Katharine Swift a teacher from Michigan came to Washington D.C. to help the war effort in 1942. She started out at Arlington Hall working weather codes and quickly moved into codebreaking when she expressed interest to an analyst working on a machine run of a French code book.

Ms. Swift then became a premier linguist and codebreaker at NSA reconstructing many codes during her career. Well known for her manual "Standards & Techniques of Code Reconstruction " Ms. Swift was awarded the Exceptional Civilian Service Award by NSA in 1972.

Ms. Swift retired in 1972 after a distinguished 30 year career. She worked for two years after retirement as a reemployed annuitant at the National Cryptologic School teaching code reconstruction.