As the founder of Central Reference, Dr. Julia Ward significantly affected the future of a key function across a wide variety of targets and problems at the NSA. Her pioneering efforts to build a library of classified and unclassified resources to aid analysis greatly advanced the American cryptologic effort.
As the Soviet Union’s Communist regime collapsed Wetzel was Chief of a major operational analysis group at the NSA. She saw the Division through the critical time of the Agency’s restructuring to align with new world issues. She moved through several managerial positions in the 1990s including Commandant of the National Cryptologic School.
Signal Security Agency (SSA, later NSA) cryptanalyst
Joining the NSA during WWII, she fought diligently, though quietly, for better opportunities for talented but underutilized employees.
Barbara Clark served in the Pacific during WWII as a member of the Woman’s Army Corps. She returned to federal service in early 1951 with the Armed Forces Security Agency as a Special Research Analyst doing research and reporting. As a Senior research analyst at NSA with foreign language capability, she served in four different production elements dealing with a wide range of international issues.
Skilled cryptanalyst whose successful breakthrough enabled the Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) to build an analog machine that solved the Japanese diplomatic system known as “Purple.” Exploitation of this system provided crucial intelligence in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II.
Agnes Meyer Driscoll’s work as a navy cryptanalyst who broke a multitude of Japanese naval systems, as well as a developer of early machine systems, marks her as one of the true “originals” in American cryptology.
Ann Caracristi began her career with the Army’s cryptologic organization during World War II. After a brief civilian career immediately following the war, she joined one of NSA’s predecessor organizations as a cryptanalyst.
Mary Budenbach, a graduate of Smith College and known to all as “Polly,” joined the Navy’s cryptologic organization, OP-20-G, in 1943. Trained as a cryptanalyst, she worked against Japanese naval ciphers during World War II.
American electrical engineer with expertise in power systems and was influential in the design of dams across the American West, including Hoover Dam.