Body Of Secrets: Anatomy Of The Ultra-Secret National Security Agency - Plot & Excerpts
On scuffed linoleum floors staffers crowded around a metal speaker, listening in almost disbelief to the deep voice, the crystal-clear words. It was 1979 and the Cold War still covered the world in a thick frost, but the Russian codebreakers in A Group were at last tasting victory, many for the first time. Attached to their chains, above their green metal security badges, was a black tab with the word "Rainfall." In charge of A Group, the elite mathematicians, linguists, and computer specialists who worked "the Soviet problem," was Ann Caracristi, a serious, gray-haired woman near sixty with a habit of tossing a yellow pencil in the air. Inconspicuous and quiet, America's top Russian codebreaker nevertheless lived in a fire-engine-red house in Washington's stylish Georgetown section. By 1979 she had been matching her wits against foreign code machines of one sort or another for nearly four decades. "I have been around long enough to remember when the cutting edge in cryptology was cross-section paper, the Frieden calculator, and the IBM punch card," she recalled with a laugh.
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