A photograph of Elizebeth Smith Friedman (Source: National Security Administration). Friedman was a cryptanalyst for the U.S. Coast Guard and became a key witness in the prosecution of several smuggling cases during Prohibition. By the end of her life, Elizebeth Smith Friedman was renowned for her work deciphering codes from civilian criminals. She cracked the codes that sent members of what one prosecutor called “the most powerful international smuggling syndicate in existence” [1] to jail, took down a Vancouver opium ring, and caught a World War II Japanese spy. But Friedman, who spent much of her working career in Washington, had every bit as exciting and strange a journey to get there.