World War II: Pearl Harbor Attack Army Security Agency Files - NSA Pearl Harbor Study

World War II: Pearl Harbor Attack Army Security Agency Files - NSA Pearl Harbor Study

672 pages of documents and reports from the Army Security Agency and other military intelligence agencies’ files used by William Friedman in preparation in his 1957 report on the Pearl Harbor Attack. Some material in this collection was not declassified until 2015.

Also included in this collection is the audio of a top secret 1960 lecture given by William Friedman on communications security, replete with mentions of the Pearl Harbor Attack.

William Frederick Friedman (1891 – 1969) is considered the father of modern cyrptoanalysis, he is even accredited with inventing the term "cyrptoanalysis."  He worked alongside his wife Elizabeth Smith Friedman, an expert cryptanalyst, she has been called "America's first female cryptanalyst". William Friedman ran the research division of the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1930s. In August 1940, a Signal Intelligence Service team led by Friedman and assisted by the Navy, broke the Japanese PURPLE code, thus disclosing Japanese diplomatic secrets before America's entrance into World War II. Friedman continued to serve U.S. crypto1ogic agencies during and after the war. In 1952 he became chief cryptologist for the National Security Agency (NSA).

Friedman retired in 1956 and, with his wife, he turned his attention to the problem that had originally brought them together: examining Francis Bacon's supposed codes. Together they wrote a book entitled The Cryptologist Looks at Shakespeare, which won a prize from the Folger Library and was published under the title The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined.

In retirement Friedman was contracted by the NSA to produce a report on the Pearl Harbor Attack. The report covers the attack, its postwar investigations and controversies. In the report Friedman wrote, "The Battle of Pearl Harbor is still being fought but the adversaries this time are all Americans; and though the battle is bloodless, because the weapons are now words, not bullets or bombs, it is quite acrimonious and intense, as internal or civil wars generally are."