On a Tuesday in 1958, three government officials arrived at the Friedmans’ Capitol Hill home with a rented truck. They had orders to reclassify and remove materials from the Friedmans’ library under a 1957 Defense Department directive upgrading “Restricted” documents to “Confidential.” The men removed 48 items, including William’s personal safe, cryptology manuals, lecture notes, and articles dating back to Riverbank. Though a rumor later circulated that William had reacted violently, an NSA employee present denied this, saying only that both Friedmans were visibly upset. Reynolds noted in a memo that William, though deeply hurt, had voiced no objections and had insisted that the historical materials should belong to the American people. William questioned why obsolete World War I ciphers needed to be seized. Elizebeth watched in silent rage, worried about her husband’s fragile health.

The raid occurred during a period of heightened Cold War suspicion. Soviet spies had stolen nuclear secrets, and the FBI and House Un-American Activities Committee were hunting communist agents. J. Edgar Hoover promised to expose “diabolic machinations,” and Senator Joe McCarthy ruined careers with unsubstantiated accusations.

William’s depression returned in 1947, initially manifesting as “psychic giddiness.” By January 1949, suffering severe insomnia, he checked himself into a Veterans Affairs hospital psychiatric ward but hated it. His condition worsened at home. By January 1950, he could barely work or solve puzzles and harbored suicidal thoughts. His son discovered a rope and noose at the house; a friend noticed another rope in William’s car. In March 1950, William consulted Dr. Zigmond Lebensohn, an early proponent of electroshock therapy. Beginning on March 31, 1950, William underwent multiple courses of electroshock. After six courses of shocks, he was discharged on April 11, 1950, appearing almost elated.

William’s illness devastated Elizebeth, who grew thin from anxiety. Retired with a small pension, she spent much time caring for William. She found an outlet in cooking themed dinner parties, caring for neighbors, and remaining active in the League of Women Voters, particularly advocating for DC statehood. In 1951, Elizebeth received an invitation to speak to a Chicago women’s social club founded by Illinois’s first female judge. After initially declining as a “Has-Been,” she accepted. At the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, she captivated the audience by sharing details of famous cases, though she couldn’t discuss World War II work. The women kept her answering questions, and she soon received more invitations to speak.

Elizebeth occasionally considered writing her memoirs. At a Cambridge luncheon with wartime colleagues including astronomer Chubby Stratton, the men’s war stories stirred her own memories. She wrote a seven-page handwritten foreword for a potential memoir but never wrote the rest, later filing the typescript in a folder marked “foreword to uncompleted work” (332).

The NSA was established on November 4, 1952. William accepted a counselor position but found the agency growing away from him. It hired thousands of young cryptanalysts trained by his textbooks but who no longer heeded him. The NSA invested heavily in computers, which William had derided as largely nonsensical gadgets. He grew uncomfortable with the agency’s expanding secrecy practices, darkly muttering about a “secrecy virus” in government.

William suffered his first heart attack in April 1955, followed immediately by a second while hospitalized. He retired from full-time NSA employment that fall. Though Director Ralph Canine gave him a respectful farewell and consultant contract, Canine’s replacement proved less sympathetic. The 1958 library seizure intensified William’s depression and paranoia. He wished to criticize the agency publicly but feared losing his security clearance, which would sever him from his community and writings.

Disillusioned with the government, William decided to donate his papers to the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia. He and Elizebeth began organizing his vast collection—thousands of books, papers, memos, photographs, prototype games, and cryptologic artifacts. The project briefly revived him, but his body failed him, leading to more heart attacks. Elizebeth kept a daybook tracking William’s condition. Just after midnight on November 2, 1969, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Elizebeth recorded in the daybook, “My beloved died at 12:15” (334). Over the following weeks, over 750 condolence letters arrived. 

Elizebeth designed William’s tombstone, embedding a secret message in Bacon’s cipher. By specifying certain letters with serifs and others without, she encoded his initials, “WFF,” in the phrase “Knowledge Is Power” (335). The Army buried William with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Attendees included Senator Eugene McCarthy, who had worked as a codebreaker under William at Arlington Hall in 1944—a fact the family never knew. 

Elizebeth became William’s champion, determined to secure his legacy even at the expense of her own. She worked daily at William’s desk, completing an annotated bibliography of his 3,002 items. In 1971, men loaded the collection into trucks along with William’s desk. Elizebeth felt like she was watching William “die all over again” (336). 

She also donated her own papers to the Marshall Library, but without William’s meticulous indexing. Because Elizebeth’s collection remained unindexed, researchers largely ignored it while studying William’s documents. In 1976, a biography titled The Man Who Broke Purple was published. Elizebeth considered it competent but felt that it missed “the man [she] knew and loved” (338).

Elizebeth struggled financially as savings dwindled and her health faltered. She instructed her children to cremate her body without funeral services. She died on October 31, 1980, at age 88 in a Plainfield, New Jersey, nursing home. The Washington Post and New York Times printed respectful obituaries but failed to mention her World War II codebreaking. Her ashes were scattered on William’s grave. 

Years passed before women in intelligence rediscovered Elizebeth. Justice Department historian Barbara Osteika located smuggling case records, viewing Elizebeth as a law-enforcement trailblazer. FBI cryptanalyst Jeanne Anderson studied Elizebeth’s trial transcripts for guidance. Though Elizebeth never worked at the NSA, she won admirers there. In the 1990s, the NSA auditorium was renamed to honor both Friedmans. In 2014, a Justice Department auditorium was also named for Elizebeth.

These honors resulted from women seeking Elizebeth’s story and from the archives she left behind. On three of the index cards she wrote for William’s collection, she added pointed comments about Hoover and the FBI taking credit for her work. Elizebeth’s legacy persists in modern secure communications technology, smartphones, messaging apps, and intelligence procedures. The game of codemakers and codebreakers continues, now vastly sped up and mathematized, but still based in familiar cryptographical patterns.