the year before relieving Safford as head of the Research Desk (see Appendix II). The Research Desk was still tiny at this time: Safford, Driscoll, two clerk-typists, and Dyer as Safford’s replacement.69 In fact, there were only six officers in the Navy at the time eligible and competent to perform any significant cryptanalysis.70 Dyer was struggling