Book Synopsis

As groundbreaking as Code Girls and Hidden Figures, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin's atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War.

Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on the US's most dangerous nuclear rival.

The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division--The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, the Plantation's 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States' Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War thirty years later.

In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists' critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.

Review Quotes

"A thought-provoking exploration of the lives and work of the largely forgotten, undervalued, and little-acknowledged Black (and mostly female) cryptologists who contributed to this nation's intelligence success during World War II and the early Cold War. These contributions were made despite physically uncomfortable and segregated workspaces and assignments far below their education and capabilities. Sarah Valentine tells a fascinating tale, deftly weaving the cryptologic work into the social and political constraints of the times." - Betsy Rohaly Smoot, author of Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Cryptology; From the Ground Up: American Cryptology during World War I; and Ninety Years of Assessing Civilian Cryptologic Performance at the National Security Agency.
"I wish Decoding the Devil was required reading for everyone in the military and military-adjacent fields, because this book shows us the seams and man-making of a patriotic narrative usually sold to us as divine. Like Zora Neal Hurston loves us, Sarah Valentine loves us enough to tell the truth about our humanity inside of purposefully inhumane American institutions." - Steven Dunn, author of Water & Power
"Decoding the Devil is an illuminating account of the dauntless and largely unacknowledged cadre of Black women who had to work within the early NSA and its predecessors for the "Triple V"--victory over fascism, victory over racism, and victory over sexism. Sarah Valentine makes a convincing case that the Agency's ingrained racism and sexism was not just a moral failing, but an operational defect with real security consequences in the Cold War era." - Gary Krist, author of The Mirage Factory and Trespassers at the Golden Gate
"In intelligence, as in all fields, a nation benefits when it taps the gifts and talents of all citizens--and suffers when it does not. It took America a long time to learn this and we are at constant risk of forgetting it. Sarah Valentine through her research has recovered this message anew, showcasing the Black women code breakers who, subjected to appalling conditions and relegated to the bleakest rooms, worked to safeguard our safety and stability during perilous times." - Liza Mundy, author of Code Girls and The Sisterhood