Decoding the Devil

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Winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities 2025 Public Scholar Award.

Decoding the Devil tells the shocking true story of four women in segregated codebreaking units in the National Intelligence Agency during World War II and the Cold War.

Naomi, a Purdue University graduate, and Ethel, a German-language expert, joined the war effort as part of a racial hiring quota in 1941. Their unit broke Japanese codes and discovered the secrets of Nazi trade relations.

Iris, a school teacher from Texas, joined the Agency’s Russian Plaintext Unit in 1951 to counter the growing threat of Soviet nuclear war. A top-secret operation, the all-Black unit worked under armed guard to decode intercepted Soviet messages and find the location of nuclear sites.

Minnie, a graduate of the Philadelphia Girls School, broke the color barrier in 1953 to become an expert on Chinese intelligence and a cybersecurity pioneer.

Decoding the Devil highlights these women’s critical contribution to national security in the early civil rights era and promises to captivate readers with its fresh perspective on this pivotal moment in American history.

Coming from HarperCollins in 2026.

“As a black cryptologist on submarines for 10 years, I was often unable to reconcile the contradictions of my race, cryptology, and the U.S Military. Nobody talked about the black cryptologists. I run a veterans writers workshop. I told them about the book, and it inspired them.”

―Liza Mundy, author of Code of Girls and The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA

“I am excited about this project. It is long overdue.”

― Steven Dunn, author of Water & Power

From the Archives

  • 1944

    The Commercial Code Unit. Coffee’s group was the first and only professional unit of African Americans in the Agency.

  • 1946

    Salvage Dump and Supply Division. Most African Americans held service positions in the Agency until the late 1950s.

  • 1948

    Building A, Arlington Hall Station. There are no official photos of the Russian Plaintext Unit, and their work remains classified.

  • 1954

    Bus Trip, Arlington Hall Station. The Army was officially desegregated in 1948, but racial tensions remained.