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Meredith Gardner, 89, Who Broke Code in Rosenberg Case, Dies August 18, 2002 By DAVID STOUT WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - Meredith Knox Gardner, a linguist and puzzle solver whose skill at deciphering codes played a pivotal role in the Rosenberg spy case, died on Aug. 9 at a hospice in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 89. Fluent in French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Lithuanian, Spanish and Russian, Mr. Gardner arrived here early in World War II to work for the Army Signal Intelligence Service, a predecessor of the National Security Agency. He spent the war poring over messages between Germany and Japan. After their defeat, his focus turned to the Soviet Union. He was assigned to help decode a backlog of communications between Moscow and its foreign missions. The project, named Venona, was based in northern Virginia. In recent years, the National Security Agency has made public some of the exploits of the code breakers. Starting in 1939, the Signal Intelligence Service intercepted thousands of Soviet communications, but they were not studied while America and Russia were allied. By 1946, Mr. Gardner was among the hundreds of people trying to decode the accumulated messages. On Dec. 20, 1946, Mr. Gardner discerned that a message from 1944 had contained a list of the leading scientists on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. More months of toil by Mr. Gardner and his colleagues turned up a reference to an agent code-named Liberal who had a wife named Ethel. "Liberal" and his wife were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed in 1953. Mr. Gardner worked closely with Robert J. Lamphere, an F.B.I. agent who was assigned to chase spies. Mr. Lamphere marveled at his partner's decoding talents. "I would bring Meredith some material, and he would print in a new word over a group of numbers," Mr. Lamphere said in 1996 in an interview with The Washington Post. "Then he would give a little smile of satisfaction." Mr. Gardner attributed his code-solving talents to his language abilities, sense of logic and, as he told The Post in 1996, "a sort of magpie attitude to facts, the habit of storing things away that did not seem to have any connection at all." Meredith Knox Gardner was born in Okolona, Miss. He graduated from the University of Texas and earned a master's degree in languages from the University of Wisconsin. He was a language teacher at the Universities of Akron, Texas and Wisconsin before World War II. Surviving are his wife, Blanche; a son, Arthur, of Milwaukee; a daughter, Ann Martin of Annapolis, Md.; and 11 grandchildren. Mrs. Gardner said her husband, after retiring in 1972, loved to solve the crossword puzzles in The Times of London, which are noted for being extremely difficult. He also traced his Scottish genealogy, disdaining computers for the pencil and paper that he had used to attack codes. Because the Venona project was not disclosed in detail until the mid-1990's, its work was never widely recognized. In a speech in 1997, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York said the deeds of Mr. Gardner and Mr. Lamphere, in particular, were contributions "that Americans have a right to know about and to celebrate." Mr. Lamphere died in February. Despite his pride in having helped to smash an espionage ring, Mr. Gardner was sorry that the Rosenbergs were put to death. Mrs. Gardner said her husband's reasoning was that "those people at least believed in what they were doing." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/obituaries/18GARD.html?ex=1030680354&ei=1&en=72be95029b81735f HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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