American Experience

(radio static crackles, intermittent beeping) (waves crashing)

NARRATOR

In March of 1942, German U-boats prowled the vast Atlantic Ocean in wolf packs, attacking scores of Allied transport ships as they headed towards war-torn Europe. (mechanical whirring) (torpedo releasing) (explosion) In less than three months, the Nazi submarines had sunk more than a million tons of desperately needed supplies and killed thousands of soldiers. The U-boat captains had a secret weapon-- encrypted messages sent by Nazi spies in South America had provided them with the coordinates of the targeted ships.

ROSE MARY SHELDON

We're talking about networks all over South America, an entire front in the Second World War.

NARRATOR

But America had on its side one of the most skilled codebreakers in the world-- Elizebeth Friedman.

DAVID HATCH

She was a suburban mom. Nothing really to mark her as anything unusual. But she lived a double life.

NARRATOR

In World War I, Friedman had trained the first team of codebreakers for the U.S. military. During Prohibition, she had taken on the most powerful gangsters in the country and brought down an international rum-running operation.

BARBARA OSTEIKA

The gangsters put a hit out on Elizebeth, and the Coast Guard puts a protection detail on her.

NARRATOR

Now, as she decrypted the intercepted messages on her desk, she knew everything she had learned in her career had led to this moment.

AMY BUTLER GREENFIELD

She was somebody who had the ability to see beyond what most other people could. She could see things starting to unlock in front of her eyes.

NARRATOR

She was one woman fighting a secret army. Her success or failure could determine the outcome of the war.

JASON FAGONE

Elizebeth Friedman was a code-breaking Quaker poet who hunted Nazi spies, and there's nobody like her then or since. (car horns honking, trolley clanking)

NARRATOR

Elizebeth Smith Friedman's life was unexpectedly set on course during a visit to the bustling city of Chicago in 1916. Twenty-three and full of dreams, she was hoping to escape the life she had been raised to expect.

FAGONE

Elizebeth came from a large Quaker family in small-town Indiana, and from a very young age, she felt like she didn't fit in. She even hated her own name. She called it "the odious name Smith." And she hated it because she believed that whenever she was introduced as Miss Smith, she would be seen as something so ordinary, and she didn't want to be ordinary, she wanted to be extraordinary. She wanted an adventurous life.

NARRATOR

Her mother, Sopha, had delivered ten children, the first when she was only 17. Elizebeth, born in 1892, was the youngest.

FAGONE

Elizebeth often felt pity for her, because Sopha's life had been completely overtaken, it seemed to Elizebeth, by childbearing and child rearing. She didn't seem to be able to pursue any kind of life of the mind, and to Elizebeth that was horrifying, because Elizebeth was a very bookish kid. She loved to read, she loved poetry. She wrote her own poetry.

GREENFIELD

Her father was a Civil War veteran. He saw his youngest as a difficult child, and their relationship absolutely was difficult. Her father did not support her going to college. He was against further education, particularly for women. She manages to talk him into this, and he says she can have the money, but at 6% interest. She has to pay it all back.

NARRATOR

In college, Elizebeth studied Greek and English literature. When she discovered Shakespeare, she became fascinated by the intricacies of language, sparking a passion that would drive her ambitions. After graduation, Elizebeth pursued one of the few careers available to women at the time and accepted a teaching job at a small Indiana school. She found the work uninspiring, and quit after just a year. In June of 1916, she headed for Chicago in search of a new job. After a week of effort, she found nothing. (trolley bell chimes) With no income and no job prospects, Elizebeth had no choice but to return home in defeat. On her last day in the city, she indulged in a visit to the Newberry Library to see a rare treasure-- Shakespeare's first folio, printed in 1623.

FAGONE

She's looking at this book of Shakespeare. And the librarian notices and says, "You're interested in Shakespeare, aren't you?" And Elizebeth says, "Well, yes." And the librarian says, "You know, it's funny, there's an odd, wealthy man "who keeps coming to the library, "and he's looking for somebody "to help him with this project, "to find some kind of secret that he thinks is hidden in this book."

NARRATOR

An hour later, George Fabyan was standing at her table. At 6'4", 250 pounds, the wealthy industrialist towered over her.

FAGONE

He walks right up to Elizebeth and the first thing he says to her is, "Would you like to come out to Riverbank and spend the night with me?" She has no idea what to say to this. It's the most indelicate question that anyone has ever posed to her. And he grabs her under the elbow, lifts her up-- she's tiny, he's huge-- and he frog marches her out the door to a waiting limousine, which takes them to the railway station. (train clattering on track)