Trump cancels Elizebeth Friedman's ship, cannibalizes it for parts

History repeating itself...

Dear “Knowledge is Power” readers:

This is my first letter to you in a while. For the last year I’ve been working on a new nonfiction book, my fourth (The Woman Who Smashed Codes was my third). I think you’ll like the new one. Soon I’ll have more to say about it. But today I’m writing with news related to Elizebeth Friedman, the codebreaking Quaker poet and hero of Codes. It’s a frustrating development. It made me sad when I heard.

You may remember that Elizebeth’s name was supposed to grace a new U.S. Coast Guard ship: the Friedman. The USCG announced the honor years ago. They cited my research in Codes that revealed Elizebeth’s role in stopping the Nazi spy invasion of South America during WWII. Your support of the book helped make this happen. The Friedman would have been the 11th ship in the largest, “legend” class of cutters: 418 feet long, with a 14,000-mile range.

Well, last week, the Trump administration canceled the contract for Elizebeth's ship. Not only that — they're junking the Friedman for parts. See, the ship is partly built already. Fabrication began four years ago. Canceling the contract means dismantling a rather large piece of machinery.

The Trump people didn't come out and say they canceled the Friedman because its namesake is a woman. They blame delays and cost overruns by the private company building the ship. Something about a contract dispute.

That explanation feels like bullshit to me.

Earlier this year, on Trump’s second day in office, the president fired the first woman commandant of the Coast Guard and replaced her with a man. Days later he fired the first woman Chief of Naval Operations. His hostility to perceived “DEI” initiatives is notorious. As part of a campaign to “restore truth and sanity to American history,” Trump officials have even deleted the memorial webpages of some women service members buried at Arlington National Cemetery. One historian has called Trump’s campaign “an Orwellian erasure of women’s achievements from the public record.”

Ship No. 11 was delayed and over budget. That part is correct. I probably don’t have to tell you that cost overruns are normal in DHS/military contracting. The Pentagon has been unable to complete a basic accounting audit in our adult lifetimes. Government planes and ships still get built.

How often are federal ships scrapped midway through construction? It seems to be extremely rare. Charles Keller, a retired Coast Guard commander, served in the 1960s on the Minnetonka and Avoyel, and on shore. I got to know Keller after Codes was published, when he highlighted Elizebeth’s career in a USCG publication that helped spark interest in naming a ship for her. “To use an almost completed vessel to cannibalize it for parts is the most ridiculous response for me to accept,” Keller told me last week. “I served for 20 years, and we never had a ship used for spare parts.”

The scrapping of the Friedman is doubly strange because outside of Trump’s bubble, Elizebeth’s achievements have never been so widely acknowledged and celebrated. Just two months ago, in April 2025, the National Security Agency broke ground on the Elizebeth Smith and William Friedman Center, a 755,000-square-foot operations hub on their East Campus, to be completed in 2029. Elizebeth’s grandson joined the Director of the NSA at the groundbreaking ceremony. Codes continues to pop up on university syllabi all over the world. Intelligence professionals certainly know what Elizebeth contributed to her country and to the science of cryptology. Historians know.

Elizebeth never got her due when she was alive. Throughout her career, men denied her credit or passed off her achievements as their own. They distorted history to feed a clownish vanity. I can’t escape a sense that the pattern is repeating.

I'm trying to find more about the ship cancellation and figure out where to go from here. The next administration may take another look. It’s possible a ship will sail someday with Elizebeth’s name. We may need to make some noise, and remind the decision-makers why she matters. I will keep you posted.

Thanks as always for supporting The Woman Who Smashed Codes and sharing Elizebeth's story.

Jason

Puzzle-themed holiday cards from a famous codebreaking couple

How Elizebeth & William Friedman celebrated the season.

A few years ago, when I began researching what would become The Woman Who Smashed Codes, I spent weeks poring through the personal papers of Elizebeth Friedman, the codebreaking Quaker poet and war hero. She gave 22 boxes of documents to a library before she died in 1980. The library is an amazing place — it’s part of the George Marshall Foundation in Virginia. And those 22 boxes are full of the most wondrous stuff. I felt giddy reading through it all, like I’d stumbled into one of the greatest stories I’d never heard before.

A lot of these materials speak to very serious missions. They document Elizebeth’s remarkable codebreaking career and all the high-stakes, often-secretive work she performed: catching gangsters during Prohibition, hunting Nazi spies during WWII, and on and on. But there are also plenty of documents that show what Elizebeth was like as a person — a friend, wife, mother. A scientist and a dreamer.

Elizebeth, of course, was married to a codebreaker — William Friedman, who would one day lead a team that solved Japan’s most secret crypto system during WWII. And from the first day they met, in 1916, at a bizarre private laboratory known as Riverbank, they bonded through the fun of codes and ciphers. They loved the challenge of solving puzzles and finding new methods to break whatever system seemed unbreakable. Early on, they even wrote love letters to each other in code. Later, as working intelligence professionals in D.C., they threw elaborate “Cipher Parties,” inviting guests to solve cryptograms that revealed the locations of scavenger-hunt items spread throughout the city. And when the Friedmans had children — a daughter, Barbara, and a son, John Ramsay — they included the kids in the games, too.

For instance, every December, Elizebeth and William devised a new original holiday card based on some type of puzzle. Elizebeth’s archive contains several of these cards, and they’re charming. I remember one day when I was doing research at the Marshall, I came across one of the cards, which required the paper to be folded a certain way to reveal the message. I had to stop everything until I could solve it.

Recently, two fellow Elizebeth obsessives reminded me of these cards, attaching images of them in a group email thread. Big thanks to Stuart Boersma, professor of math at Central Washington University, and Melissa Davis, Director of Library and Archives at the Marshall — both great champions of Elizebeth’s story and legacy.

Now I want to share the cards with you. They’re included at the bottom of this newsletter post.

Feel free to print these out, email them, and share with your own friends and family. All images are courtesy of the George Marshall Foundation Library.

See if you can solve them.

Elizebeth TV show TK???

One more thing before the images — I hope to have some news early next year about a possible TV show centered on Elizebeth and based on the book. I can’t say anything yet, but I’ve been working on it with some awesome creative people, and we have some momentum and a potential studio partner that’s pretty exciting. Fingers crossed. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m able.

Thanks as always to those of you who have bought or borrowed TWWSC. Please keep spreading the word about the book and Elizebeth’s story!

Onto the cards…

The full folding holiday card (year unknown):

1931:

1933:

1934:

1935:

1928:

O.K., I saved my favorite for last. I can’t resist saying something extra about this one, below. It’s called a “turning grille.” The red square at the left is perforated with circular holes. When you place the grille above the letter grid to the right, certain letters show through. But that’s not all: When you turn the grille 90 degrees, and then 90 degrees again, different letters show, and those are part of the message too. This is actually a classic pencil-and-paper code system that was widely used by spies even into WWII — as I detail in “The Woman Who Smashed Codes,” Nazi agents in South America were using this same kind of turning-grille system to conceal their dispatches. Elizebeth, of course, broke their code and gave U.S. and British intelligence the ability to read the Nazi messages.

Happy holidays, and see you in the new year.

—Jason

Elizebeth Friedman documentary, "The Codebreaker," premieres tonight on PBS

Dear “Knowledge is Power” readers and Elizebeth Smith Friedman fans:

This is just a quick note to let you know about two new events:

First, a documentary about Elizebeth and her adventures in codebreaking, titled THE CODEBREAKER, premieres tonight on PBS, at 9 EST / 8 Central, as part of PBS’s American Experience documentary series. You can watch on TV or stream it at PBS’s site. The show is based on my book, “The Woman Who Smashed Codes,” and I’m interviewed in it, along with other Elizebeth obsessives.

I’m excited for you to see this show. I think the filmmakers who put it together, a team led by Chana Gazit and Hilary Steinman, did an amazing job, and the vision is theirs. I saw how hard they worked and how much heart they put into it. There’s something about seeing the arc of Elizebeth’s story on the screen that’s impressive and powerful. Thank you to all of you who bought, shared, and talked about “The Woman Who Smashed Codes,” because the positive reaction to the book helped get this made. Please let your friends and family know about this if you think they’d like it, and if you watch, you can share thoughts on social media under the hashtag #CodebreakerPBS.

The second thing I wanted to tell you about: You can go online and cast a vote that will help preserve Elizebeth’s legacy. Her oil portrait (below), held at the George Marshall Foundation Library, has been named one of Virginia’s 10 most endangered artifacts. If you go to this page and vote for her portrait to get preservation funding, and if she gets the most votes, the library will get $1,000 for restoration. You can vote once a day per email address. Thanks to Melissa Davis, director of library and archives at the Marshall Foundation, for letting me know about this and getting the word out.

Thank you, and I hope you’re all doing ok.

Jason

New honors for Elizebeth Friedman

And some thoughts on the 40th anniversary of her death.

Dear “Knowledge is Power” readers,

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Elizebeth Smith Friedman’s death, and I spent a lot of the day thinking about her.

It’s been a few years since I was researching The Woman Who Smashed Codes, poring through the papers Elizebeth left behind and trying to piece together the long-secret tale of her achievements. And I have a different job now, a day job, covering Northern California as a newspaper reporter. Still, when these key dates in Elizebeth’s life roll around, her words start pinging through the brain again, and I start looking at old photos and other stuff from my files, and then, suddenly, mentally, I’m back in book mode, freshly obsessed with the whole wild story.

Elizebeth died at 88, on Oct. 31, 1980. At the time, a few obituaries appeared in newspapers, noting that Elizebeth broke codes for the U.S. Coast Guard during Prohibition and was a pioneering woman in cryptology (the science of secret writing).

But as you know if you’ve read TWWSC, the obits didn’t tell anything close to the full story. They didn’t talk about her important and dramatic work in World War II, when she tracked dozens of clandestine radio circuits used by Nazi spies in South America, breaking the codes, solving thousands of Nazi messages, and bringing the spies to ruin. The obits didn’t mention that Elizebeth helped invent a new American science of codebreaking as a co-author of the Riverbank Publications. They didn’t mention that she broke multiple Enigma codes during WWII and was part of the first American team ever to solve an unknown Enigma machine. The obituaries missed the details and the big picture too — that Elizebeth wasn’t just a pathbreaking woman in her field but one of the greatest American codebreakers of all time.

It’s true that government secrecy rules played a part in keeping her story hidden. After WWII, the Navy ordered her to box up many of her team’s files and ship them to a classified vault. But I’m skeptical that this was the main obstacle, because secrecy considerations didn’t stop prominent male codebreakers from being recognized and praised while Elizebeth was still alive, including men whose WWII accomplishments paled in comparison to hers. (And yes, Elizebeth found this irritating: One year after the war, she and husband William ate dinner with some British colleagues in Cambridge, and when the men started telling tales about their wartime codebreaking feats, Elizebeth sensed that she was expected to keep her mouth shut. “As befits a woman in the monastic traditions of Cambridge,” she wrote later, “I said little, but my own recollections began to boil up from the cauldron of memories.”)

Of course, the real culprit in the erasure of Elizebeth was J. Edgar Hoover, longtime director of the FBI. Hoover didn’t play by the same secrecy rules as everyone else. As one of the most powerful men in Washington, he could flout them without consequence, and he was a masterful and notorious manipulator of the press, using PR techniques to steal credit for work that was actually done by other agencies. Pretty much singlehandedly, Hoover crafted and sold a false narrative that the FBI — not Elizebeth and the Coast Guard — played the decisive role in smashing the Nazi spy rings in South America during WWII, and that’s the story that got written into history, even though it was a lie.

But now this injustice is starting to be addressed, thanks in huge part to you — to the community of readers and teachers that has sprung up around TWWSC.

Here are a few relatively recent (and exciting) developments:

THERE’S GONNA BE A BOAT: In July, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that they will name one of their new “Legend-Class” cutters after Elizebeth, in honor of her career as a “pioneering codebreaker” who battled gangsters during Prohibition and founded the Coast Guard’s elite codebreaking Unit 387 that went after Nazi spies in WWII. We are talking here about an actual sizable ship, 418 feet long, named the FRIEDMAN. It’s apparently scheduled to be constructed at a shipbuilding facility in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and delivered to the Coast Guard in early 2024.

As I understand it, this happened after a retired USCG captain read “The Woman Who Smashed Codes,” realized the scope of Elizebeth’s contribution in WWII, and started pushing for recognition. In announcing the naming of the cutter, an internal USCG “Alcoast” dispatch refers to my research: “Only recently was her legacy fully appreciated when a journalist researched now-declassified papers and discovered her pivotal role in the Enigma-machine code-breaking as well as the Customs Prohibition operations.” Here’s part of the Alcoast:

I was grinning for hours after I learned the news. I mean… amazing, right? I’m going to try to attend the ship’s christening ceremony.

AN HONOR IN CONGRESS: Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan resolution honoring Elizebeth as “a pioneer in codebreaking,” “leaving behind a legacy of remarkable skill and technical ingenuity, woven together to solve the most complex secret messages in the world.” The effort was spurred by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and his staff, and co-sponsored by Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska. The resolution described Elizebeth’s achievements during World War II — as revealed in TWWSC — and even pointed out that Hoover “took credit for the achievements of Friedman and her team, leaving her work widely unrecognized until after her death.” I did give Wyden’s team some feedback on the resolution text when they asked me, but the project was their idea, and they did a wonderful job.

NEW CODEBREAKING HISTORIES: One of my big hopes in writing TWWSC was that it would start to shift the lore of the field and Elizebeth’s place in it. So I was glad to see her play an important role in a new book by a pair of writers and codebreaking enthusiasts, Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh. The book, Codebreaking: A Practical Guide, out in the UK in December, calls Elizebeth “one of the great cryptanalysts in American history” and includes examples of actual messages she solved. The book is terrific, and I highly recommend it if you’re at all interested in puzzles or secret writing.

AN ELIZEBETH-THEMED CELEBRATION: There’s an academic conference inspired by Elizebeth being planned for next August, at Indiana University, not far from her hometown of Huntington, where a new historical marker honoring her will be revealed. The project is being organized by Justin Troutman, a cybersecurity professional and educator, in conjunction with the university. I’ll have more details for you in a future newsletter.

As always, I’m grateful to all who have read the book, reviewed it, chosen it for a book club, ordered it for a library, taught it in a class, talked about it on social media, or shared it with friends and family. If you’re a student or journalist researching Elizebeth, I’m happy to help point you in the right direction or share documents from my files. And please, keep telling people about the book. There is no formula for book promotion, only word of mouth. It’s what works, what keeps the story alive.

I hope you’re safe and doing ok. I struggle these days to keep from feeling despair. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’ve stopped trying to predict. I’m going to be in line to vote on Tuesday a half hour before the polls open. I do know that. (Some journalists say that journalists shouldn’t vote. I think these people are insane.) If you’re in the U.S., I hope you’re as eager to vote in Tuesday’s election as I am. Elizebeth was a lifelong voting-rights activist. She ran a chapter of the League of Women Voters out of her home. She thought it was a scandal that residents of Washington D.C. didn’t have meaningful representation in Congress, and she pushed relentlessly for D.C. statehood. I would never describe her as an optimist. She was a precise and unsentimental thinker who hated bullshit in all its forms. But she did believe in democracy, and even though she saw so many of America’s failings up close — and despite the appalling way she was treated by her own government — she still thought this place was salvageable.

Until next time, take care,

Jason

"The Woman Who Smashed Codes" out in paperback

a quick note from the author, and a favor to ask

Hi. Jason Fagone here, author of “The Woman Who Smashed Codes,” the true story of the codebreaking Quaker poet Elizebeth Smith Friedman. She caught gangsters and Nazi spies with little more than a paper and pencil. I spent years researching her life.

The book is out today in paperback, which is why I’m writing.

If you’re getting this email, you are probably either

1. a person who wrote me at some point over the last year to say you enjoyed the book (thank you)

2. a reader who pointed out a misprint (thank you)

3. a person who used to subscribe to my old email newsletter, years ago, and who may or may not want to keep getting updates on my projects (no problem if not, sorry to bother, hit unsubscribe)

4. my parents (hi)

I realize that some of you have probably already bought the book in hardcover, kindle, or audiobook format. I am not asking you to buy the book a second time. Instead, I’m asking for this:

If you liked the book, please tell one friend about it.

In person, if possible. Or on the phone. Social media is ok too.

The truth about books is that the whole publishing industry is a crazy mystery and there is no magic way to get a book in front of readers who may enjoy it.

The only way that works, unless you are James Patterson or something, is grassroots conversation. People telling other people that they like it. So…

Here are a few links about the book you can share:

• a page of links to the paperback at various booksellers

• a Twitter-thread “trailer” for the book that tells a shortened version of Elizebeth’s tale

• an archive of primary source documents I uploaded to the Internet Archive

• a review of the book (some options: NPR, Washington Post, New York Times, SF Chronicle, Ars Technica)

That’s it. Thanks for listening. And if you’d like to get occasional updates about the book, Elizebeth Smith Friedman’s story, and my other projects, you should stay subscribed to this list. The name of the list, by the way, is:

K E D P O !
N L G S W !
O W E I E R

P.S. If you would like a signed bookplate for your hardcover or paperback of TWWSC, write me at jfagone@gmail.com and I will send you one.