Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Agnes Meyer Driscoll (born July 24, 1889, Genesco, Illinois, U.S.—died September 16, 1971, Fairfax, Virginia) American cryptologist who served as a code breaker before and during World War II. Her work for the U.S. Navy’s signals intelligence bureau (1919–46) and the Armed Forces Security Agency (later the National Security Agency; 1949–59) earned her the nickname “the first lady of naval cryptology.”

Early life and career

Driscoll spent two years at Otterbein University in Columbus, Ohio, before transferring to Ohio State University, where she graduated in 1911. Her course of study focused on mathematics, music, physics, and foreign languages—a curriculum atypical at any time but especially so for a woman in the early 20th century. She moved to Amarillo, Texas, where she taught and headed the music and mathematics departments of two high schools from 1911 to 1918.

In June 1918 Driscoll enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a chief yeoman, the highest rank possible for a woman in that era. She was assigned to the Postal and Cable Censorship Office in Washington, D.C., where she reviewed correspondence for evidence of espionage. She was transferred to the Office of the Director of Naval Communications, Code and Signal Section (DNC, OP-20), which was responsible for developing codes, ciphers, and operating signals for the navy. After World War I she continued her work as a civilian in the same department.

While continuing her association with the navy, in 1920 Driscoll studied at the Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois, a think tank that earlier had hosted code breakers William and Elizebeth Friedman. She also spent time in New York City at Herbert O. Yardley’s Cipher Bureau (also known as the American Black Chamber), the first U.S. peacetime code-breaking agency, which was disguised as a commercial enterprise. The bureau’s chief mission was to break diplomatic codes. It did so during the Washington Conference (1921–22), when the decrypting of Japanese communiqués led to an advantageous bargaining position for the United States during naval arms negotiations.

Main work in cryptology

Driscoll’s primary work for the navy involved the development of new cryptographic systems and the testing and evaluation of foreign and commercial ciphers and codes. She tested several mechanical systems, including the Kryha and Swedish Damm machines and Edward Hebern’s cipher wheel machine. She also codeveloped the Communications Machine (CM), a type of sliding alphabet system that became a standard cipher device for the navy during the 1920s. In recognition of her work, the U.S. Congress awarded Driscoll $15,000, which she split with the widow of the device’s coinventor.

In 1923 Driscoll was hired by Hebern to help develop a more-secure rotor-driven cipher device for the navy. However, the machine could not deliver the promised security, and Driscoll returned to the navy as a civilian in 1924. She joined the navy’s new Cryptographic Research Desk (soon to be renamed OP-20-G), serving as a cryptanalyst under Laurance Safford. The group’s goal was to exploit Japan’s main operational codebook—nicknamed the “Red Book”—a copy of which had been stolen by the U.S. Navy. (Its name came from the red covers used on duplicate copies of the book.) Driscoll’s breaking of the Red Book’s associated ciphers laid bare some of the Japanese navy’s most-important communiqués, including those that revealed Japan’s deep knowledge of American naval planning in the Pacific, especially “War Plan Orange,” which outlined U.S. naval operations near Japan.

Having broken the Red Book, in December 1930 Driscoll turned her attention to its replacement, the Japanese “Blue Book.” She led the efforts to recover both the 85,000 entries in the code book and its transposition cipher. In 1935 she decoded Japan’s early machine cipher system called the M-1 (or Orange), which was in use worldwide by Japanese naval attachés. Among the secrets that she uncovered were a pair of American spies who were secretly passing information to the Japanese.

During those years, Driscoll tutored and mentored a number of important naval cryptologists and intelligence officers, including Joseph Rochefort, Thomas Dyer, Edwin Layton, and Joseph Wenger. Whereas Driscoll was collegial within the OP-20-G, her dealings with code breakers from other organizations often were noncooperative. At least part of that can be attributed to interagency rivalry, as the U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service existed as a parallel code-breaking operation that did not routinely share information or resources with its navy counterparts. Driscoll was also cognizant of her key position in a male-dominated field, a fact that made her guarded in her professional relations.

In 1937 Driscoll was in a car accident and suffered serious injuries. Although she never fully recovered from her injuries, she eventually returned to work, and in late 1939 she attacked the new Japanese general purpose fleet code, more commonly known as JN-25. That complicated code replaced the Blue Book and was used by the Japanese for the most-secret and high-level naval communiqués. Driscoll successfully solved the cipher component of the “5-Num” system, as JN-25 was then called, that allowed recovery of the code values—a system of more than 30,000 five-number groups used as substitutes for words, numbers, and place names—with a digital cipher to encrypt the code groups. Though the code was not fully exploitable by the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 (it would not be fully exploitable until late 1942), it began to pay dividends early the next year, providing advance warning, for example, of Japan’s attack on Midway Island in June.

In October 1940 Driscoll was transferred from the JN-25 effort and tasked with breaking Germany’s naval codes, with a focus on the Enigma device. After almost two years of work on her new assignment, Driscoll and her team were unable to make progress in solving the German device. That was partly due to her unwillingness to use machine support or a mathematical approach, but she also refused the help of British code breakers from Bletchley Park who had traveled to the United States to advise her.

Later years

In 1943 Driscoll was moved to work on the new Japanese attaché machine, Coral, which was solved in 1944. But her years of major successes were over. From 1946 until her retirement from the National Security Agency in 1959, she filled a number of positions, but she never rose to the ranks of senior leadership. When she died in 1971, there was no official notice of her passing by either the U.S. Navy or the NSA. She was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.