obituary

[dan at geer.org]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/10/01/mildred_hayes_78_decoded_russian_messages_for_nsa/

Mildred Hayes, 78; decoded Russian messages for NSA
By Joe Holley, Washington Post  |  October 1, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Mildred Louise Hayes, a retired Russian-language
cryptologist with the National Security Agency, died of respiratory
failure Sept. 23 at her home in Gulfport, Miss. She was 78.

The former resident of Fairfax Station, Va., had lived in Gulfport
since 2005.

At the National Security Agency, Ms. Hayes was involved with Venona,
a computer-created code name for a small, very secret program set
up to examine Soviet diplomatic communications. Established in 1943,
Venona soon expanded its message traffic to include espionage
efforts. The Central Intelligence Agency finally unveiled the project
in 1995, 15 years after it ended, hailing it as one of the most
significant counterespionage accomplishments of the Cold War.

Over the years, the program uncovered information about Soviet
efforts to acquire information about US atomic bomb research and
the Manhattan Project and about Soviet spy networks in the United
States. It led to the unmasking of Klaus Fuchs, the German-born
scientist convicted of spying for the Soviets; Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage in 1953; and British
intelligence officer Kim Philby, who after defecting to Moscow in
1963 admitted that he had been a Soviet spy for two decades.

Ms. Hayes was one of the dozens of language teachers and professors,
many of them young women, who were recruited by the US Army's Signal
Intelligence Service, forerunner to the National Security Agency,
to come to Washington and work as code breakers after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. Based at the headquarters of Signal
Intelligence at Arlington Hall in Northern Virginia, the Venona
cryptanalysts sifted through thousands and thousands of encrypted
cable messages from the Soviet Union.

Ms. Hayes, who was recruited for the program in 1952, was born in
Cisco, Texas. Her father died when she was 6, and when her mother
remarried, her stepfather decided he didn't want to raise the girl
and her sister, only their little brother. An aunt and uncle in
Little Rock took in the two girls.

She grew up in Little Rock and received a bachelor's degree in
languages from Arkansas State University in 1944. She received a
master's degree in Russian language and linguistics from George
Washington University in 1980.

Her marriage to Paul Hayes ended in divorce. Ms. Hayes leaves a
daughter, Sharon Hayes of Gulfport, and a brother.

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