Cora Du Bois became interested in anthropology while earning a M.A. in history from Columbia University. Cora then traveled to the American Southwest to pursue further research in anthropology—studying several Native American tribes in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. She later joined the OSS, the precursor to the modern CIA.
Montes was spying for the Cubans from inside the U.S. intelligence community itself—as a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA.
Graphic designer who worked for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA
Pioneering agent for the Special Operations Executive in occupied France during WWII
During the course of her 43-year career, Ms. McNeal Kenny received NSA’s two highest awards: the Meritorious Civilian Service Award (1980) and the Exceptional Civilian Service Award (1984).
Eunice Russell Willson Rice was a pioneering US Navy cryptologist who successfully broke Italian and Japanese codes during WWII.
Maureen Baginski began her cryptologic career as a Russian Language instructor in 1979. During her tenure, Ms. Baginski held various operational management positions, including a tour as a Senior Operations Officer in the National Security Operations Center and the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) National Intelligence Officer for Russia.
Mary Louise Prather joined the Signal Intelligence Service in 1938 and was named the chief of the Soviet Information Division in 1960. In 1969 she received the Meritorious Civilian Service Award.
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.