THE ONCE-CLASSIFIED TALE OF JUANITA MOODY

On the morning of Sunday, October 14, 1962, Juanita Moody exited the headquarters of the National Security Agency, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and walked the short distance to her car, parked in one of the reserved front-row spaces. The sky was a crystalline blue, “a most beautiful day,” she recalled later. Moody had just learned that the U.S. Air Force was sending a U-2 spy plane to take high-altitude photographs of military installations. Moody was worried for the pilot—twice already in the past two years a U-2 had been shot out of the sky. American military leaders and the intelligence community believed that something unusual was up. Exactly what, no one could say. “I went out and got into my old convertible at the precise moment I had been told this pilot was going to get into his plane,” Moody said.

What unfolded over the next two weeks was arguably the most dangerous period in the history of civilization. One of the most extraordinary omissions in this story to date is the central role played by Moody, a 38-year-old during the perilous fall of 1962. Even today her name is largely unknown outside the agency, and some details of her contributions to the nation’s security remain closely guarded.

Moody, who died in 2015 at age 90, and quietly buried at Arlington National Cemetery, was forever discreet. When asked about her past, she would deflect. As one friend remembered her saying, "Oh, I’ve done lots of interesting things for a country girl from North Carolina."

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This is a long but interesting read of a time and place much different than our own. A time many of you lived through. I highly recommend you take the time and read her story.

 

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