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

3 3

The Person I: 

1889-1918

While 1918 was the beginning for 

Agnes Meyer Driscoll’s calling, her personal beginning was when she was born 

in Geneseo, Illinois, on 24 July 1889, to 

German immigrant Dr. Gustav Meyer 

and his wife, Lucy Andrews Meyer.1 The 

third child of eight—after George Isaac 

Meyer and Lucy Carolina Meyer, and 

before Gustav Freckmann Meyer, Margaret Eliza 

Meyer, Mary Randall Meyer, Otto (no middle name 

or unavailable), and Joseph Lawrence2—she was a 

direct descendant of Rhode Island founder Roger 

Williams through her maternal grandfather, George 

W. Shaw3 (d. 20 February 1912,4 when Agnes would 

have been 22 years old). The family was reportedly 

severe, demanding obedience.5

The family moved from Geneseo to Westerville, 

Ohio, in time for Agnes to attend one of the Westerville 

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 enlisting, was fresh from school when she enlisted, it was as 

a teacher, not a recent graduate.

After the Westerville public schools, she attended Business School (high school) in Amarillo, Texas 

(dates unknown), Otterbein University in Westerville 

from 1907 to 1909, then Ohio State University from 

1910 to 1911, graduating with an A.B.8

*Because she achieved historical signifi cance both 

as Agnes Meyer and after her marriage, as Agnes 

Driscoll, historians have referred to her as Agnes Meyer Driscoll. However, there is no evidence this author 

can discover that she ever used that name herself; all 

her postmarriage personnel forms are as Agnes May 

Driscoll. Th is paper will refer hereafter to her as Meyer 

before her marriage and Driscoll after.

The Giant 

 Although Agnes May Meyer, later 

Agnes May Driscoll,* was the Navy’s 

principal cryptanalyst of many years, 

spent over 40 years in cryptology, 

became a member of the Cryptologic 

Hall of Honor, and has principal credit 

for personally breaking two major codes/

ciphers, she was curiously neglected during her career and after.

Never credited with as much as she believed was 

her due, never promoted in grade with her peers, 

even now she is not always ranked with those she 

regarded as peers. Although considered one of the 

giants of American cryptology, she is nevertheless 

rarely mentioned in the same breath as a William 

Friedman or a Laurance Safford, even though she 

began her code and cipher work in 1918, contemporary with Friedman. Should she be ranked with 

them? Has she been neglected by history? We will 

consider exactly that.

Fig. 1. Agnes May Meyer, 

age 21; her Cryptologic 

Hall of Honor photograph
4

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

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 fi rst 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 diff erent 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 

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:

• Th e U.S. had thirty-eight states when she 

was born (she would be seventy years old, 

and retired, when the fi ftieth 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 fi rst fl ight.

• Moving pictures would have been a novelty 

as well; the landmark fi lm Th e 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)

† 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.
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. 4. The Meyer family: 

(front) Lucy, Agnes, and George; 

(back) Lucy (mother) and Gustav (father)

Fig. 5. Meyer sisters Lucy (l) and Agnes Fig. 6. June 1903: Agnes (l) and Lucy Meyer 

5

Yeoman (F): 1918-1919
6

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

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, 

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 offi ce 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 offi ce 

and assigned to the Bureau of Supplies and 

Accounts paymaster—was disapproved.

• Eventually she and the Navy found where 

she fi t, 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 teleFig. 7. Agnes Meyer, age 20

Fig. 8. Agnes Meyer, probably age 10
7

A Glass Ceiling?

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:

• Th e Yeomen (F) were demobilized with all 

reservists at war’s end; this might have connot 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. 

*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.

Fig. 9. Yeoman 1st Class F Agnes Meyer, far right; others unidentified
8

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

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 

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.

• Th e 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. 

*Th e Navy’s offi ce 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.

†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 offi ce for fi ve months in 1920”; SRH355, Part I, 29, and Part II, 16.
9

Rise of the Machines I

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 $1,400-

a-year stenographer positions on 1 August 

1919,

• Th en 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 signifi cant 

advancement right then may have been nil. 

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.

†She may have needed to be reclassifi ed from stenographer to be able to go to Riverbank; this may be 

what Draemel was referring to about “defi nitely determining” her civilian status in the 26 February 1920 

letter to Fabyan, above.
10

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

... 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.

In 1919 the only positions above the clerical were held by naval offi cers.

• 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 benefi t 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:

Fig. 10. Inventor Edward Hebern
11

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 

Company secretary notified Meyer 

that she had been elected assistant secretary, and thus could sign stock certificates. A follow-up letter of the 

same date, from Hebern himself, 

explained that she could sign 

them herself, once she received 

money for the shares. He went 

further into detail about the 

shares, such as the $5 per share 

price. (A third letter of 25 April 

notified Meyer that she was the 

recipient of 200 shares, with 

Hebern’s promise to buy them 

back at $1,000 a year later.)

Did Hebern intend for her to spend time on clerical work? Or sales? Possibly. But he did not ignore 

the technical side completely with her.

Hebern did, in that second letter, 

spend a paragraph on technical matters. 

To Meyer’s unrecorded complaint of the 

machine being “static,” probably meaning that it lacked interrupters or irregular stepping, 

he noted that the Engineering Department had not 

foreseen the consequences of this, and that only a 

perforated tape (key tape) would be the solution.38

Sadly, Hebern’s plans were based on getting significant federal contracts, and he had built a large factory before any such contracts were in place. In the 

spring of 1924, the company defaulted on the mortgage interest, Hebern was subsequently removed as 

president, and a state investigation showed that the 

shares were only legally authorized to be sold at $1 

per share.39

 Department officials 

would not discuss the gun 

but said it operates on a 

sound wave-electrical principle and aims automatically.

 A weapon of this type, 

experts pointed out, would 

be of inestimable value as a 

defensive weapon in time 

of war, especially in protecting densely populated 

areas and the National 

Capital from air invasion.

 Existence of the gun was 

disclosed after publication 

of reports that Germany 

had developed a similar 

weapon.

 The radio mechanism 

was developed by the late Navy Commander 

William F. Gresham and a Mrs. Agnes M. 

Driscoll.36

It is difficult to know what to make of this account 

except that Driscoll and Gresham invented more 

than just the CM, or that its principles were applied 

to, presumably, radar. Either way, development of the 

CM may have led her to believe that crypto-machines 

were her future.

Whatever her reason, Agnes May Meyer resigned 

effective 15 January 1923, seeing how green were the 

pastures of private industry.

 Private Industry: 1923-1924

Meyer had already examined whether the grass was 

greener in the public school system, the Navy enlisted 

ranks, or the Navy civil service. Starting in February 

1923, at age 33, she tried private industry, as technical adviser for the Hebern Electric Code Company of 

Oakland, California, in Washington, DC.37

Fig. 11. The Hebern Company logo

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192

Com

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12

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

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 

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 
13

The Red Book

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

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.) 

*Th e Main Navy and Munitions Building, built 

near the end of World War I and torn down in 1970 

for part of the National Mall.

†See Appendix V for a list of terms for Japanese 

interwar codes and ciphers.

Fig. 12. Agnes Driscoll, 

probably mid-1920s
14

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:

• Rochefort himself: “When I fi rst 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 Saff ord greater credit 

as his teacher.51

• Captain Th omas 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.

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.

Fig. 13. Driscoll in the 

mid-1920s
15

The Person and Her 1930s World

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. 

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 
16

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

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 

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.
17

 “This Is a New Code”

To make a long story short, the Navy cryptanalysts, spear-headed by Mrs. Driscoll, 

“accomplished the impossible,” solved the 

ciphers and then reconstructed the code. 

This was the most difficult cryptanalytic task 

ever performed up to that date and possibly 

the most brilliant as there were no “cribs” and 

“translations” to help out as in the subsequent 

Army solution of the Purple machine.73

This statement is pardonably extravagant, as 

breaking the Blue Book was certainly an accomplishment to be proud of. But likening it to the Army’s 

solution of the Japanese diplomatic Purple machine is 

an exaggeration, no doubt an example of the ArmyNavy rivalry that was so strong during this era.

 The 1918 Red Book had been a one-part code, 

which by its nature is more easily broken. A one-part 

code essentially has its entries in the equivalent of alphabetical order, along the lines of, for a list of locations 

(in Japanese “alphabetical”—dictionary—order):

1643 KISAN 

 1644 KIRIGAN

 1645 KEIMEI

Once a codebreaker establishes those values, he or 

she will instantly realize that 1640 to 1642 will mean 

something very close in dictionary order to “KI__.”

By contrast, a two-part code will have an decoding table like this ... 

1643 KISAN

1644 Washington, DC

1645 Turret

 ... and an encoding like this:

KISAN 1643

KIRIGAN 1608

KEIMEI 269074

The Blue Book code was a compromise between 

one-part and two-part codes. The Japanese had broken up the lengthy, one-part sequences characteristic 

of the Red Book with inserts from other sections. But 

those inserts were themselves alphabetical.75 So the 

Blue Book was constructed as if “abandon” through 

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 with some traffic, and Driscoll came up behind 

him, looked over his shoulder (as schoolteachers are 

wont to do), took it from him, and said, “This isn’t 

the same code. This is a new code.”71

The Japanese had changed their fleet operational 

code on 1 December 1930 (see Appendix V). The 

Red Book, its pages taken and photographed at such 

risk, and translated over so many years, was no longer in use. The window into Japanese thinking had 

closed. The advantage of knowing their plans was 

gone. It would take Driscoll and OP-20-G three years 

to break the new code. Their discoveries and breaks 

were stored in new binders of a different color.

It would require three long years, but, with the 

example of the Red Book for the kinds of entries 

to expect, augmented by officer trainees and led by 

Driscoll, the window would once again open. The 

Navy would no longer be deaf to Japanese communications. The two levels of superencipherment would 

be broken and stripped away. The underlying code 

values would be discovered. The “Blue Book” would 

be understood, the mystery revealed.72

Safford would later praise the breaking of the 

Blue Book as one of the great feats of cryptanalysis:
18

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Solving the code with so few cryptanalysts, and only a few clerk-typists to 

do the typing and filing, was indeed a 

major achievement. Doing so strictly by 

hand methods would have taken far too 

long, however. OP-20-G needed to automate whatever it could.

Rise of the Machines II: 

Doubt

The OP-20-G officers consulted Lt. 

Joseph Wenger, who had trained in OP20-G starting in August 1930, would be 

its chief later (see Appendix II), and was 

in the Bureau of Engineering at that time. At first, 

they considered alphabetic sorters made by Remington Rand, used elsewhere in the Navy. Then Dyer 

learned of IBM machines that could transpose input 

as needed and had an alphabetic capability. OP-20-G 

was able to rent two card punches, a sorter, and a tabulator. Later, it obtained even more flexible machines.78

With budgets as they were during the Depression, 

this was no mean feat.

Driscoll, of course, had co-invented a cipher 

machine, as noted previously. Wenger, while training in OP-20-G, had been present when Director of 

Naval Communications Capt. Hooper had requested 

OP-20-G consideration of machine aids for cryptanalysis. Safford and Driscoll discussed the subject at 

some length and concluded that machine aids were 

certainly desirable, but they doubted that such were 

feasible.79

Such an attitude isn’t surprising for the co-inventor of a cipher machine with sound cipher principles 

but problematic engineering—especially when you 

consider the co-inventor was such an intuitive cryptanalyst that she could look over someone’s shoulder 

and realize in moments the code had changed. It is 

even less surprising when considering the co-inventor 

did not grow up with automobiles and airplanes and 

had achieved all of her success with pencil and graph 

paper.

“attack” were 0001 through 0200, “KISAN” through 

“KOMINATO” were 0201 through 0250, and so on.

The Blue Book was a sizeable code, with over 

85,000 code groups, as Driscoll and her cohorts laboriously discovered. They began working on it in September 1931, after their analysis of the 1930 maneuvers was complete, and had to begin by breaking the 

new form of superencipherment, which fortunately 

was not too dissimilar from its predecessors. Driscoll 

led the effort and made the first break; she worked 

the Blue Book full time until the solution was well in 

progress. She, Dyer (for five months), and Safford (for 

eight months) put suspected meanings in a card file; 

at first, the blue binders that gave the code its Navy 

name held only the code values typed in.76

When Driscoll and the others completed the 

cryptanalytic success of breaking the Blue Book, the 

biggest intelligence success that followed was discovering in decrypted message traffic the top speed of the 

new Kongo-class battle cruiser Nagato. Upon learning 

the Nagato could make twenty-six knots, the Navy’s 

General Board changed the requirements for the 

new U.S. North Carolina-class battleships to exceed 

twenty-six knots. This alone was considered to have 

justified OP-20-G’s entire peacetime budget, and 

then some.77 But that was true only after the code was 

solved.

Fig. 14. Driscoll on 

the roof of the Navy 

Building, Washington, 

DC, late 1920s
19

The Accident: 1937-1938

Navy, especially compared to the Japanese diplomats’ 

Purple, it was no accident that the Japanese Navy 

replaced the Blue Book code in 1938.

Before that, though, Driscoll would have to 

take a break from her career after suffering an accident of her own, and showing her own, personal 

vulnerability.

The Accident: 1937-1938

Holtwick notes that, in October 1937, when she 

was forty-eight, “Driscoll was seriously injured in an 

automobile accident in which two others were killed. 

So, this is the person who later, in 1938, reportedly 

would “hardly stay in the same room” with the Army’s 

analog machine for breaking messages encrypted with 

the Japanese diplomatic Purple encryption system, 

when the analog was demonstrated for OP-20-G on 

her desk.80

Rise of the Machines III: Success

And yet, Driscoll solved the Japanese system, 

apparently used before 1935 by naval attachés, designated the M-1 cipher machine by OP-20-G. However, her solution to the machine was manual: sliding 

a handwritten, recovered cipher sequence against a 

diagram on cross-section paper.81

By 1937, OP-20-G had grown to some forty 

personnel;82 nevertheless, it relied very heavily on 

Driscoll. Although efforts were underway to record 

much of what resided only in her memory,83 not only 

did a severe shortage of “really qualified” cryptanalysts 

remain, in fact there was only one individual, unquestionably Driscoll, capable of attacking any problem.84

Driscoll, for all her reliance on manual methods, 

was responsible then for solving machine ciphers; 

one of the other cryptanalysts, former enlisted man 

Prescott Currier, was responsible for hand systems.85

Finally, the Army solved Purple in 1939; the 

credit for this exceptional feat has always gone to the 

extraordinarily talented personnel there at the time, 

as it should. Nevertheless, Driscoll contributed in her 

own small way: the machine’s “47 positions” matched 

with those of a cipher machine, likely the M-1, solved 

by Driscoll and her OP-20-G colleagues. The discovery of this match reassured the Army cryptanalysts 

that they were on the right track.86

Vulnerable

 Although OP-20-G’s principal cryptanalyst was 

riding an unbroken record of successful codebreaking, and although she had her doubts about machine 

aids, the organization needed such aids for a timely 

solution of the Blue Book in the early 1930s. Even 

so, with such a vulnerable cipher for the Japanese 

Fig. 15. Driscoll with nephew 

James Hamilton, ca. 1932
20

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

quoting at more length (as reproduced in Jack Holtwick’s Naval Security Group History to World War II):

3. ... There still remains, however, a serious shortage of really qualified cryptanalysts. 

There is, in fact, only one fully trained individual among the permanent force who is 

capable of attacking any problem. Should the 

services of this person be suddenly discontinued for any reason there would be no qualified substitute. ... For this reason at least one 

additional civil service position in each of 

the professional grades P2 and P3 should be 

established ... 

Only “at least one” more civilian? Why such a 

small number? The following paragraph may explain 

the reason:

4. Much the best source of permanent personnel for both peace and war is the Fleet 

Naval Reserve. ... They are trustworthy and 

have an invaluable background of naval experience which is lacking in civilians. ...92

Holtwick’s history is rife with references to officers 

only, or officers and enlisted men, but not civilians.93

Holtwick, as will be seen at the end of this paper, had 

a high opinion of Driscoll. But, as a Navy officer of 

his era, he thought in terms of officers and men, just 

as Wenger did.

This attitude persisted into the postwar era, as we 

will see later.

... Compared to a Civilian 

in the Army

William Friedman was, in a number of ways, 

Driscoll’s Army counterpart:

• Friedman was hired by the Army as a civilian in 1920; Driscoll by the Navy in 1919.

• Both were the lone civilians in their branches 

of service for more than a decade afterwards.

• Friedman spent the 1920s creating training 

She suffered two broken jaws [sic] and a broken leg 

and was out of action for nearly a year, not returning 

fully to duty until September 1938.”87

Except ... perhaps not. According to family, she 

suffered severe facial injuries, including a broken jaw; 

possibly a broken arm; and her right leg was broken 

in two places. Apparently four people were in the car: 

Driscoll, her mother, likely her co-worker and friend 

Helen Talley, and possibly another, unidentified 

woman. Driscoll did not drive, although it was her 

husband Brownie’s car. However, no one was killed, 

and Driscoll was the most badly injured, in those days 

before air bags and even seat belts.

She ended up in Harrisonburg Hospital, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and the leg never did heal properly. It was not put in a cast immediately and healed 

bowed. Driscoll was unwilling to go through having 

it redone (probably rebroken and reset), and she had 

to use a cane to walk for the rest of her life.88

The driver of the other vehicle may have been 

uninsured, and lost control of his car in causing the 

accident.89

It also seems likely that she returned to work in 

July 1938, rather than September, since she took 174 

days of leave without pay, including from 15 February through 22 July 1938, after exhausting her sick 

leave.90 Perhaps from July through September, she 

worked part-time.

Neglected, 1930s

Driscoll was thus forced to take a break from her 

career while recuperating. We will take a break as well, 

to consider some areas of neglect, that, by all reports, 

frustrated her in the 1930s.

A Civilian in the Navy ... 

The earlier mention of the severe shortage of 

“really qualified” cryptanalysts, with only one individual, unquestionably Driscoll, who could attack 

any problem, comes from Wenger’s Military Study 

of Communication Intelligence Research Activities of 

30 June 1937.91 The section it comes from is worth 
21

Personality Change?

turned down in 1935 when requesting reallocation 

of her position.97 She would be raised in grade only 

twice more over the rest of her career, when already 

two or three grades behind. She never came close to 

catching Friedman.

Personality Change?

Many extant works that mention Driscoll 

include the “personality change” she supposedly 

went through after the 1937 accident. Enough 

such works have mentioned the change that it is 

often assumed to be true at this point. But was 

there such a change? There is evidence both for 

and against.

For

Layton described her earlier as “enigmatic” and 

“patrician” but “could be warm and friendly.” The 

following excerpts from others certainly sound like a 

changed personality:

... [S]he had a very bad accident and was 

crippled, limped. She really looked like a 

witch. And she was very secretive ... I think 

she had developed a little bit of paranoia.98

I am convinced that the same accident that 

moved her from a beautiful woman to a hag 

affected her mind and that when she came 

back she couldn’t achieve a monoalphabetic 

substitution. She was non compos mentis or 

something of that sort. ... She came back a 

bitter vindictive witch. ... I talked to people. 

She was a very pleasant, well-mannered, nice, 

educated lady [before] ... 99

One caution: Both* of the preceding quotes are 

from top-notch Navy cryptanalysts, but ones who 

never knew her before the accident. And the second 

for future cryptanalysts; Driscoll spent it 

training offi cers in cryptanalysis.

Beyond that, though, their experiences went in 

different directions:

• Friedman held a reserve offi cer’s commission, 

an impossibility for Driscoll at that time.

• Th e Army entrusted Friedman to create the 

training, but the Navy had Saff ord, an offi -

cer, create its.

• Friedman was in charge of his organization during this entire time period, while 

Driscoll lacked authority.

• He was paid more, as well, as we will see below.

Those are easy comparisons for a historian to 

make. But did Driscoll herself do so? By all reports, 

absolutely she did.

Rochefort: “There was considerable competition between [Driscoll] and Friedman—considerable 

competition.”94 In fact, according to Capt. Wesley 

“Ham” Wright, USN (ret.), “a terrific antagonism 

developed between her and Friedman”95 (which might 

explain her antipathy to the Army’s Purple analog, as 

mentioned above).

Dyer had tried to do something about it during 

his time in OP-20-G between 1930 (as a trainee) and 

1933 (in charge for the last year):

There was a great unwillingness to grant her 

a grade ... Friedman was always two, three 

grades ahead of her, and I think that her feeling that that was sexist was probably true. 

And ... before I left here in 1931, I wrote a 

letter and got it approved, and they cussed me 

out for it afterwards, I think, but under the 

difficulties of the Depression and so forth, it 

was impossible to advance her in grade, but 

“it should be done as soon as it was possible.” 

They were stuck with it.96

But Driscoll was the one stuck with it. She was 

not promoted between 1929 and 1934, and was 

*Th e author has not read every oral history that 

might bear on the putative change. However, the 

twenty-fi ve most likely were examined, and these two 

examples found.
22

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

overly optimistic. Likewise, changes in Driscoll’s personality might not have been visible to her family or 

to the Navy people who wrote to the interviewing 

historian. 

Alternative Possibilities

So there does not seem to be any diagnostic evidence that would clearly indicate whether 

Driscoll’s personality changed or not. But change 

and no change are not the only possibilities. A year 

in which she could dwell on any frustrations might 

have increased them. Alternatively, being treated as 

a “witch” or “hag,” hardly an uplifting experience, 

might have angered her. An antagonistic response to 

such treatment could be attributed to, or dismissed as, 

a “personality change.”

Suffice it to say that, while Driscoll, by all 

accounts, reacted to at least some people differently 

after the accident, attributing this to a change in personality, and attributing such a change to the accident, is not the sole, tenable conclusion. One has 

to leap over all the other conclusions the same facts 

support.

Her behavior likely did change to some degree, 

with some people. Whether her personality did or 

not, we cannot be sure. She might have been seething 

with resentment, fuming with frustration, or burning 

with ambition, but the evidence is inadequate for us 

to be sure.

“We Didn’t See Anything 

Burning”: 1938-1941

Going “Black”

The year Driscoll returned to work, she was 

faced with another major change: the Japanese Navy 

changed from the Blue Book code to what the U.S. 

Navy called Black. But the Japanese changed codes 

yet again on 1 June 1939, adopting two codes: the 

“flag officers’ code,” which was not used enough for 

OP-20-G to successfully attack, and their main operational code, JN-25.102

citation is from an exceptionally forceful cryptanalyst, 

one who found Driscoll an obstacle, as will be discussed later, when he worked for her during World 

War II.

One other consideration in favor of a personality 

change is that an extended period of pain could easily 

change a person’s outlook and thus personality; however, there is no evidence to support or refute this in 

the case of Driscoll.

Against

There is evidence suggesting that Driscoll’s personality did not change, as well:

• Saff ord, in a 29 August 1938 letter: “Mrs. 

Driscoll is back on active duty once more 

and is herself in every respect.”100

• Family: “And she walked on them [her 

legs], she used a cane, but she walked on 

them. I remember one time at work I 

looked out an offi ce window; there she is 

going down Pennsylvania Avenue walking 

downtown from 25th Street, and I was on 

19th or 18th Street, and by golly I saw her 

walking back again! So ... I mean, she was 

really messed up [physically]. But as far as 

I’m concerned, she was very philosophical 

about it.”

• Also from the family: “She always encouraged you in anything you ever did. She was 

always encouraging.” Which drew the comment from the interviewing historian: “I’ve 

had several people write to me about that, 

who worked for her, especially in the late 

forties [after the accident], a lot of Navy 

people wrote to me about how she would 

encourage everybody ... ”101

The evidence against a change also has its qualifiers. Safford’s letter dates to right after she returned to 

work, and, given that she had to use a cane to walk, his 

assertion that she was “herself in every respect” seems 
23

JN-25

nel determine if they had made an error removing 

additives.

Driscoll and a handful of cohorts107 set to 

work. OP-20-G did not subdivide the organization into smaller formal groups before 1940, but 

in that year, Driscoll was in charge of the JN-25 

effort. For help, she had, as of approximately 

summer 1940:

• Her friend, Mrs. Talley

• Civilian Larry Clark

• A Lt. Chisholm, USNR

• A Chief (CRM) McGregor, and

• A Yeoman Kochen.108

All five had been with OP-20-G since at least 

October 1939,109 and Talley was one of the Red 

Book copyists back in 1929.110 It should be safe to say 

that they were of significant help to the 51-year-old 

Driscoll, but that she still did most of the cryptanalytic heavy lifting.

And the lifting stayed heavy. Despite similarities to previous codes, OP-20-G was repeatedly set 

back by the Japanese. Between JN-25’s 1 June 1939 

introduction and 1 October 1940, the Japanese 

changed additive books four times. Driscoll and the 

others had to break five different books of superencipherment and break into the code itself.

On 1 December 1940, the Japanese then 

changed the underlying code as well as additive book, 

from the original JN-25A to JN-25B. Fortunately for 

OP-20-G, it intercepted messages using the previous 

additive book through January 1941. This allowed 

Driscoll’s team to spend less time on the superencipherment and more time on the code than they 

might have.111

Nevertheless, success would take time and 

resources that were not available before 7 December 1941. Only some 4 percent of the codebook was 

solved by August 1941; that portion was doubled 

after comparing notes with British codebreakers in 

Singapore.112 The additive book would be replaced 

again, in June, August, and on 4 December 1941.113

JN-25

The Red Book wasn’t so much broken as it 

was the result of a break-in. The Blue Book was 

a major accomplishment in codebreaking. JN-25 

would be much, much harder. Anyone wanting 

to attack the code would have to break through 

better superencipherment than the Red or Blue 

Books had had.

This was no transposition system as before. 

Much harder, the Japanese Navy used a book of additive groups. The book of random numbers to be used 

as additives consisted of 300 pages of 100 numbers 

each. Noncarrying addition was used to combine 

the additive groups to the basic code groups; if code 

group 1643 (“KISAN”) were combined with additive 5514,103 the result would be 6157—thus superenciphering the code with additives rather than by 

transposition.

The number of each additive page and the 

number of the line on the page where the selection of additives began served as “keys” which were 

included in each message at the beginning and end. 

Otherwise the receiving code clerk would not have 

known where to start in the additive book in stripping off the additive prior to decoding. It should be 

noted that this additive book for JN-25 was not a 

one-time pad: the five-digit groups were re-used, as 

needed.104

The underlying true two-part code of 30,000105

five-digit code numbers had nothing to do with the 

entries’ alphabetical order. So Driscoll and OP-20-G, 

if they could determine that 20001 was, say, “cruiser,” would have no hint to what “cruise” or “cruising 

speed” were. They wouldn’t automatically be something like 20000 and 20002, the way the Red Book 

was set up, and, in chunks, the Blue Book.

A crucial feature of JN-25 was that, when the 

digits in a code group (“20001”) were added together, the total was always divisible by three.106 This let 

the Japanese code clerks determine if numbers had 

been garbled, but it also let the OP-20-G person-
24

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

sages since 1924 and breaking the codes since 1930, 

she had already been moved off the Japanese problem, 

apparently in October 1940.121

The Enigma: 1941-1942

Assignment: German Navy

Driscoll was reportedly adamant after the war 

that she broke “the” Japanese code, undoubtedly 

meaning her work on JN-25, but that her bosses 

got the credit.122 That wasn’t the only major Axis 

cryptsystem she worked on, but her contributions 

on her next assignment did become acknowledged by history. She hasn’t gotten much credit, 

but that is no doubt as it should be, given her 

contributions.

In presumably October 1940, and certainly as of 

7 December 1941, she and four others were assigned 

to work on the “German Naval System”—Enigma. 

Only these five people against a system the Germans 

considered unbreakable:

• Driscoll

• Gaschk

• Clark

• Hamilton, and

• Talley.123

The wonder of their work on the machine isn’t 

that they didn’t provide an exploitable solution, it’s 

that they solved anything at all. However, what outweighs the wonder is that Driscoll created expectations that she not only did not meet, but did not even 

approach.

Anglophobia

After more than a decade focused on Japan, the 

Navy presumably did not take well to being directed 

to change that focus to Germany, especially when 

the Purple analog for decrypting Japanese diplomatic 

messages, the unit that was destined for Hawaii, was 

sent to Great Britain instead. Safford at least, back in 

Messages in JN-25 would not reliably be read until 

March 1942,114 with the initial break thanks largely 

to the way numerals were encrypted.115

Driscoll would be moved to work on something 

else before this time. Credit for breaking JN-25 

would largely be vested in Rochefort and those 

working so hard for him in Hawaii. Driscoll’s contributions were largely lost to history—but not to 

everyone.

Ham Wright, who would be Driscoll’s boss in 

1949,116 later noted how few people had contributed more than she—in fact, probably only one 

individual*:

I know the British commander that did most 

of the major work on it [JN-25]. ... Malcolm Burnett, yeah. He probably did more 

in the initial JN-25 than anybody else, probably more than Aggie.117

7 December 1941

As it happens, Driscoll was on a Sunday drive 

with family on 7 December 1941. They stopped 

at the Silver Spring Hot Shoppe when they saw 

the headlines about the Japanese attack on Pearl 

Harbor. She was not surprised. They drove past 

the Japanese embassy in Washington and looked 

in the gates. “We didn’t see anything burning.”118

The Japanese had already burned all but one copy 

of all codes.119

Driscoll was not the only one not surprised that 

the Japanese attacked; Navy officials in Washington 

were aware war was imminent.120 But how much 

attention she was paying to what had been the Navy’s 

main concern since at least 1930 is unknown. The 

U.S. codebreaker with the most experience on Japanese targets, who had been decrypting Japanese mes-

*Rochefort and Station HYPO as an organization deserve most of the credit for breaking JN-25; 

Driscoll’s achievement is to have contributed more on 

an individual basis than anyone but Burnett.
25

Catalog Attack

Effort

The team was expanded within a year; by 

3 July 1942, it numbered fifteen, with ten people 

added to Driscoll, Gaschk, Clark, Hamilton, and 

Talley.126

The German Enigma machine, between its multiple rotors, stecker plugs, and reflector, had some 150 

million squared possible permutations when encrypting.127 The British, of course, were already working 

with some success against the Enigma by the time 

OP-20-G began its effort. However, the Navy, given apparent Anglophobia and probably an attempt 

at independence, was unwilling to work with them 

initially.128

The Enigma was unlike every other cryptsystem 

Driscoll was acquainted with. It could not be solved 

and exploited in a timely fashion without a great deal 

of 1940s machine and human resources. This must 

not have been immediately obvious to her, given her 

belief in a low-resource solution.

Catalog Attack

Burke suggested129 that Driscoll might have 

been making a catalog attack against Enigma. A 

catalog attack generally involves taking a stereotyped 

phrase—e.g., “situation normal”—and then encrypting it with every encryption setting that the cryptsystem allows. Then, all the possible encrypted versions 

are searched for in all available traffic. When found, 

the current setting for that day, week, or other time 

period is likely found as well.130

One other support for the possibility of a catalog attack is Capt. John A. Skinner’s war diary, when 

he was a junior officer in OP-20-G; his entry for 

6 December 1942 includes, “Yesterday the boss 

[Howard T. Engstrom] approved of making the trigraphic index of words in decrypted text on tabulating cards for Mrs. D.”131

Skinner added on 10 December, “Got a gang 

punch from Hogan and [we] are set now to start the 

catalogue for Mrs. D[riscoll]. The plugging presents 

OP-20-G, seems to have developed a raging case of 

Anglophobia in response.*

The apparent Anglophobia might instead have 

been xenophobia; earlier, in 1937, in response to a 

State Department request for a British engineer to 

spend four months with Bell Telephone Laboratories 

and the Radio Corporation of New York, Safford’s 

response on behalf of OP-20-G consisted of:

The Director of Naval Communications 

can raise no specific objections to Mr. Gee’s 

extended visit to the Bell Laboratories. However, it is considered an undesirable practice for this country to disclose its technical 

secrets to foreigners while getting nothing in 

return.124

There is nothing to indicate whether Driscoll 

shared Safford’s feelings. However, she did turn down 

a British offer of a Bombe (essentially, a chain of 

Enigma-analogs) in August 1941, and she made clear 

her belief that she could come up with a solution that 

did not require the kind of machine and manpower 

resources that a Bombe did.† In addition, when Britain’s great codebreaker Brigadier John Tiltman visited, 

she publicly grilled him on the “vital information” 

Britain was withholding and again claimed to be able 

to break Enigma “properly.”125

*See Dundas P. Tucker, “Rhapsody in Purple: A 

New History of Pearl Harbor,” Cryptologia 6, no. 3 

(July 1982): 193-228. Saff ord wrote the article, and 

Tucker published it after Saff ord’s death. Th e section 

heading “Perfi dious Albion” should convey the general 

tenor of the article.

†Th e defi nitive study on this period, which includes 

extensive documentation from the National Archives, 

is Colin Burke, “Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma 

and the Bombe,” http://userpages.umbc.edu/~burke/

driscoll1-2011.pdf. See also Robert Hanyok, “Madame 

X: Agnes in Twilight, the Last Years of the Career of 

Agnes Driscoll, 1941-1957,” http://www.nsa.gov/

public_info/_files/crypto_almanac_50th/

Madame_X_Agnes_in_Twilight.pdf.
26

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

lifetime of the war....133 [Presumably Raven 

meant the four-wheel Naval Enigma, but it is 

difficult to be certain.]

In other words, Driscoll solved the Enigma much 

as the British had with their paper analog (which was 

of the three-rotor Enigma, not the four-rotor Naval 

Enigma).134 Presumably she had paper analogs of the 

wheels, stecker, etc., to manually test stereotyped phrases 

against. This would have been a glacially slow process, 

as Raven commented. Her solution did not require 

massive machine support nor did it enable timely 

exploitation, so it was effectively useless. As victories go, 

this was as hollow as hollow can be.

Skinner’s war diary for 1 December 1942 suggests the analogs were indeed paper, or at least punch 

cards: “Discussed the advisability of making cards for 

the wheel and s. [stecker?] for all the past E[nigma] 

traffic, with Mrs. D.”135

She had fourteen people working with her in 

1942, but until the Navy began building Bombes, 

after Driscoll was moved from the effort, they would 

produce no usable results against the Enigma.

Grenades for Bombes

Nevertheless, Driscoll did make a lasting contribution to the work against Enigma. Once the Navy 

was producing Bombes, machines called Grenades, 

adjuncts to the Bombes,* aided the effort. Driscoll 

helped design the first U.S. Grenade, a month before 

the Bombe project had been approved in September 

1942. Once the Bombes found the daily key, the 

Driscoll-Howard Standard Grenades reduced the 

effort needed to identify the window settings for succeeding messages to a short four- or five-letter crib.136

Enigmatic Motivations

Why didn’t Driscoll accept what help the 

British offered, instead of putting them off? Was 

some problems, but we should easily get it under way 

tomorrow.”132

A catalog attack, with hundreds or thousands 

of possibilities to search for by hand, was a practical 

method with the cryptsystems Driscoll was used to. 

But searching for millions of possibilities would make 

timely exploitation impossible and furthermore would 

have required far more paper than she likely could find 

storage space for. She may have started with a catalog 

approach, but she did not likely stay with it.

Solution ... ?

She did, in an extremely limited sense, succeed in 

solving the Enigma. Frank Raven noted that, despite 

lasting problems with the “slow” wheel, 

Aggie [Driscoll] had her own solution to the 

Enigma which required no machine support whatsoever. It was done completely by 

hand and roughly about 20 sailors should 

be able to read about 2/3 of the traffic. ... 

[H]er solution was using paper models of the 

machine ... in which you slipshoe [sic] the side 

up and down. ... [U]sing paper models of the 

machine she would in essence work a rather 

poor Bombe by hand of the entire machine.

You’ll start off assuming wheel order 1, 2, 3. 

Then you have a crib message of course. The 

first assumption, the second assumption gearing toward this was that you had an unsteckered letter. So starting with the assumption of 

an unsteckered letter which was six chances 

out of twenty-six. Starting with an assumed 

window of the machine and an assumed 

notch pattern you would try to recover the 

sequences, see, by hand. Well when you 

didn’t get it on one setting, which you check 

off very carefully, then you move to the next 

setting. After you got through the complete 

cycle of the machine then you changed the 

outside wheel. It was a trial of exhaustion. 

... She can’t test one crib, one message in the 

*A Grenade was a Navy machine used to test cribs 

for Enigma-based messages, when the original plug 

settings were known but the wheel order was not.
27

Bypassed: 1943-1944

of cribs on these messages. ... Through my 

old friend Milt Gasch we bootlegged copies 

of the original ciphers and the material without Aggie knowing it. ... 

I said [to a subordinate], assume that this 

thing is like the Jade machine [see Appendix V], telephone selectors lapped the square 

wire. ... He brings the thing back and by 

God, he’s got it on. He’s placed the crib, 

and again it was a favorable motion of the 

machine. ...

Raven then approached Engstrom about studying the plaintext underlying Coral, which Engstrom 

accepted, putting production and research together. 

Raven claimed that Engstrom did not realize that 

the only way to study the plaintext was to break the 

encryption. When Engstrom did realize, according to Raven, he gave the go-ahead. The Navy had 

National Cash Register build a machine for decryption. Raven: “We had the machine in my office, 

running. They had to tell Aggie about it at this 

point. ... Aggie demanded that I be court-martialed 

for wasting government materials and going against 

orders.”

Secondly, she refused to turn over the current 

traffic. That was her responsibility. ... What 

the Navy brass didn’t know and what Aggie 

didn’t know was we had tapped the line that 

the current traffic was coming in on, and we 

were processing the current traffic up in my 

office with the full cooperation of Engstrom 

and Howie Campaigne, too.139

Raven would do whatever he needed to, to get 

the job done. Earlier, when Driscoll was working on 

Enigma, he broke into her safe to examine what she 

had.140

If it sounds as if the author is denigrating Raven 

for ensuring that Coral was broken (and Enigma as 

well) during a war, when lives were on the line, not 

Driscoll just backing Safford and trying to keep the 

British at arm’s length? Trying to support him by 

exposing “Albion’s perfidy”? Was she overconfident 

after breaking so many codes with so little help? 

Was she herself Anglophobic enough to underrate 

anything the British did? Or was she simply angry, 

frustrated, or displaying a changed personality? We 

cannot know. Her motivations remain an enigma, 

one with probably too little information ever to be 

uncovered.

As the principal cryptanalyst, Driscoll might 

seem the key figure in any OP-20-G cryptanalytic 

effort during this timeframe. But her approach 

to Enigma suggested that time and encryption 

developments might be passing her by. She was 

bypassed in another way in her next assignment, 

on Coral.

Bypassed: 1943-1944

Coral

Driscoll and some of her team had been moved 

by 29 January 1943 to work the Japanese Naval 

Attaché machine known as Coral (see Appendix V). 

She was in charge, with one enlisted man and five 

civilians:

• Kilcullen, E. T., Sea1c

• Mrs. L. V. Appleby

• Mrs. E. A. Clark

• Mr. D. B. Grier

• Mrs. M. M. Hamilton, and

• Miss [Mrs.] H. L. Talley.137

Although Frank Raven wasn’t listed as a member of the team, he was part of the group that broke 

Coral.138 In his words, briefly:

Engstrom had gone to Wenger and got Aggie 

Driscoll assigned to work Coral to get her off 

his back on the Enigma. ... I remember that 

... when we turned the problem over I had 

copies of my notes, there had been a couple 
28

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Skinner might have earned some of Driscoll’s ire, 

as well; he recorded for 4 November moving “Mrs. 

D” to unspecified other or new spaces* the following 

day. Then, on 5 November, he wrote, without elaboration, “Got the devil for the rooms being in rather 

bad shape. Must get after the men some more.”145

Raven

Raven was heading an OP-20-G decryption 

watch in early 1941 but came in contact with 

Driscoll earlier, when he was initially working for 

her. His description of the work environment was 

anything but flattering. No one was permitted to 

talk, but could only pass notes through Driscoll. 

Restroom breaks required her approval. Any sailor 

who displeased her would be shipped off to Hawaii. 

And she had many senior Navy officers behind her 

giving her clout.146

This last item has partial corroboration: 

One of our Navy people recalls when they 

had to fill out the questionnaire for periodic 

security investigation and update. Where 

it asked for references, Mrs. Driscoll listed 

the names of five admirals. When a young 

Navy lieutenant saw this, he came over to her 

office and said, Ma’am, you can’t do that. She 

looked at him with a squint eye, and said, 

“Sonny, I knew them when they were ensigns 

so. Only, perhaps, his methods. Wenger, for one, does 

not appear to have approved:

According to Raven himself: “I was the first 

person who didn’t kowtow and had enough 

guts to say she was nuts. Wenger I don’t think 

ever talked to me privately or personally from 

that day on.”141

Rise of the Machines IV

Driscoll may not have been as machine-oriented 

as some and was certainly slow to adopt them, but she 

did not categorically disdain their use. On both Enigma and Coral, she took some advantage of machine 

processing.

Aside from the Grenade mentioned above, she 

requested automation support in November 1941 for 

Enigma, and the microfilm-reading machine eventually delivered became known as “Hypo”142 (not to be 

confused with Station HYPO).

Capt. John A. Skinner’s war diary, when he was 

a junior officer in OP-20-G dealing with machine 

support, mentions machine runs for Driscoll and her 

team in 1942: 

• on 15, 16, and 18 May 1942 (the 18 May 

entry mentions “Raven’s NAT [naval attaché] traffi c”)

• 23 June and 10 July 1942

• 18 August 1942: “Mrs. D gave us E-2-8 

traffi c to punch and prepare for the IC [a 

machine for making Index of Comparison 

checks] when it arrives. It took only three 

watches for the whole thing,” and

• 14, 21, and 28 September 1942.143

Skinner also notes work on 8 October that 

might relate to Hypo development: “The books on 

Mrs. D’s library will stack up as follows—78 pages 

per book, 6,066 books, or 473,148 pages to be photographed on microfilm. 35mm? or 325 sets times 

336.”144

*Probably not a reference to OP-20-G’s move to 

Nebraska Avenue; the entry for 12 December 1942, 

(p. 216) mentions what space Mrs. D. “will” require, 

and on 19 January 1943 (p. 225) what phones will be 

needed at “the new place.” Th e 2 February 1943 entry 

(p. 232) adds that the “Driscoll” section will move 

from room 1532, presumably at the Navy Building, 

to room 1120 at “the School bldg.”—undoubtedly 

Nebraska Avenue—which had been a girls’ school. 

Skinner himself moved or at least visited on 6 February 

(p. 234): “I fi nally went out to the new offi ce--Naval 

Communications Annex, Massachusetts and Nebraska 

Ave., Room 2104, phone 17 (ORdway 2600).”
29

Last Navy Years: 1944-1949

thing of an immovable object? How widely might his 

views have propagated?

There is no evidence and we can only speculate: 

How much might Frank Raven’s personal experience 

have been responsible for the “witch” perception of 

Driscoll towards the end of her career? For the postaccident “changed personality” view? How much 

might this highly influential man’s opinions have 

influenced others’?

No doubt the smoke had some sort of fire behind 

it, but how much is difficult to determine at this late 

date.

Last Navy Years: 1944-1949

Any fuming or frustration she might have felt for 

the Navy would not last much longer; she was one 

of many Navy cryptologists who were moved to the 

Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) when it was 

formed in 1949.

What she was working on in her last four years 

as a Navy civilian carried on into her time in AFSA 

and will be treated in the next section. But what the 

Navy was like in those final years is worth considering 

briefly, to put Driscoll in context. 

OP-20-G had only eighteen civilians on 30 

September 1939;149 naval cryptologic giant Joseph 

Wenger’s study, cited above in Neglected: Part I, had 

pointed out the lack of “really qualified personnel.” 

This remained true into the postwar years, as well; 

Wenger’s study was never acted on, as Holtwick 

noted:

Unrealized by most ... was the inherent inability of an effective and efficient COMINT 

organization to fit into the traditional concept of Naval organizational structure. Many 

attempts were made to reconcile the incongruities, but they never really succeeded; the 

lack of fit was circumvented, plastered over, or 

ignored (in the case of the Wenger study) in 

the hope it would go away. ... 150

and lieutenants, and if you keep this up, I’m 

going to tell them not to promote you.” The 

young lieutenant said, “Yes, Ma’am,” and 

departed.147

Although presumably accurate, Raven as an 

uncorroborated source requires a brief treatment. 

Was Frank Raven an extremely forceful individual? 

According to one now-retired NSA senior executive who dealt with Raven on numerous occasions, 

“extremely forceful” was an understatement. Raven 

was exceptionally focused; he would generally charge 

right through any obstacle to reach his goal, whether 

breaking a cryptsystem or just getting a soft drink 

from the vending machine. Not in any sense malicious, he was simply very, very driven, and in his drive 

would steamroll anyone who got in his way.148

Raven’s oral history has small measures of praise 

for Driscoll but has more than one “witch” reference 

when he speaks of her; the one noted in the “Personality Change?” section is an example. It’s reasonable 

to believe that young Raven, arriving in OP-20-G, 

expected the preeminent cryptanalyst to know everything he knew, and then some. He presumably 

expected that she would take the approach he would, 

or a better one.

Sadly, with both Enigma and Coral, that was not 

the case. Instead, she chose methods that would not 

ultimately work.

And so Driscoll got in Raven’s way. She came 

between him and his goal. And Driscoll had clout 

enough that he couldn’t steamroll her, and trying to 

could get him sent to Hawaii.

Although Driscoll undoubtedly irked others at 

some point, searches of NSA oral histories reveal that 

most of the mentions of her are factual, laudatory, or 

both. Only a few seem to disparage her.

What makes this pertinent is ... Raven was as 

close as a human being is likely to get to being an 

unstoppable force. How much might his views of 

Driscoll have been colored by her desire to be some-
30

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

it she would raise holy hell. ... [Asked if she 

tried to run things.] She tried to. Wenger 

and I would be able to calm her down pretty 

well. Safford never had much luck with her. 

Wenger was quite good at it and I was fair, I 

guess.”155

Driscoll never did get to run OP-20-G; sadly, 

neither was she one of those moved to a senior 

grade. Her Navy P-6 grade converted to a government service GS-13 upon joining AFSA, but 

her last promotion was to that grade in 1942 (see 

Appendix III), and she would carry that grade to 

retirement.

Carrying on to AFSA:

1944-1952

“The Russian Problem”

After the ignominy of Enigma and being circumvented on Coral, Driscoll was moved to a new problem in 1944.

Raven claimed that she had been moved to Coral 

to get her off of Enigma, and then the Coral business 

broke the back of her reputation.156

Campaigne (the other person to refer to Driscoll 

as a “witch,” above) expressed similar sentiments later, 

that Driscoll was given very difficult assignments, 

which others had given up on, just to “keep her 

busy.”157

If that was the intent, the move was a success. 

Driscoll was moved in April 1944 to OP-20-G-50, 

the Russian Language Section corresponding to the 

Army section that eventually produced the Venona 

breakthrough. She headed the small machine-support 

group.158

Venona is the name for the Army’s cryptanalytic 

effort that began on 1 February 1943 to attack accumulated Soviet diplomatic traffic. Mixed in with “true 

diplomatic” traffic was other traffic as well, including 

Soviet espionage messages. The extreme cryptanalytic 

Thus the Navy, unlike the Army, came out of 

World War II with only 70 civilians out of 11,000 

personnel.151 Holtwick was not the only one aware 

of the costs of the lack of civilian experts; Capt. Wesley “Ham” Wright was as well, at least in retrospect. 

When asked in an oral history about comparing technical ability between the Army and Navy, he said:

No, they [the Army] were way ahead of 

us. ... The only thing we had was Aggie 

Driscoll and a bunch of naval officers who 

were not very savvy. Dyer and myself were 

the only ones who had any real talent at all. 

We couldn’t compare with Rowlett and the 

people that he had, or Friedman. ... [I]t was 

the way we were trained. We had to go to sea 

for three years. ... The Army methods were 

more sophisticated than ours because their 

people had been trained for longer periods of 

time at it. Where we had a bunch of young 

squirts that we just developed ourselves.152

The Navy had relied on reservists who could 

be called up and commissioned, which the Navy 

believed gave it better control of security, personnel 

rotation, assignment flexibility, and better overall control by commanders. But the Navy did realize after 

the war that this approach would be less likely to work 

in peacetime and moved to a system that included 

senior-grade civilians, wherein the Navy decided what 

was to be done, and the civilians, how to do it.153

Driscoll presumably welcomed this change; she 

had reportedly sought some level of authority, even 

during the times she was the head of a section, for 

some time:

Raven: “She ran everybody around her and 

if she didn’t like the look of a sailor he was 

sent to Hawaii. Period. That’s all she had to 

say, ‘Get that man out of here,’ and he was 

shipped off.”154

Wright: “The main reason that we didn’t talk 

to the Army is because if she found out about 
31

Technical Consultant

room at the head of the wing that I worked 

in, and every once in a while I would just 

stop in and talk with her. But, you know, 

nothing of any consequence. At this point 

she received help in and out, but I do 

remember a lot of people who had known 

her over the years would drop by. People 

who would be ... you know, a lot of Navy 

people who would be back on TDY, so 

they’d drop in and say hello to her.

I don’t know [what she was working on then]. 

I don’t think much of anything. I think they 

just took her some worksheets ... probably 

nothing that made any difference. ... I just 

felt, you know, that she kind of liked to have 

somebody drop in and say hello, and every 

once in a while I’d do that. ...166

Technical Consultant

Driscoll was moved to AFSA-206 on 26 November 1950 (see Appendix I); this was the Technical 

Consulting Group, where she worked for Frank 

Raven, of all people.167

Raven, to his credit, reportedly defended her 

when she needed it: “... I found myself in a rather 

amusing situation after World War II of defending her. Some of her old Navy friends, these characters who licked her boots, were really out to do 

her in, and I was so pissed off that I found myself 

in the position of seriously defending her. ... 

When she was down and out they were prepared 

to kick her teeth in. ... By 1947 all her admirals 

had left, had all retired. She lost her clout. ...”168

She remained in AFSA-206 until the National 

Security Agency was formed in 1952.

and analytic challenge of Venona continued until 

1980.159

Driscoll’s section consisted of herself, four civil 

servants, and three enlisted WAVES and was responsible for cryptanalysis, language work, and traffic 

analysis. She and her section were moved from what 

had become OP-20-G-10 in March 1945 to OP20-G-50; in June 1946 all Russian diplomatic effort 

in the section, which had become NY-1, was ended; 

all traffic, research material, and results were transferred to Driscoll.160

In September 1946 Driscoll’s cryptanalytic 

group was placed under the operational control of 

N-2.161

The Navy attacked only one Soviet diplomatic 

system. This part of Venona, to grossly oversimplify, 

was both the most voluminous and the least lucrative for intelligence content. Its primary value was in 

whatever light it shed on the espionage traffic that it 

shared with accidental one-time-pad use.

It took the efforts of cryptologic giants like 

Dr. Richard Leibler and Cecil Phillips, along with 

exceptionally advanced techniques and equally 

advanced equipment, to break what was finally broken in that system. Over 50 work-years of effort 

were expended.162

Unsurprisingly, Driscoll and her seven-person 

group did not have any success to report.163

AFSA was formed in 1949, and Driscoll was 

assigned to AFSA-24 on Christmas Day that year. 

AFSA-24 probably became AFSA-02A7 a year later 

(see Appendix I) and was formally the Special Processing Division in the Office of Operations;164 informally, it was “the Soviet problem.”165 So the work she 

had been doing at the end of her time in the Navy 

carried on into AFSA.

It was probably this period that future coworker 

(and NSA’s Cryptologic Hall of Honor member) 

Juanita Moody later remembered:

But I knew Aggie through school. She sat 

in a room. Had a [pause] like a little private 
32

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

against a highly important postwar cryptanalytic problem

• Leslie A. Rutledge, who led an NSA eff ort 

against an important element of the Soviet 

problem and later wrote the article “John 

Dee: Consultant to Queen Elizabeth I”171

• David Shepard, who arrived at William 

Friedman’s SIS in 1944 and later left the 

Agency to form a systems development 

company

• Martha Shinn, who had become one of the 

top fi ve women in pay grade only two years 

later, in February 1955

• Harold Stukey, who co-wrote, with the 

eminent Lambros Callimahos, the June 

1971 Basic Cryptologic Glossary

Pacific Division

Driscoll moved to NSA-064 (later, NSA-0641) 

around 1954, then to C74203 between late 1955 

and mid-1956 (see Appendix I). NSA-064 was presumably the Pacific Division, where she developed 

some machine support.172 C74203 probably changed 

designators to C7403 by mid-March 1956, since she 

did not change raters for her performance appraisals. 

The latter organization was listed as “ACOM-403” 

in NSA telephone books of the period (again, see 

Appendix I).

Driscoll was recognized in the January 1954 

NSA Newsletter for reaching thirty years’ service. She, 

Wenger, and Friedman seem to have been among the 

first five people at NSA to reach this milestone.173

Driscoll would have been in one of the early contingents that moved to Fort Meade, moving between 

late 1957 and early 1958.174 She did not relocate175

and did not drive from Washington, DC, to Fort 

Meade every day, either.176

A former coworker remembered his first years, 

which were her last; his words are so eloquent they 

speak for themselves:

NSA: 1952-1959

Top Consultant

Given the similarity in organizational designators, AFSA-206 probably became NSA-206, 

Driscoll’s first office after NSA was created (see 

Appendix I); this office was known as the Technical 

Projects/Services Group, an adjunct research office 

for Operations.169

She stayed in NSA-206 or 206B until sometime 

in 1953. A roster, or partial roster, of personnel in the 

office in her Civilian Personnel Record170 shows that 

this was not just an office of technical experts, it was 

an office of stars. Her coworkers included:

• Mary J. Dunning, a statistician on William 

Friedman’s team that broke Purple

• Sydney Fairbanks, the fi rst editor of the 

NSA Technical Journal, lauded as an accomplished musician, brilliant teacher, expert 

linguist, and, once, a law clerk to the Massachusetts Supreme Court—among other 

things

• Bassford Getchell, honored as a Distinguished Member of the CryptoMathematics Institute (CMI)

• Arthur Lewis, also honored as a Distinguished Member of the CMI

• Frank Lewis, an important cryptanalyst 

against Japanese systems during World War 

II and on the Venona project after the war. 

A creator of crossword puzzles for decades, 

in 1950 Lewis was named by Harper’s Magazine as one of the four outstanding “puzzlers” in the U.S. and UK.

• Bill Lutwiniak, also honored as a CMI 

Distinguished Member, was a major cryptanalyst in World War II, on the Venona 

project, and later

• Paul Reimers, who, with Hall of Honor 

member Juanita Moody, came up with the 

concept for the “Mathew” machine used 
33

Pacific Division

could not convince her to move her work 

spaces and thus the aisle had to be diverted 

around them. During an office meeting, as 

the Division Chief lamented the disruption to the normal work area, I volunteered 

to take on the job of trying to get Agnes 

Driscoll to reconsider. With a few snickers 

around the table, the Chief invited me to go 

into the “lion’s den” and get chewed up. As 

it turned out, to everyone’s surprise, Agnes 

Driscoll smiled with a twinkle in her eye 

and readily agreed to move after I noted the 

advantages of doing so. I thought it was a 

great accomplishment at the time, but I suspect in retrospect, that it was probably my 

youth, short haircut, and “courage” which 

reminded her of a different era with former 

student naval officers and compelled her 

to take pity on my plight and request. In 

any case, I believe the caution and timidity of people to approach her generally was 

without foundation—she was one of the 

most pleasant and kind persons I have ever 

met and certainly a very memorable individual. She readily deserves a special place 

of recognition and remembrance in our 

organization.177

Apparently Driscoll’s last assignment before 

departure was one, unlike some in the last half of her 

career, that harnessed her talents. She was reportedly 

given some unreadable communications that no one 

else could solve. Two weeks later, shortly before her 

retirement, she was able to provide the solution and 

make the communications readable.178

Driscoll reached the then-maximum retirement age of 70 on 24 July 1959 and retired on 

31 July 1959. She received a letter from the thenNSA Director congratulating her after “service with 

this Agency and its predecessors since 1918 [which] 

has been highly satisfactory in all respects.”179

When entering the Agency in 1956 as a 

civilian, I was assigned initially as the Chief 

of a division’s management staff. Part of 

my “other duties as assigned” was to ensure 

that that “kindly, but firm” elderly lady—

Agnes Driscoll and her two assistants were 

comfortable and pleased in their physical 

location—a small space in one of the deteriorating World War II barracks, designated 

B Building in the Arlington Hall Station. It 

wasn’t unusual to see visiting senior naval 

officers crawl their way through the small 

aisle and cramped spaces to where she was 

located for a courtesy visit, and on a few 

occasions, Dr. Abe Sinkov, then Chief (or 

Deputy) of Production, would stop by to 

personally inspect that all was well with 

Agnes Driscoll.

She was a kindly and brilliant-minded person, and while I was ignorant of her impressive background, she always treated me with 

respect and friendliness. It was obvious, 

however, that she was extremely loyal to her 

workers, and she was a fierce fighter when 

it came to protecting them. She performed 

research work, which some said would take 

only a fraction of the time if she would use 

and rely on machine support. But it was her 

apparent belief that there was no substitute 

for hard copy traffic, and she was supplied 

with endless boxes full of it to use for her 

analysis. She could often be seen with her 

huge magnifying glass, mounted on a special 

fixture, to scan each piece of traffic.

When the Agency moved to Ft. Meade, 

Agnes Driscoll decided that she and her 

assistants should sit right up against an 

inside wall—in the middle of a long aisle in 

the operational spaces! To the consternation 

and frustration of the Division Chief, he 
34

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Two Close Associates

Margaret Hamilton

Driscoll’s sister Margaret Eliza Meyer was born 

10 May 1897,180 eight years after Driscoll. She too 

enlisted in World War I,181 then joined her sister in 

OP-20-G by 7 December 1941, working for her 

against JN-25, Enigma, and Coral.182 Married by 

then, Margaret Hamilton went on to work with 

Driscoll at Arlington Hall as well: as someone who 

knew Driscoll then related: “... [T]his was during the 

Korean War. ... When I first saw her and Mrs. Hamilton sitting in a private office, I asked my Branch 

Chief who she was. His reply, ‘She’s a friend of the 

Admirals.’ ”183

Campaigne and Raven, who showed little liking 

for Driscoll as a person, felt otherwise about Hamilton: “a very nice person” in Campaigne’s view, and 

Raven had nothing derogatory to say.184

Hamilton was unwilling to make the move to 

Fort Meade, unlike Driscoll, and resigned in 1957. 

She suffered a stroke in 1969 and fell into a coma, 

staying in the Fairfax Nursing Home until her death 

in 1980.185

Helen Talley

Helen Talley hired on as a stenographer in the 

Fifth Naval District’s Commandant’s Office in 1920. 

She transferred to the Office of the Director of Naval 

Communications in 1928.186 She was, as noted in 

the section on JN-25, one of the Red Book copyists 

from 1929, was likely with Driscoll during the nearcrippling car accident, and worked with Driscoll on 

Enigma and Coral,187 and quite possibly for the rest 

of her career.

Campaigne remembered Talley as well, not with 

favor: “another crony named Mrs. Talley, whom she 

[Driscoll] said was the greatest frequency counter. 

And, you know, that’s not very high level.” Raven was 

even less complimentary: “She [Driscoll] had with her 

Nevertheless, NSA neglected then or for the rest 

of 1959 to mention her retirement in its newsletter, 

as it had for others. Her retirement was not marked 

in any way. Of course, that may have been Driscoll’s 

choice. She was generally quiet about her work, even 

with family.

Fig. 16. Y1C Margaret Meyer Hamilton, 

Agnes’s sister
35

Retirement: 1959-1971

especially at their seven-acre property in Tyson’s Corner, which had a Civil War-era dugout and a lookout 

post called something like Fort Freedom, which they 

used as a garden. They owned considerable real estate.

They traveled, before and after retirement, often 

with Driscoll’s mother Lucy Andrews Meyer; destinations included New England, postwar Europe, and 

pre-Castro Cuba. Driscoll liked to go shopping and 

collect and redeem Green Stamps for rewards. They 

entered contests, and Driscoll liked to gamble. They 

would travel to Route 301 in southern Maryland and 

gamble for prizes. (Interest in gambling apparently is 

not unusual with cryptologists who spend as much 

time with probabilities as Driscoll did.) She was a 

good chess player, as well.189

[on Enigma] two or three really hack clerks. One I 

think was named Callie.”188

Talley retired, with 35 years of service, on 28 

February 1958 and was held in high enough regard 

that her picture was taken with the director of NSA 

at that time, Lt. Gen. Samford, and with her supervisor, Agnes Driscoll, age 69, just 17 months before 

Driscoll’s own retirement.

Retirement: 1959-1971

Hobbies

After retirement, Driscoll and her husband 

Brownie had considerably more time for hobbies and 

recreation. According to family, she loved to garden, 

Fig. 17. NSA Director Lt. Gen. John Samford, Helen Talley, and Driscoll, 

at Talley’s 1958 retirement
36

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

She did not talk about work or coworkers much, 

but she did speak often and favorably of Thomas 

Dyer,192 who had tried so hard to get her promoted 

when he headed OP-20-G.

They also attended lectures by leading scientists 

in fields such as astronomy and anthropology. Family 

remembered Driscoll as “deep” herself; even in talking, 

she used examples and drew unusual conclusions.193

Deaths

Driscoll’s mother, Lucy Andrews Meyer, apparently lived on the seventh floor in the same building 

in Washington, as her daughters Driscoll and Hamilton, near the end of her long life.194 She died 27 May 

1964, aged 100.195

Brownie died later that year, on 3 December, of a 

heart attack.196 Driscoll took his death stoically; family remembered her as so iron-willed, she would not 

react to an atomic bomb going off.197

Driscoll herself, in her mid- to late seventies, was 

beginning to decline in health. Safford visited her 

around 1967; she was still living on 25th St. NW 

with her sister but was in very poor shape and barely 

able to walk.198

Hamilton, as previously mentioned, had a 

stroke in 1969, collapsed, and remained unable to 

speak until her death in 1980. Driscoll took this 

very hard, and family noticed her decline as well; 

the two were extremely close.199 Driscoll lost the sister who had served with her in both World Wars, 

through Enigma, Coral, in the Navy Building, at 

the Communications Annex on Nebraska Avenue, 

and at Arlington Hall in AFSA and NSA. Margaret 

Hamilton was the only one with whom she shared 

so much of her life.

Driscoll went into the nursing home with her sister then, so they were together, even if Driscoll could 

not communicate with her.200 When Driscoll’s Navy 

officer relative visited at one point, she was apparently 

unable to speak.201

Personal Life

She wasn’t interested in dresses or jewelry, but she 

did like scarves. She liked spending time with children, such as her nieces and nephews, and figuring 

out what their play meant (“looking deeper into them 

than just kids being around”). She also encouraged 

them in what they did; family remembered her as 

always encouraging.

The Driscolls didn’t socialize much, especially 

with coworkers, but did spend Thanksgiving and 

Christmas with friends, one of whom was a professor at Maryland University.190 One of her grandnephews entered the Naval Academy in Annapolis, 

and Driscoll was thrilled that one of the family was 

embarking on a career in the Navy, given her great 

respect for that service.191

Fig. 18: Driscoll 

gardening at the 

Four Corners property, 

mid-1930s
37

Assessing Agnes Driscoll

of Friedman ... if not superior. ... Aggie 

Driscoll appears at the top of the list [of 

Navy cryptanalysts], in my book.”203

She died in Fairfax on 16 September 1971, at the 

age of 82, and was buried beside Brownie, in Section 

35, Grave 4808, of Arlington National Cemetery.202

Assessing Agnes Driscoll

Assessing Agnes Driscoll isn’t easy, given the virtual complete lack of documentation she left behind, 

but it can be done. We can look at others’ existing 

views of her; we can compare her to her closest peers, 

namely William Friedman and his first three hires; 

and we can, in the process, attempt to remedy any 

remaining neglect.

Contemporaries’ Assessments

There is no shortage of existing views on Driscoll. 

Quite a few, some of which will be familiar, can be 

found to praise her. Alphabetically:

• Cryptologic Hall of Honor member Th omas Dyer, Capt., USN (ret.): “I think she was 

absolutely brilliant, particularly before her 

accident. ... I think she was fully the equal 

Figs. 20 and 21: Driscoll’s and her husband’s gravestones 

in Arlington National Cemetery

Fig. 19: Driscoll and 

her mother, Lucy 

Andrews Meyer, 24 

August 1963, three 

days before Meyer’s 

100th birthday. Note 

Driscoll’s right leg, in 

foreground.
38

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

moved her from a beautiful woman to a hag 

aff ected her mind and that when she came 

back she couldn’t solve a monoalphabetic 

substitution. She was non compos mentis or 

something. ...”209

• Howard Campaigne: “[S]he was very secretive. ... For a long time she had been a 

shining light ... their main cryptanalyst. ... 

But she became fearful that she wouldn’t be 

able to do things. ... She would get a-hold 

of what she thought was good and she 

wouldn’t let us see it and hide things. ... So 

I was her superior. And she wouldn’t tell me 

what she was doing. I’d go in and talk to her 

and she’d give me nothing.”210

• Prescott Currier, Capt., USN (ret.): When 

asked, was she a talented individual? “You 

know, I used to think so. ... [S]he had a certain 

amount of innate cryptanalytic sense, there’s no 

doubt about that, but I can remember when I 

came back from England in ’48, my job was 

called ‘Th e Director of Research, Naval Security Group, OP-20-G.’ I was ‘N.’ ... Mrs. 

Driscoll was N-2. ... She spent two solid years 

taking hand frequency counts of what was 

obviously one-time pad traffi c. Now, I never 

felt that I should go tell her that the world had 

fallen, times had changed, so. ...”211

Resolving these different views of Driscoll would 

be very difficult, except that it’s just possible that Wesley “Ham” Wright, Capt., USN (ret.) did it for us: 

“Very good on the whole as a cryptanalyst. ... On the 

stuff we were working on, she was the best. There was 

no question on the Blue Book and on the recovering. 

She had taught herself enough Japanese as Dyer and 

I had to do also to be able to do something with it. 

She wasn’t much good on the machine stuff when the 

machine stuff started to come in. Her mathematics 

were not as good as the rest of us. So she wasn’t as 

good on the machine stuff as she was on the codes.”212

• Edwin Layton, RAdm., USN (ret.): She was 

“enigmatic but brilliant ... extremely dedicated ... She not only trained most of the leading cryptanalysts of World War II, but they 

were all agreed that none exceeded her gifted 

accomplishments in the business. Injuries sustained in a bad auto accident in 1937 required 

her to use a cane for the rest of her life, but she 

continued to work miracles, as we shall see, 

in breaking Japanese and German codes and 

ciphers throughout World War II. ... insightful ... [an] unostentatious but spectacular 

career ... [an] uncanny grasp of cryptology. ... 

In the Navy, she was without peer as a cryptanalyst. Some of her pupils, like Ham Wright, 

were more able mathematicians. ...”204

• Redfi eld “Rosie” Mason, Capt., USN (ret.): 

“[S]he was very good. ...” When asked if 

she was the best cryptanalyst in the Navy, 

he simply answered in the affi rmative.205

• Hall of Honor member Joseph Rochefort, 

Capt., USN (ret.): “[A] fi rst-class cryptanalyst ... extremely capable ... a very talented 

person—awfully good.”206

• Hall of Honor member Dr. Louis Tordella, 

NSA’s longest-serving Deputy Director: 

“[Th e Navy] had the equivalent of Friedman. Th ey had Agnes Driscoll who was 

really a very brilliant, very outstanding 

person, and to whom we owe a great bit of 

information and a great debt.”207

• Duane Whitlock, Capt., USN (ret.): “I 

didn’t learn until much later what a genius 

she was. ...”208

Three top cryptanalysts can be found to give 

rather opposite views:

• Hall of Honor member Frank Raven: “In 

retrospect I am convinced that Aggie Driscoll 

is one of the world’s greatest cryptanalysts. 

I am convinced that the same accident that 
39

Comparing with Friedman

On the other hand, we must in justice 

acknowledge that the Navy never wanted her to 

create training programs. The officer in charge of 

OP-20-G was the one to set up any such programs. 

Driscoll’s role was to work with, in Wright’s word, 

the “squirts.”

Likewise, we cannot compare her to Friedman in terms of hiring. His three initial hires, 

all cryptanalysts, went on to stellar careers and, 

like Friedman and Driscoll, entered the Cryptologic Hall of Honor. Then again, Driscoll had no 

input that we know of into hiring, and the Navy 

focused on bringing in officers and reserve officers in any case.

Where the comparison becomes more illuminating is when we compare Driscoll to Friedman and 

his first hires, but comparing them to the 55-year-old 

Driscoll, at the end of 1944. This was when she’d 

been moved from Enigma and Coral to something 

else to “keep her busy.”

What were Friedman and his three first hires, 

Frank Rowlett, Abraham Sinkov, and Solomon Kullback, doing at age 55? (See table below.)

Simply put, Driscoll was at an age when top 

codebreakers are no longer breaking codes but leading organizations, working with top leaders, or 

retiring.

So, although she apparently remained a master 

of what we now call hand systems for the rest of her 

career, it’s fair to say that, for whatever reason, she 

wasn’t ready to tackle the latest, most modern cryptsystems in her mid-50s. The record proves that. At 

Wright’s assessment makes sense of the disparate, 

preceding views and agrees with Layton’s. Driscoll’s 

1911 bachelor’s degree in mathematics and her OP20-G experience were enough for the Japanese superenciphered codes she started with and learned so well.

On the other hand, Campaigne, for example, 

was a PhD with a degree decades more recent than 

Driscoll’s; he had been teaching math at the University of Minnesota when Pearl Harbor was attacked.213

When Driscoll tackled Enigma and Coral, her degree 

was thirty years old. She could have kept up on developments in mathematics, but she may have felt too 

many reasons not to: OP-20-G was so small for so 

long, had so much work needing to be done, and, 

especially, did not need mathematical skills greater 

than hers for so long.

One other aspect to her assessment becomes 

clear if she is compared to other cryptanalysts of 

her era.

Comparing with Friedman

If Dr. Tordella, NSA’s longest-serving deputy 

director, was going to compare her to William Friedman, the least we can do is the same.

In terms of training others, there is no comparison. Friedman—and especially the training he created—set up the Army, AFSA, and NSA cryptanalysts 

for success for decades to come. He put them on a 

sound mathematical basis, with thoroughly documented training. Driscoll did not come in any way 

close to matching this.

Name Year Activity/Title Comment

Driscoll 1944 Being removed from Coral -

Friedman 1946 Helping reorganize cryptologic services, then (1947?) became 

seriously ill214

-

Rowlett 1963 Special assistant to director, NSA Retired three years later215

Sinkov 1962 Deputy director for production, for at least part of the year Retired that year216

Kullback 1962 Chief of R&D, for at least part of the year Retired that year217
40

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

sands upon thousands of Allied lives were saved due 

to cryptology, history cannot neglect her importance, 

not just to cryptologic history, but to America itself.

Holtwick made that importance quite clear:

It is apparent that until the Japanese attack of 

December 7, 1941, most of the cryptanalytic 

work of the Navy fell upon the shoulders of a 

very few regular Navy officers and men, and a 

handful of civilians at the Navy Department. 

Only about 400 persons were actively engaged 

in COMINT work at the time of that attack, 

and at least 200 were newcomers who had 

joined the group in the preceding 18 months.

Thus the accomplishments of WWII in the 

COMINT field were built on the foundation laid between 1924 and 1941. ... It is for 

that reason that the names of those pioneers 

are mentioned in this narrative. ...218

Likewise, at the end of her career, Driscoll might 

not have done the networking and managing to get 

ahead, but she had a reputation with the workforce as 

helpful and encouraging, aloof but not unapproachable, and as a top troubleshooter sent in to deal with 

the tough problems.219

She certainly wasn’t unapproachable, as these two 

quotes make clear:

the same time, however, it’s fair to say that cryptanalysts that age generally aren’t expected to. They either 

lead efforts or retire.

Neglected No Longer

Driscoll lifted herself up from stenography to 

become the Navy’s principal cryptologist for many 

years. The Navy, however, neglected to promote a 

civilian woman when its focus was on interchangeable, 

rotational officers. The Navy and AFSA neglected to 

put her in a position to succeed, with her immense 

strengths against hand systems. NSA has neglected to 

name a building, road, or auditorium after her, as of 

this writing. History has neglected to present her in 

the fullest light. And she herself neglected to leave historians the material to do so.

But perhaps much of that neglect can now be 

banished. The only person assigned to Riverbank, 

MI-8, a service cryptologic agency, AFSA, and NSA, 

along with private-industry cryptography, has earned 

a unique place in history.

Safford observed in Back in the Navy: 1924-

1930, the “Departure and Change” section, that 

it was thanks to the need for someone like Driscoll 

that the Navy brought him into cryptologic work. 

Given how important both cryptologists were to the 

United States in World War II and how many thouFigs. 22 and 23. Agnes Meyer’s/Driscoll’s signatures, on her Navy enlistment papers (top), 

and on those for her retirement from federal service
41

Neglected No Longer

She was in the second group inducted into the 

Cryptologic Hall of Honor. Family members reported that her work earned her an invitation to the 

White House (which she turned down, out of intense 

dislike for Franklin Roosevelt).224 Near the end of her 

life, she might not have been able to talk but was still 

excitedly gratified when her young Navy officer relative visited her in the nursing home, in dress uniform, 

and formally saluted her.225

But for unique honors, the Navy might have 

done even better. According to family legend, during 

her recovery from the accident, the Navy sent a gunboat up the Potomac to fire her a salute.226 The story 

is plausible, if it took place after her return to the 25th 

Street NW apartment.

I am so fortunate to have known this 

lady. I used to have coffee with her in 

the morning, but I had no idea she 

was this great a person.220

and:

When I was still a young officer I had 

to deliver an incoming message to her. 

I was told to first stop by the CO’s 

[Commanding Officer’s] office and 

receive a briefing. I was told that she 

was a ‘crotchety old [expletive deleted],’ 

and that I should knock on her door, 

not enter until she gave me permission, 

then say, ‘Ma’am, I have a message for 

you.’ I did all this. She told me to sit 

down while she read the message, then 

signed for a copy, then she said, ‘Young 

man, thanks very much for delivering 

this important message to me. Tell me 

your name.’ She smiled and I did and 

got the hell out of there. That was the 

beginning of our friendship.221

So at least she was appreciated, rather 

than neglected, by part of the workforce.

And, for the latter part of her career, 

there may have been failures and frustrations, but they cannot have affected 

Driscoll too severely. She clearly was frustrated, at least at times; when working Coral, she hissed 

at Raven’s protégé Polly Budenbach during a chance 

encounter in a hallway.222 But Driscoll must have loved 

the work enough to put up with the frustrations.

How can we conclude that? When she died, the 

real estate holdings she and Brownie had amassed 

were worth over a million dollars.223 She was unquestionably financially secure long before then. She did 

not have to work until the laws of that time forced 

her to retire. She could have retired in her fifties, as so 

many of her peers did. Yet she did not do so. She was a 

cryptographer for her government until that government no longer allowed her to be.

Fig. 24. Location of Driscoll’s apartment in Washington; the Navy may have 

sent a gunboat up the Potomac to fire her a salute. (1938 map, Wikimedia)
42

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

She must have loved what she did, and she 

devoted her life to it. She, those she trained, and 

the organization she helped put on a sound footing 

saved countless lives as a result. She received signal 

honors during her life and even more after.

Agnes Driscoll unquestionably had flaws and 

faults. But those do not diminish what a giant she 

was. She lifted Navy cryptology up as high as anyone and rose high in the esteem of those she worked 

most closely with.

She rose as high as her talents, organizational 

limitations, and her wishes suited her. She towers 

above nearly all her contemporaries. Let us not lose 

sight of her limitations but still admire her for all that 

she did and all that she was. Agnes Driscoll is one of 

the true giants of cryptology, and one we can all look 

up to. Let us neglect her no more.
43

10. There are some discrepancies between the sources. For the Navy organizations, the name is provided 

rather than the designator. For AFSA and NSA, only 

the designator is generally available. 

The following table is drawn from Driscoll’s 

Civilian Record, in chronological order, using what 

dates are available, along with (in italics) old NSA and 

predecessor telephone books, copies of which are in 

NSA Archives Accession 49511, Box CCH36, Folder 

Organization Date(s) According to

Office of Director Naval Communications (Code and Signal Section)As of 1 August 1919 Annual Acceptance Form of that date

Office of Naval Communication Service As of 17 March 1920 Annual Acceptance Form of that date

Office of the Director of Naval 

Communications

As of 1 July 1920 through 1 July 1922 Annual Acceptance Forms of those 

dates

Office of the Director Naval Communications, Code and Signal Section15 January 1923 Resignation letter

Bureau of Navigation 1 August 1924 Acceptance Form of that date

Office of the Director of Naval 

Communications

As of 13 October 1924 through 1 April 

1927

Annual Acceptance Forms of those 

dates

Operations, Communications, Code and 

[or &] Signal

As of 24 November 1924 through 10 

May 1926

Efficiency Ratings of those dates

Operations, Communications As of 11 April 1927 Efficiency Rating

Operations, Communications, Code and 

[or &] Signal

As of 11 May 1928 and 17 May 1930 Efficiency Ratings of those dates

DNC, Code & Signal As of 19 May 1931 through 

7 June 1934

Efficiency Ratings of those dates

Operations, Communications As of 7 June 1935 and 15 May 1936 Service Ratings of those dates

Operations, Communications, G As of 29 April 1940 Service Rating of that date

Security Section As of 15 May 1941 Service Rating of that date

Naval Communications, Security, GY As of 1 April 1941 and 31 March 1942 Efficiency Ratings of those dates

Naval Communications, Security, Rdo. 

Intelligence

As of 1 April 1942 and 31 March 1943 Efficiency Ratings of those dates

Naval Operations, Communications, 

Communications Intelligence

As of 1 April 1943 through 

31 March 1946

Efficiency Ratings of those dates

Navy Department, Office of the Chief of 

Naval Operations (OP-20-G)

As of 13 November 1946 Appointment letter of that date

Appendix I: Driscoll’s Civilian Assignments

Continued
44

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

DCNO (Administration), Naval 

Communications, Communications 

Intelligence

As of 26 January 1947 Appointment letter of that date

Naval Operations, Communications, 

Comm. Intelligence

As of 1 April 1946 and 31 March 1947 Efficiency Ratings of those dates

CNC-CommSupAct As of 1 April 1947 and 31 March 1948 Efficiency Ratings of those dates

Transferred from DCNO (Administrative) Naval Communications 

CommSupAct

30 June 1948 Intra-agency transfer notification of 

21 June 1948

U.S. Navy Communication Station 

(CSAW)

As of 1 July 1948 to 25 December 1949 Intra-agency transfer of 21 June 1948 and 

Efficiency Rating of 25 December 1949

Armed Forces Security Agency 24 

[AFSA-24]* 

25 December 1949 Notification of Personnel Action 

(SF-50) of 19 December 1949

AFSA-02A7† 26 November 1950 SF-50 of 25 November 1950

AFSA-206 26 November 1950 (see footnote to previous entry) to at least 22 July 1951SF-50 of 25 November 1950 and Pay Roll 

Change Slip of 22 July 1951

NSA-206 As of 6 January 1952 Pay Roll Change Slip (no DD-590) of that 

date

NSA-206B 4 March 1953 until before 

26 June 1953

Notice to Employees (AFSA Form 985) of 

3 March 1953 and NSA Form 1629 of 

26 June 1953

NSA-064 By 20 April 1953, until before 6 September 1953, or even after November 

1955

NSA, Arlington Hall Station, Naval Security 

Station telephone directories of 20 April 

1953 and November 1955 and NSA 

Form 1629 of 6 September 1953

NSA-0641 After 6 September 1953 until at least 

14 December 1954

NSA Form 1629 of 6 September 1953 and 

14 December 1954 letter regarding pay 

and longevity

C74203‡ By December 1955 until at least July 

1956

Performance Appraisal of 8 August 1956; 

the NSA telephone directory of June 1956 

lists the organization as “742”

C7403 18 March 1956 until retirement NSA Form 1629 of 18 March 1956 and 

Performance Appraisals of 13 May 1957 

and after, as well as undated Request for 

Personnel Action for retirement; “ACOM403” according to the October 1957 and 

October 1958 NSA directories

Organization Date(s) According to

*Her job number, 2001, stays the same from 1 July 1948 until her 26 November 1950 transfer.

†Th e “02A7” is marked out and replaced with “206” in one place (but not another) on the 26 November 1950 

transfer form.

‡Presumably the same organization as the next, C7403, since she had the same rater; her raters from 1957 to 1959 

both signed as “Chief, ACOM-403.”
45

created within OP-20-G, she worked within that. So, 

the following list is focused on who was in charge of 

her work unit, whether OP-20-G itself or a section 

within it.

The Code and Signal Section, which was originally focused solely on creating codes and ciphers, was 

designated OP-20-G in July 1922 and retained that 

designation for twenty-four years.227

Agnes May Meyer originally worked in the Code 

and Signal Section; once the Research Desk was 

Appendix II: OP-20-G: Commanders, 1917-1941

Timeframe Organization Commander

1 Apr. 1917-20 Oct. 1918 Code and Signal Section Cdr. Russell Willson 

21 Oct. 1918-1 Jul. 1921 Code and Signal Section Lt. Cdr./Cdr. Milo F. Draemel228

1 Jul. 1921-30 Jun. 1922 Code and Signal Section Lt. Cdr. William F. Gresham

1 Jul. 1922-28 Jun. 1924 Code and Signal Section Lt. Cdr. Donald C. Goodwin229

Jan. 1924-ca. 15 Feb. 1926 Research Desk Lt. Laurance F. Safford230

Ca. 15 Feb. 1926-Sept. 1927 Research Desk Lt. Joseph J. Rochefort 231

Sept. 1927-Aug. 1929 Research Desk Lt. Bern Anderson232

Aug. 1929-ca. May 1932 Research Desk Safford233

Ca. May 1932-ca. 3 May 1933 Research Desk Lt. (j.g.) Thomas Dyer 234

Ca. 3 May 1933-11 Mar. 1935 Research Desk Lt. (j.g.) T. A. Huckins 235

11 Mar. 1935-30 Jun. 1938 Communication Security 

Group

Lt. Cdr. Joseph N. Wenger 236

30 Jun. 1938-May? 1940 Crypto Intelligence 

Sub-Section/

Radio Intelligence Section Lt. E. S. L. Goodwin237

Sept.? 1940-after 7 Dec. 1941 Radio Intelligence Section/

Communications Security 

Section

Lt. L. W. Parke 238
46

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Step Increase/PPI GS-13 $8,600 $77,372 22 July 1951 “TOG”/Top of Grade

Pay Adj. GS-13 $9,360 $84,207 24 October 1951 -

Step Increase GS-13 step 7 $10,280 $89,392 5 September 1954 “Longevity”

Step Increase GS-13 step y § $10,495 $87,365 15 September 1957 “Longevity”

[unknown] GS-13 step 9** $11,570 $93,647 Before 10 October 

1958

As listed on SF-50 of that 

date

*Per www.bls.gov/data/infl ation_calculator.htm, accessed 28 February 2014; rounded to nearest dollar.

†“Periodic Pay Increase”; note that the 1950 PPI was also listed as a Step Increase. “Adj.” is presumably an abbreviation for “Adjustment.”

‡Unclear.

§Unknown; possibly a typographical error.

**According to her Personnel Record; the SF 2806 lists her as a GS-13 step 8.

Position/Increase Grade Annual 

Salary

2014 

Equivalent* Date Notes

Stenographer - $1,400 $18,930 1 August 1919 Temporary appointment

Clerk - $1,400 $16,374 17 March 1920 Permanent

Clerk - $1,600 $22,278 16 January 1922 Resigned from this position

Clerk CAF-2 $1,320 $18,057 1 August 1924 Reinstatement

Clerk CAF-2 $1,440 $19,698 16 October 1924 -

Senior Clerk CAF-5 $1,860 $24,862 16 April 1925 -

Principal Clerk CAF-6 $2,100 $28,070 1 December 1925 -

Principal Clerk CAF-6 $2,400 $31,717 16 January 1926 -

Junior Administrative 

Assistant (Adm. Asst.)

CAF-9 $3,000 $40,330 1 April 1927 -

Senior Adm. Asst. CAF-9 $3,100 $42,406 1 June 1928 -

Cryptanalyst P-4 $3,800 $51,981 1 July 1929 -

Cryptanalyst P-4 $4,000 $69,826 1 November 1934 -

Senior Cryptanalyst P-5 $4,600 $78,541 1 December 1935 -

Senior Cryptanalyst P-5 $4,800 $76,381 1 October 1941 -

Principal Cryptanalyst P-6 $5,600 $80,364 20 December 1942 -

Pay Adj./PPI† P-6 $6,440 $83,690 1 July 1945 -

P. L. #390‡ P-6 $7,341.60 $88,068 1 July 1946 -

Pay Adj./PPI P-6 $7,581 $79,521 12 January 1947 -

Pay Adj. - $7,911 $76,785 11 July 1948 -

Pay Adj./PPI P-6 $8,150.40 $79,108 25 July 1948 -

Conversion/“CA” GS-13 $8,200 $80,593 30 October 1949 -

Step Increase/PPI GS-13 $8,400 $81,531 22 January 1950 -

Appendix III: Driscoll’s Promotions and Pay Increases

As provided in her Civilian Record and the Standard Form (SF) 2806, Individual Retirement Record, in NSA 

Archives Access 49511, Box CCH36, Folder 10. 
47

Continued

Appendix IV: Performance Appraisals

Score (%) Date Rater Reviewer Comment

92.40 24 Nov. 1924 L. F. Safford H. F. Kingman -

95.06 25 May 1925 L. F. Safford, Lt.. 

USN

H. F. Kingman Reduced by reviewer Kingman from rater 

Safford’s 97.78%

91.32 10 May 1926 Possibly M. 

Comstock*

(No signature) Reduced from rater’s 94.32%

89.42 11 Apr. 1927 (Same as 1926) (No signature) Reduced from rater’s 95.64%

91.14 10 May 1928 B. Anderson A. D. Struble† Very high; exceptional ratings for industry, 

knowledge, initiative, and execution; 

high for judgment and middling for 

cooperativeness

91.24 17 May 1930 L. F. Safford A. D. Struble Much the same as 10 May 1928 rating

97.24 19 May 1931 L. F. Safford J. W. McClaran Exceptionally high, with maximum ratings 

in reliability, industry, knowledge, initiative, and execution; very high in judgment 

and cooperativeness

98.54 10 May 1932 T. H. Dyer J. W. McClaran Maximum or near-maximum in everything

90.14 2 May 1933 J. W. McClaran (No signature) Reduced from rater McClaran’s 98.12%

90.56 7 Jun. 1934 J. A. Huckins H. F. Kingman Very high; exceptional ratings for industry, 

knowledge, initiative, and execution; middling for judgment and cooperativeness

*Perhaps not the Lt. Merrill Comstock listed on p. 62 of the Naval Register of 1926 (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/

AMH/USN/Naval_Registry/1926.pdf, accessed 16 June 2014), who was assigned to “V-1” then.

†Presumably the Lt. Arthur Dewey Struble that the Naval Register of 1930 (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/

USN/Naval_Registry/1930.pdf, accessed 16 June 2014) has assigned to Operations, the same as Driscoll.

The following lists Agnes May Meyer/Driscoll’s civilian performance appraisals, in whichever system was in use 

then in her organization, as drawn from her Civilian Record.

Efficiency Ratings

Per a 17 May 1926 letter from the Director of Naval Communications,239 the four-digit ratings given were a percentage with two decimal places; i.e., 1926’s “9132” would be “91.32 percent”; the percent-age is given here for ease 

of understanding. A rating below 65 percent was grounds for compulsory demotion or dismissal, and 100 percent was 

the maximum possible, of course.

The dates are abbreviated; 24 Nov. 1924 is short for 24 November 1924. Some raters’ and reviewers’ signatures 

were illegible. 
48

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

“Eff ectiveness in meeting and dealing with 

others”), “Excellent” in 7 

• Rater: H. T. Engstrom, Cmdr, USNR

• Reviewer: Leon P. Smith, Lt. Cmdr., USNR

Excellent, 31 March 1945 (Highest rating)

• Rated “Excellent” in all areas (which might 

simply indicate a nonadministrative focus 

during wartime)

• Rater: [possibly G.] F. Cramer, Lt. Cmdr.

• Reviewer: Leon P. Smith, Cmdr., USNR

Very Good, 31 March 1946 (Second-highest 

rating)

• “Adequate” in 10 areas (including “Accuracy 

of fi nal results,” “Accuracy of judgments or 

decisions,” and “Cooperativeness”), “Excellent” in 6

• Rater: H. Campaigne, Cmdr., USNR

• Reviewer: Leon P. Smith, Cmdr, USNR

Excellent, 31 March 1947 (Highest rating)

• “Adequate” in 5 areas: “Eff ectiveness in meeting and dealing with others” (not rated the 

following year), “Cooperativeness,” “PhysiService Ratings

A scale for overall of 3 = best, 30 = worst, and for 

each factor 1 = best, 10 = worst 

“Q P” is short for Quality of Performance; “Prod” 

for Productiveness, and “Q S J” for Qualifications 

Shown on Job.

Efficiency Ratings 

(Note: Not the same form or rating scale as 1924-

1934. All entries are unclassified.)

Very Good/3, 31 March 1942 (Third-highest 

rating, after Excellent/1 and Very Good/2)

• Rated “Weak” in 1 area (“Eff ectiveness in 

promoting high working morale”), “Adequate” in 9 areas (including “Cooperativeness”), and “Excellent” in 13

• Rater: L. W. Parke, Lt. Cdr., USN

• Reviewer: John R. Redman, Cmdr., USN

Excellent, 31 March 1943 (Highest rating)

• Rated “Adequate” in “Amount of acceptable 

work produced,” “Excellent” in 21 other 

areas (including “Cooperativeness” and 

“Eff ectiveness in promoting high working 

morale”) 

• Rater: H. T. Engstrom, Lt. Cmdr., USNR

• Reviewer: R. B. [Hackman or Hartman], 

Lt., USNR

Excellent, 31 March 1944 (Highest rating)

• Rated “Adequate” in 4 areas (including 

Overall Date FactorsRater Reviewer Comment Q P Prod Q S J

7 (Excellent) 7 Jun. 1935 2 2 3 H. F. Kingman W. A. Wright Kingman changed Wright’s 

Q S J 2 to 3

5 15 May 1936 1 2 2 J. N. Wenger L. F. Safford -

6 29 Apr. 1940 2 2 2 L. F. Safford (None) Reviewer changed Safford’s 

Q P 1 to 2

7 15 May 1941 2 3 2 L. F. Safford (None) -
49

Appendix IV: Performance Appraisals

“Accuracy of judgments or decisions,” 

“Industry,” “Ability to organize his [sic] 

work,” “Initiative,” “Resourcefulness,” 

“Dependability,” “Eff ectiveness in devising 

procedures,” and “Eff ectiveness in directing, reviewing, and checking the work of 

subordinates”

• Rater: Lawrance [illegible, and does not 

look like Saff ord]

• Reviewer: Oliver Kirby

In AFSA’s first year of existence, it apparently 

continued to use the services’ appraisal systems.

Performance Appraisals

Three possible ratings: Outstanding, Satisfactory, and Unsatisfactory; the first and last required 

justification.

Satisfactory, December 1955-July 1956 (Highest: Outstanding) 

• “During this period, Mrs. Driscoll has been 

working on a complex problem demanding a great deal of painstaking labor. She is 

also working on a possible machine process 

which, if successful, should be of great help 

on a number of other problems as well as 

her own.”

• Supervisor: Elizabeth A. Whitmore, Chief, 

NSA-7420

Satisfactory, July 1956-February 1957

• “During this period Mrs. Driscoll has virtually completed work on a complex and 

laborious problem. She has also evolved a 

machine process which should be of value 

in the solution of related problems. She has 

eff ectively supervised the activities of two 

junior analysts assigned to the problem.”

• Supervisor: Elizabeth A. Whitmore, Chief, 

ACOM403

Continued

cal fi tness for the work,” “Eff ectiveness in 

adapting the work program to broader or 

related programs,” “Eff ectiveness in laying 

out work and establishing standards of performance for subordinates” (rated “excellent” the following year), “Eff ectiveness 

in promoting high working morale,” and 

“Eff ectiveness in delegating clearly defi ned 

authority to act” (the last two not rated the 

following year)

• “Excellent” in 23

• Rater: Wesley A. Wright, Capt., USN

• Reviewer: [illegible], Cmdr., USN

Excellent, 31 March 1948 (Highest rating)

• “Adequate” in “Cooperativeness” and 

“Physical fi tness for the work” (not rated 

the following year)

• Rater: Th omas H. Dyer, Capt., USN

• Reviewer: [illegible], Cmdr., USN

Excellent, 31 March 1949 (Highest rating)

• Th e overall rating was not changed, but on 

24 June, the Effi ciency Rating Committee changed the rating details: element 10, 

“Eff ectiveness in presenting ideas or facts,” 

which had been marked “adequate,” should 

not have been considered especially important to her position.

• She was also marked “adequate” in “Eff ectiveness in directing, reviewing, and checking the work of subordinates” (which was 

marked “outstanding” the following year), 

and in “Eff ectiveness in instructing, training, and developing subordinates in the 

work” (not rated the next year)

• Rater: P. H. Currier, Cmdr., USN

• Reviewer: J. [illegible initial] Harper, Capt., 

USN

Excellent, 31 March 1950 (Highest rating)

• Outstanding in “Accuracy of fi nal results,” 
50

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Satisfactory, 28 February 1958-28 February 1959 

(her last before retirement)

• “During this appraisal period Mrs. Driscoll 

has performed research analysis on a very 

diffi cult problem, the solution of which 

would be of considerable importance to the 

division. Her technical background for this 

job is unmatched and her eff orts have been 

most diligent and thorough.” 

• Supervisor: John W. Pittman, Chief, 

ACOM-403

Satisfactory, 28 February 1957-28 February 1958

• “During this period Mrs. Driscoll has been 

working on a complex and laborious problem. She has eff ectively supervised the activities of two junior analysts assigned to the 

problem.”

• Supervisor: Elizabeth A. Whitmore, Chief, 

ACOM403
51

Naval Introduced

Red Book Presumably 1918†

Blue Book 1 December‡ 1930

Black Code 1938§

Flag Officers’ Code 1939

JN-25 1 June 1939

JN-25B 1 December 1940

† Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 30.

‡ Month and date per Safford, “A Brief History of 

Communications Intelligence in the United States,” 

SRH-149, 11.

§http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/

center_crypt_history/pearl_harbor_review/jn25.shtml, 

accessed 27 March 2014, for both of these.

According to Frederick D. Parker, Pearl Harbor 

Revisited: United States Navy Communications Intelligence, 1924-1941, Third Edition (2013), Center for Cryptologic History, 20-22, except as noted 

otherwise: 

Diplomatic Year Introduced

Red (machine) Before 1939

Purple 1939

Naval Attaché Year Introduced

Coral (machine)* 1939

* Coral was the naval attaché version of Purple; the 

fl eet version, which saw a high volume of use only 

initially, was Jade. See “Pearl Harbor Review - Early 

Japanese Systems” (http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/pearl_harbor_review/early_japanese.shtml, accessed 20 June 

2014).

Appendix V: Japanese Interwar Cryptosystems
52

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

There is anecdotal evidence that Driscoll was 

“tall” and “thin,” not to mention a contention240 that 

she had bouts of weight loss. Height and weight are 

measurable, and, as it happens, measurements exist. 

So, how tall was she, and was she indeed thin? Her 

Military Record and Civilian Record state: 

Height Weight Age Date Source

5'7" - 28 22 June 1918 Naval Reserve enrollment papers

5'43⁄4" 105 lb.; “underweight waived” 28 22 June 1918 Naval Reserve Health Record

5'43⁄4" - 30 31 August 1919 Release from active duty forms

5'5" 105 lb. 35 1 August 1924 Certificate of Medical Examination

5'5" 104 lb. 53 11 January 1943 Application for Federal Employment

[5']7" 110 lb. 55 11 April 1945 Application for Federal Employment

5'7" 112 lb. 57 12 November 1946 Application for Federal Employment

So she was somewhere around 5'6" tall, in a time 

when the average American white woman’s height 

was between 5'3" and 5'6".241 Of course, the 1943 to 

1946 numbers were apparently supplied by Driscoll 

herself, and are thus less reliable. 

Appendix VI: Height and Weight
53

Appendix VII: Photo Credits and Identifications

Fig. 1: NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, courtesy Meyer family; identifying information on 

back of photograph.

Fig. 2: NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by the author 

and James Hamilton in telephone conversation, 25 November 2013.

Fig. 3: NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by the author 

and James Hamilton, in telephone conversation, 25 November 2013.

Fig. 4: NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by the author 

and James Hamilton, in telephone conversation, 25 November 2013.

Fig. 5: CCH Holdings; received from Victor Meyer, 9 July 2014, courtesy Meyer family; “Lucy Caroline Meyer, 

15 yrs. Agnes May Meyer, 13 yrs. June 1903” on the back of the photograph.

Fig. 6: CCH Holdings; received from V. Meyer, 9 July 2014, courtesy Meyer family; “Agnes at left, Lucy at right” 

on the back of the photograph.

Continued
54

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

 Above: Also received from V. Meyer on 9 July 

2014, a key to photo in Fig. 7.

Note that this photo key misspells Gustav Freckmann’s middle name.

Fig. 7: Cropped from this photograph in NSA 

Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, 

courtesy Meyer family.

Identifying information:

• From left to right: Lucy, Gustav, Margaret, 

Lucy (mother), Joseph (being held), George, 

Otto (in front of George), Gustav (father), 

Mary (front right) and Agnes. (Source: National 

Cryptologic Museum Library, emailed to author 

on 13 November 2013.)

• Gustav Meyer, 51 yrs; Lucy Meyer, 46 [yrs]; 

George Shaw [Meyer], 23; Lucy Carolina, 

22; Agnes May, 20; Gustav Freckmann, 14; 

Margaret Eliza, 13; Mary Randal, 8; Otto, 4; 

Joseph Lawrence, 7 mo.; July 1910. (Source: 

Back of photo received from V. Meyer on 9 July 

2014.)

1. Mrs. Lucy Andrews (Shaw) Meyer

2. Dr. Gustav Frederick Meyer

3. Lucy Caroline

4. Gustav Frankmann

5. Margaret Elizabeth

6. Joseph Lawrence (baby)

7. George Shaw

8. Agnes May

9. Otto 

10. Mary Randal

Dates pertaining to the above may be found on 

the Meyer Family Group Chart and on succeeding 

Family Group Sheets of the individual children. 

The caption reads: 

Photo taken in July 1910 in Westerville, O.
55

Fig. 8: Cropped from the above photograph in the NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, courtesy 

Meyer family. 

Identifying information from two sources:

1. Tentative date 1899; tentative identifications, left to right: Lucy Carolina, about age 11; Lucy Andrews, about age 

37 (identification initially confirmed by James Hamilton, in telephone conversation of 15 November 2013; see also 

below); Gustav [Jr.], about age 5; Unknown (standing in back); Gustav (father) (seated); Unknown (standing in back); 

Margaret (front) (seated), about age 2; George, about age 12; Unknown (standing in back); Agnes, about age 10; 

Unknown; Unknown. James Hamilton adds: all the adults in the back row are visitors or in-laws, not blood relatives. 

(Source: the author and James Hamilton, in telephone conversation, 25 November 2013. Note that the author has 

chosen to use the following identification information as definitive of the children.)

2. Agnes, Gustav, Margaret, George & Lucy [children only, evidently], Agnes on left. (Source: Back of a copy of 

this photograph received from V. Meyer on 9 July 2014.)

Continued

Appendix VII: Photo Credits and Identifications
56

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Fig. 9: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identification by the author.

Fig. 10: CCH holdings.

Fig. 11: CCH holdings.

Fig. 12: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 13: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 14: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 15: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 16: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 17: NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10; identifying information from March 1958 NSA 

Newsletter (copy in ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10). 

Fig. 18: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 19: CCH holdings, courtesy Meyer family; identifications by retired CCH historian Robert Hanyok, in meeting with author, NCM Library, 6 May 2014.

Fig. 20: findagrave.com, accessed 8 November 2013.

Fig. 21: findagrave.com, accessed 8 November 2013.

Fig. 22: Military Record.

Fig. 23: Civilian Record.
57

Lucy Meyer’s report card from the Westerville, 

Ohio, public school Driscoll also attended.

NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, 

courtesy Meyer family

Bonus Images

NSA Archives, ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, 

courtesy Meyer family; identifying information:

• “George [illegible] Meyer, 10 years old. Lucy 

Caroline “ [Meyer], 9 “ “ [years old; omitting 

ditto marks for remainder]. Agnes May, 8. Gustav 

Freckmann, 2 3/4. Margaret Eliza, 5 months.” 

(Source: ACC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10; 

assigned to this photo by the author.)

• “George - 10 yrs; Lucy Carolina 9 yrs; Agnes 

May 8 yrs; Gustav Freckmann 2 3/4 yrs; Margaret 

Eliza 5 mos.; Agnes on lower right.” (Source: 

Back of copy of this photo received from V. 

Meyer on 9 July 2014.)

Appendix VII: Photo Credits and Identifications
58

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Recital program, Conservatory 

of Music (Amarillo, TX), for 1912 

concert in which Agnes Meyer, 

her father, and other faculty 

members performed
59

Acknowledgments/Source Notes

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge first the Meyer family, who from 1987 until today have responded 

to requests for help with the utmost assistance and 

graciousness. In particular:

• Agnes Driscoll’s nephew John Hamilton, 

who, despite advanced age, patiently helped 

the author with small details from Driscoll’s 

later life, including identifying who was 

who in old photographs, and

• Driscoll’s grandnephew Victor A. Meyer, 

Capt., USN (ret.), and his son Victor A. 

Meyer, Jr., Cmdr., USN, who not only provided information, original photographs, 

and mementoes, but also carried on the 

Meyer Naval tradition started by Driscoll, 

in the Submarine Service and SEALs, 

respectively.

Second, the author thanks retired CCH historian 

Robert Hanyok and former scholar in residence Dr. 

Colin Burke, who, among others, first began to write 

up the Agnes Driscoll story for CCH (Dr. Burke’s 

“Agnes Driscoll vs. the Enigma” goes further, and 

suggests how much might be waiting in the National 

Archives to add to the story).

A third thank-you must go to another set of 

archives, and the dedicated people who unearth the 

treasures contained within: the NSA Archives and the 

NSA archivists. This history would be virtually nonexistent without their enthusiastic, seemingly endless 

help.

Finally, the author would like to thank Gwen 

Cohen, whose efforts in 1987 did not bear the fruit 

that she wished at the time she wished it but did plant 

seeds in the NSA Archives, seeds which this author 

hopes have grown and flourished herein.

Source Notes

Three of the sources used bear comment.

First, Colin Burke’s “Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. 

the Enigma and the Bombe” is able to do what the 

author was not, namely delve deeply into the National Archives. Its depth on the period in question is 

matchless.

Two details in “Driscoll vs. the Enigma” do not 

match up well with the source material for this history. First, that her religion caused her to refuse newer treatments for her injuries in the 1937 accident 

(see Burke’s footnote 18); this seems inconsistent 

with the Presbyterian faith she professed to follow 

when enlisting in the Navy. To be sure, she might 

have changed religions in the nearly twenty years 

that followed.

The second detail was her “frequent bouts of 

weight loss” (Burke’s footnote 13). Appendix VI does 

not show any such pattern, but, of course, that does 

not mean none such existed.

Second, oral histories with Navy cryptanalysts do 

not tend to feature much praise for fellow codebreakers. While illustrative of how competitive the Navy 

was for cryptanalysts, if taken out of that Navy context, they can appear to reduce all the giants of OP20-G to ants.

Third, Raven’s oral history in particular is 

problematic.

He does not compliment much of anyone except 

fellow OP-20-G officers Joe Eachus and Howard 

Engstrom over the course of the interview, so his 

remarks about both Talley and Driscoll are difficult 

to evaluate. A giant himself, Raven seems not to 

have noticed the heights his fellows had attained, but 

rather their flaws and foibles. This must be taken into 

account when deciding whether those people should 

be looked up to or down upon.
60

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

12. Enrollment Record into Naval Reserve, Military 

Record; Information Sheet, Military Record.

13. Military Record.

14. Offi ce of the Chief Cable Censor letter of April 

25, 1919, in NSA Archives Accession AC49511, 

Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

15. Military Record.

16. 3 February 1919 letter from the Offi ce of the Chief 

Cable Censor to Chief Yeoman Agnes May Meyer, 

USNRF, in NSA Archives Accession AC49511, 

Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

17. Capt. Laurance F. Saff ord, interview by [no fi rst 

name] Schmidt, Naval Institute, 3.

18. Information in the bullets drawn from Th e United 

States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia, Anne 

Cipriano Venzon and Paul L. Miles, eds. (New 

York: Routledge, 1999), 759-60.

19. Captain Jack S. Holtwick, USN (Ret.), Naval 

Security Group History to World War II, National 

Archives Special Research Histories series SRH355, Part I, 157-58.

20. Standard Form 2806, Individual Retirement 

Record, in NSA Archives Accession AC49511, Box 

CCH 36, Folder 10.

21. 27 October 1919 letter from Cdr. Milo Draemel, 

Navy Communication Service, OP-58-M, in NSA 

Archives Accession AC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

22. Notes in CCH holdings, sourced to Biographies 

of People at Riverbank Series II D.

23. Both letters, along with a 1 March 1920 letter 

from George Fabyan to Draemel, and a 23 June 

1925 letter from Saff ord to Fabyan, are in NSA 

Archives Accession AC49511, Box CCH 36, 

Folder 10. 

24. 17 June 1920 letter from Offi ce of Naval Intelligence to OP-16-B, with copy to Agnes May Meyer, 

in NSA Archives Accession AC49511, Box CCH 

36, Folder 10.

25. Standard Form 2806, Individual Retirement 

Record, in NSA Archives Accession AC49511, Box 

CCH 36, Folder 10.

26. Civilian Record.

27. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 22.

28. Civilian Record.

29. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 3.

Notes

1. Agnes May Meyer’s Naval Reserve Health 

Record and her Record of Allotments, Family 

Allowances, and Insurance of Enlisted Men, 

22 June 1918, Official Personnel Folder, Military Personnel Records. St. Louis, MO: National 

Personnel Records Center (hereafter, Military 

Record).

2. Letter postmarked 20 July 1987 to Assistant Curator Gwen L. Cohen of the National Cryptologic 

Museum, from Driscoll’s niece Lucy Johnson (no 

relation to the author) in NSA Archives Accession 

49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10, and partial copy 

of Meyer family tree, National Cryptologic Museum Library and Center for Cryptologic History 

(CCH) holdings.

3. Ibid.

4. Geneseo (Illinois) News, 20 February 1912 (courtesy 

of Lucy Johnson in 1987); copy in NSA Archives 

Accession AC49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

5. Email from Victor A. Meyer, Capt., USN (ret.), 

to the Center for Cryptologic History (CCH), 23 

January 2014.

6. Lucy Johnson letter of 20 July 1987, NSA Archives 

Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

7. Agnes May Meyer’s Enrollment Record into Naval 

Reserve, Military Record.

8. Information Sheet, Military Record; undated, but 

from June 1918, based on internal evidence.

9. Conservatory of Music, Lowrey-Phillips Schools, 

29 March 1912 recital program, in CCH holdings. 

In the program, her father Dr. Gustav Meyer is 

listed as Director of the Conservatory Faculty [sic]. 

Which of the Humoresque pieces she played is not 

specifi ed.

10. Ibid., and Agnes Driscoll’s 11 January 1943 Application for Federal Employment, Offi cial Personnel 

Folder, Civilian Personnel Records (St. Louis, MO: 

National Personnel Records Center) (hereafter, 

Civilian Record). Unfortunately, there appear to be 

no yearbook photographs or newspaper articles of 

Agnes May Meyer during this time. See the negative responses to letters from Gwen L. Cohen in 

NSA Archives Accession AC49511, Box CCH 36, 

Folder 10.

11. Information Sheet, Military Record.
61

Notes

51. Rochefort, Naval Institute interview, 1970, 7, 

28-29.

52. Capt. Th omas Dyer, interview by R. Farley and H. 

Schorreck, CCH, OH-1982-01-Dyer, 8, 10-11, 

24-25.

53. Layton, “And I Was Th ere,” 33.

54. Rochefort, Naval Institute interview, 1970, 28-29. 

55. Dyer interview, CCH, OH-1982-01-Dyer, 24-25.

56. Layton, “And I Was Th ere,” 58-59; Duane L. Whitlock, “And So Was I,” A Gratuitous Supplement to 

“And I was Th ere” by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, 

USN (Retired), October 17, 1986, unpublished 

manuscript, Mucklow Papers, Center for Cryptologic History, 1.

57. Layton, “And I Was Th ere,” 33, sourced to Mrs. 

Eunice Willson Rice letter to one of the co-authors 

on 28 June 1985. Layton’s description is the source 

of the similar description of Driscoll in Elliot Carlson, Joe Rochefort’s War (Annapolis, MD: Naval 

Institute Press, 2011), 36.

58. Civilian record: 1959 civilian Application for 

Retirement; December 1947 Loyalty Data form; 

and 12 November 1946 Application for Federal 

Employment.

59. James, Nancy, and James Hamilton, interview by 

Robert J. Hanyok, CCH, OH-1998-07-Hamiltons. 

60. Email from Capt. Victor A. Meyer, USN (ret.) to 

author, 23 January 2014. 

61. Layton, “And I Was Th ere,” 58-59; Hamiltons 

interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-Hamiltons.

62. In the CCH interview OH-1998-07-Hamiltons, 

none of the family members recognized any of the 

names of the notables Driscoll had worked with, 

except Saff ord’s and Dyer’s.

63. “Madame X”: see, for example, Layton, “And I Was 

Th ere,” 58-59.

64. Conversation between retired CCH historian Dr. 

Timothy Mucklow and the author, 13 November 

2013; see also Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 311-12.

65. Military Record, 1918 enrollment and health 

record: “Blue eyes, light brown hair, fair complexion.” Th e health record adds that she had 20/20 

vision in each eye, 15/15 hearing in each ear, a vaccination mark on her left arm, and a small scar on 

her left wrist. 

30. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 35, which notes that 

the Army’s William F. Friedman also solved it.

31. Ibid., 161.

32. Outside the scope of this paper, but described in 

Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 16.

33. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 18-19.

34. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 10-12.

35. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 19, and NSA Archives 

Accession 49000, 31, 33, 37.

36. Civilian Record; photocopy in NSA Archives 

Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

37. Civilian Record, 11 April 1945 Application for 

Federal Employment.

38. All three letters are in NSA Archives Accession 

49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

39. David Kahn, Th e Codebreakers: Th e Story of Secret 

Writing (New York: MacMillan, 1967), 418.

40. Civilian Record, 11 April 1945 Application for 

Federal Employment; 1924 Acceptance Form.

41. http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/

hall_of_honor/1999/saff ord.shtml, accessed 28 February 2014.

42. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 35; Saff ord, Naval 

Institute interview, 3.

43. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 3.

44. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 30, 36.

45. Frederick D. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited: United States Navy Communications Intelligence, 1924-

1941, 3rd ed. (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 2013), 21-22.

46. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 83-84.

47. Ibid., 35-36, 45, 84; Joseph Rochefort, interview 

by Cdr. Etta-Belle Kitchen, USN (ret.). Naval 

Institute, 1970, 29. See also Saff ord, Th e Undeclared War, “Th e History of R.I.,” SRH-305, 5.

48. Edwin T. Layton, R.Adm., USN (ret.), “And I Was 

Th ere”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the 

Secrets (New York: Morrow, 1985), 58-59; Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 353-55.

49. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 29 and especially 

42-43; Rochefort, Naval Institute oral interview by 

Cdr. Kitchen, 1970, 6-7.

50. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/oral_

history_interviews/nsa_oh_14_83_campaigne.

pdf, 33; accessed 14 April 2014. Layton, “And I 

Was Th ere,” 33.
62

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

88. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-Hamiltons.

89. Letter postmarked 20 June 1987 from Meyer family member Lucy Johnson, in NSA Archives Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10. It is diffi cult 

to ascertain how reliable this information is; Ms. 

Johnson, in relating what she heard within the 

family, thought the accident might have happened 

in 1934 or 1935, and understood that Driscoll 

needed crutches, rather than a cane, for the rest 

of her life. However, the apparent dubiety of some 

facts does not invalidate all. 

90. Retirement Record Card, in NSA Archives Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

91. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 239.

92. Ibid.

93. Ibid. For example, 138, 254, 292.

94. Rochefort, 1970 Naval Institute interview, 28.

95. Wesley Wright interview by R. Farley and H. 

Schorreck, CCH, OH-1982-11-Wright, 11.

96. Dyer interview, CCH, OH-1982-01-Dyer, 24-25.

97. 6 July 1935 letter from the U.S. Civil Service 

Commission to Driscoll, advising her that her 

appeal was pending, in NSA Archives Accession 

49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10. Th e results of the 

appeal are unknown at this time.

98. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/oral_history_

interviews/nsa_oh_14_83_campaigne.pdf, 33.

99. Frank Raven, interview by R. Farley and H. 

Schorreck, transcript, CCH, OH-1980-03-Raven, 

37-38.

100. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 308-309.

101. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07- 

Hamiltons.

102. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 22; CCH, 

“Pearl Harbor Review - JN-25,” http://www.nsa.

gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_

history/pearl_harbor_review/jn25.shtml, accessed 

27 March 2014.

103. Th ese are the fi rst four characters in the fi rst row 

of Conversion square No. 10, applied to JN-25 

ciphers. See the page with fourth line “T.O.O. 

160411 MAY 1945,” in “OP-20-G to all BRUSA 

stations 8/1/45 - 13/9/45,” in National Cryptologic Museum Library holdings.

66. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 71-73; Layton, “And 

I Was Th ere,” 45.

67. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, List of Abbreviations 

and Code of Cover Terms Used Before WWII, in 

the front matter: “ORANGE: Euphemism for 

‘JAPANESE’ (from color system used for Naval War 

Plans, wherein all plans for against [redacted], Japan, 

ORANGE, and so on. BLUE was U.S.; BLACK 

was an unspecifi ed enemy, in fl eet problems usage 

for designating opposing fl eets.)”

68. Cf. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 74-76.

69. Dyer interview, CCH, OH-1982-01-Dyer, 10-11.

70. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 68-71.

71. Dyer interview, CCH, OH-1982-01-Dyer, 10-11.

72. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 85-91; Saff ord, SRH149, 11; Layton, “And I Was Th ere,” 45-46.

73. Saff ord, SRH-149, 11.

74. As is in fact the case; these three Japanese values, 

along with KOMINATO in the following paragraph, are weather stations in the two-part JN-25 

code (covered later in the text), as passed by OP20-G on 121821 JUNE 1945. See the page with 

that heading in “OP-20-G to all BRUSA stations 

8/1/45 - 13/9/45,” in National Cryptologic Museum Library holdings.

75. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, p. 87.

76. Saff ord, SRH-305, 11-12 and SRH-149, 11; Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 87, 89; Howe, ACC49106, 

15-16.

77. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 90-91.

78. Ibid., 80, 88.

79. Ibid., 80.

80. Prescott Currier, interview by R. Farley and H. 

Schorreck, CCH, OH-1983-38-Currier, 35.

81. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 161-62, 164; Layton, 

on 79, said that OP-20-G became aware of the 

M-1 in 1935.

82. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 224-25; Howe, NSA 

Archives ACC49106, 18.

83. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 159-60.

84. Ibid., 239.

85. Ibid., 224-25.

86. Frank Rowlett, Abraham Sinkov, and Solomon 

Kullback interview, CCH, OH-2011-86-Rowlett, 

Sinkov, Kullback.

87. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 160.
63

Notes

order was used for listing the four who follow is 

not clear.

124. United States Navy File of Correspondence with 

Department of State, 1919-1950, SRH-281, CCH 

Holdings, 74.

125. http://www.nsa.gov/about/_fi les_cryptologic_

heritage/publications/misc/tiltman.pdf, 38, 

accessed 14 April 2014.

126. NSA Archives accessions A2405055, 2, and 

AC46793, 2.

127. Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 73.

128. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/crypto_

almanac_50th/Madame_X_Agnes_in_

Twilight.pdf, accessed 14 April 2014; Colin Burke, 

“Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma and the Bombe,” 

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~burke/driscoll1-

2011.pdf, accessed 15 May 2014.

129. Ibid.

130. Burke, “Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma and 

the Bombe.” See also Robert Hanyok, “Madame 

X: Agnes in Twilight, the Last Years of the Career 

of Agnes Driscoll, 1941-1957, http://www.nsa.

gov/public_info/_files/crypto_almanac_50th/

Madame_X_Agnes_in_Twilight.pdf.

131. NSA Archives accession ACC48999, 214.

132. Ibid., 216.

133. Raven interview, OH-1980-03-Raven, 14-16.

134. Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 127-28; Hanyok, 

“Madame X.”

135. NSA Archives accession ACC48999, 212.

136. Burke, It Wasn’t All Magic: Th e Early Struggle to 

Automate Cryptanalysis, 1930s-1960s, Center for 

Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 

2002, http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/

cryptologic_histories/Magic.pdf, accessed 22 

May 2014, 113.

137. NSA Archives Accession ACC48999, 88-91; 

Hanyok, “Madame X.”

138. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/crypto_

almanac_50th/Francis_A._Raven.pdf, accessed 22 

May 2014, 2.

139. Raven interview, CCH, OH-1980-03-Raven, 

56-62.

140. Ibid., 24.

141. Ibid., 39.

142. Burke, Magic, 49 and 69.

104. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 22; “Pearl Harbor Review-JN-25”; Capt. Duane L. Whitlock, 

USN (ret.), Th e Silent War against the Japanese 

Navy, http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/ultra/nwc-01.

html.

105. Layton, in “And I Was Th ere” (77), says 33,333 

entries; Parker, in Pearl Harbor Revisited (21), 

30,000; “Pearl Harbor Review - JN-25,” says 

27,500; Whitlock, in Th e Silent War against the 

Japanese Navy, says 45,000, but perhaps exaggerated in distant retrospect. 

106. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 22.

107. “Two to fi ve people,” which would include 

Driscoll; Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 22.

108. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 376.

109. Ibid., 339-40.

110. Ibid., 82.

111. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 22; “Pearl Harbor 

Review - JN-25.”

112. “Pearl Harbor Review - JN-25.”

113. Ibid.

114. http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/

center_crypt_history/pre_1952_timeline/index.

shtml, accessed 10 April 2014.

115. See Stephen Budiansky, Battle of Wits: Th e Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II (New 

York: Th e Free Press, 2000), 215-16.

116. NSA Archives Accession ACC8741, Document 

Reference A82274, which duplicates ACC4765, 

Document Reference A83353 and ACC1406, 

Document Reference A10415.

117. Wright interview, CCH, OH-1982-11-Wright, 

38-39.

118. Telephone conversations between James Russell 

Hamilton and author, 6 and 25 November 2013.

119. Th ey were ordered to do so on 3 December; 

Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 65.

120. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited, 44.

121. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/crypto_

almanac_50th/Madame_X_Agnes_in_Twilight.

pdf, accessed 14 April 2014.

122. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-

07-Hamiltons.

123. NSA Archives Accessions A2405085, 2, and 

AC46793, 2. Driscoll’s name at the top of the list 

is undoubtedly because she was in charge; what 
64

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

History of Venona, Vol. I: Chronology, National 

Security Agency, 1995, 152-55, 159.

163. Hanyok, “Madame X” (unredacted version).

164. AFSA Organization and External Relationships 

chart, http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_

heritage/60th/interactive_timeline/Content/

preNSA/documents/19500324_PreNSA_

Doc_3985846_AFSA.pdf, accessed 9 April 2014.

165. Oliver Kirby oral history, http://www.nsa.gov/

public_info/_files/oral_history_interviews/nsa_

oh_20_92_kirby.pdf, 52, accessed 9 April 2014.

166. Moody interview, CCH, OH-2001-28-Moody, 

CCH holdings.

167. Hanyok, “Madame X.”

168. Raven interview, CCH, OH-1980-03-Raven, 

63-64, 86.

169. Ibid.

170. Personnel Record, Notice to Employees of 

3 March 1953.

171. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/tech_

journals/John_Dee.pdf, accessed 11 June 2014.

172. Hanyok, “Madame X.”

173. January 1954 NSA Newsletter, 4; copy in NSA 

Archives Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 

10. Th e other two recognized were Edith Stanley 

and John E. Harbin.

174. Civilian Record, orders of 25 July 1957, which 

gave a date range of 12 October 1957 to 6 January 

1958.

175. Civilian Record; the address she gave on her 

civilian Application for Federal Employment of 

11 April 1945 (for continued employment) was 

1010 25th Street NW, Washington, DC, Apt. 802; 

on her Application for Retirement, 1959, 1010 

25th Street NW, no apartment number given.

176. OH-1998-07-Hamiltons; from NSA Oral History OH-1984-15-Chamberlin, 95-96, we know 

that she rode to and from Arlington Hall (in her 

AFSA days) with long-time OP-20-G member Lt. 

Cmdr. Milton Gasch; sadly, according to Chamberlin’s interviewer, Gasch was unwilling to be 

interviewed himself.

177. 1 July 1987 letter from Vincent A. Las Casas to 

Gwen Cohen, received by CCH from Victor Meyer, Capt., USN (ret.) on 9 July 2014.

143. NSA Archives accession ACC48999, 93, 96, 

112, 128, 156, 173, 179, and 186.

144. Ibid., 191.

145. Ibid., 201-02.

146. Raven interview, CCH, OH-1980-03-

Raven, 10, 11, 14-15, and 18.

147. Bill Price, an individual favorably inclined 

towards Driscoll, in his email of 21 April 2000. As 

to the accuracy of this story, Driscoll’s 11 January 

1943 Application for Federal Employment (Civilian Record) lists “Comdr. J. Wenger” (who became 

an admiral), “Admiral M. Draemel,” “Admiral Russell Willson,” and “Admiral Hooper” as references. 

She listed “Capt. [Earl] Stone” (who became an 

Admiral) as “Name of Employer” under “Present 

Position.”

148. Conversation between the author and William 

Kvetkas, 19 March 2014.

149. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part II, Appendix IX, 91.

150. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 242.

151. Th omas L. Burns, Th e Quest for Cryptologic Centralization and the Establishment of NSA: 1940-

1952, http://www.nsa.gov/about/_fi les/cryptologic_

heritage/publications/misc/quest_for_centralization.

pdf, 50, accessed 11 June 2014.

152. Wright interview, CCH, OH-1982-11-Wright, 

10 and 75.

153. Burns, Quest for Centralization, 50.

154. Raven interview, CCH, OH-1980-03-Raven, 

11.

155. Wright interview, CCH, OH-1982-11-Wright, 

10-11.

156. Raven interview, CCH, OH-1980-03-Raven, 

56, 63.

157. Campaigne interview, CCH, OH-1983-14-Campaigne, 33-34.

158. Hanyok, “Madame X.” [see note 137, e.g.]

159. Robert L. Benson, Th e Venona Story, http://

www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/

publications/coldwar/venona_story.pdf, 1, 3, 5, 

accessed 11 June 2014.

160. Naval Communications Activity—Russian Language Section History, NSA Archives Accession 

45021 (no page numbers).

161. NSA Archives Box CCH 620, Folder 11.

162. Robert Louis Benson and Cecil James Phillips, 
65

Notes

202. fi ndagrave.com; 20 July 2000 letter from Arlington National Cemetery Administrator, in CCH 

holdings.

203. OH-1982-01-Dyer, 24, 97.

204. Layton, “And I Was Th ere,” 33, 34, 45-46, 58-59.

205. Mason interview, CCH, OH-1985-04-Mason.

206. Rochefort, Naval Institute oral interview, 1970, 

28.

207. Tordella interviews, CCH, “OH-1995-07 and 

1995-xx-Tordella.” 

208. Whitlock, “And So Was I,” 1.

209. Raven interview, CCH, OH-1980-03-Raven, 

37.

210. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/oral_

history_interviews/nsa_oh_14_83_campaigne.

pdf, 33-34.

211. Currier interview, CCH, OH-1980-38-Currier, 

35-40.

212. Wright interview, CCH, OH-1982-11-Wright, 

10-12.

213. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/oral_

history_interviews/nsa_oh_14_83_campaigne.

pdf, 2.

214. Ronald Clark, Th e Man Who Broke Purple, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1977, 

205. 

215. http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/

hall_of_honor/1999/rowlett.shtml, accessed 17 

May 2014.

216. http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/

hall_of_honor/1999/sinkov.shtml, accessed 17 

May 2014. 

217. http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/

hall_of_honor/1999/kullback.shtml, accessed 17 

May 2014.

218. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 372.

219. October 2013 conversations between the author 

and retired Director, Program and Budget Offi ce, 

Intelligence Community Staff William Kvetkas 

and retired NSA Deputy Director for Administration Gene Becker, both of whose careers started at 

Arlington Hall.

220. Bill Price email to author of 21 April 2000.

221. Email from George McGinnis included by Bill 

Price on 21 April 2000.

178. Email from Charles Hagedorn to the Cryptologic Museum Foundation, nominating Driscoll 

to the Cryptologic Hall of Honor on 8 July 1999, 

included in 21 April 2000 email by Bill Price; copy 

in CCH holdings.

179. Civilian Record. 

180. Family tree. [see note 2]

181. Burke, “Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma 

and the Bombe”; see also Figure 18.

182. Burke, “Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma and the Bombe”; NSA Archives Accessions 

A2405085, AC46793, 2; A2405055, AC46793, 2; 

ACC48999, 88-91.

183. Bill Price email of 21 April 2000.

184. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/oral_

history_interviews/nsa_oh_14_83_campaigne.

pdf, 35; OH-1980-03-Raven, 11-12, respectively.

185. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-

Hamiltons.

186. March 1958 NSA Newsletter, 3; copy in Archives 

Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, Folder 10.

187. NSA Archives Accessions A2405085, AC46793, 

2; A2405055, AC46793, 2; ACC48999, 88-91.

188. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_fi les/oral_

history_interviews/nsa_oh_14_83_campaigne.

pdf, 35; OH-1980-03-Raven, 12, respectively.

189. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-

Hamiltons.

190. Ibid.

191. Meyer interview, CCH, OH-2014-07-Meyer.

192. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-

Hamiltons.

193. Ibid.

194. Ibid.

195. https://www.westerville.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=8257, accessed 8 

November 2013.

196. http://www.fi ndagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=

pv&GRid=49129856, accessed 8 November 2013.

197. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-

Hamiltons.

198. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 1.

199. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-

Hamiltons.

200. Ibid.

201. OH-2014-07-Meyer.
66

The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll

234. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 27-28, and 

Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 106.

235. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 106 and 326, and 

Part II, 5.

236. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 136, 305, and 326, 

and Part II, 5.

237. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 305, 326, 340, and 

368.

238. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 133, 326, and 394, 

and NSA Archives, Accession 2405085, 1.

239. NSA Archives Accession 49511, Box CCH 36, 

Folder 10.

240. Burke, “Agnes Meyer Driscoll vs. the Enigma 

and the Bombe”; see his footnote 13.

241. Found to be 5'4" for American women between 

approximately the early 1960s and early 2010s; 

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/

story?id=98438; surveyed at 5'3" in 1937, and dressmaking patterns designed for 5'3" to 5'6" in 1940; 

http://analogme.typepad.com/analog-me/2011/11/

history-of-measurements.html, both accessed 10 

March 2014. 

222. Polly Budenbach, interview by Jill Frahm, CCH, 

OH-2001-27-Budenbach.

223. Meyer interview, CCH, OH-2014-07-Meyer.

224. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-

07-Hamiltons. Unfortunately the actual invitation 

had been lost, and they did not know the details, 

e.g., why she had been invited.

225. Meyer interview, CCH, OH-2014-07-Meyer.

226. Hamiltons interview, CCH, OH-1998-07-

Hamiltons.

227. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part II, 2.

228. Willson and Draemel per Holtwick, SRH-355, 

Part I, 23, and Part II, Appendix II, 009. 

229. Gresham and Godwin per Holtwick, SRH-355, 

Part II, 2, and Part II, Appendix II, 009.

230. Holtwick, SRH-355, Part II, 4; Saff ord, Naval 

Institute interview, 25.

231. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 25-26, and 

Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 68-69.

232. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 26-27, and 

Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 62 and 68-69.

233. Saff ord, Naval Institute interview, 26-27, and 

Holtwick, SRH-355, Part I, 62.