| During
the 1920s Herbert O. Yardley was chief of the first peacetime
cryptanalytic organization in the United States, the ancestor
of today’s National Security Agency. Funded by the U.S.
Army and the Department of State and working out of New York,
his small and highly secret unit succeeded in breaking the
diplomatic codes of several nations, including Japan. The
decrypts played a critical role in U.S. diplomacy. Despite
its extraordinary successes, the Black Chamber, as it came
to known, was disbanded in 1929. President Hoover’s
new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson refused to continue
its funding with the now-famous comment, “Gentlemen
do not read other people’s mail.” In 1931 a disappointed
Yardley caused a sensation when he published this book and
revealed to the world exactly what his agency had done with
the secret and illegal cooperation of nearly the entire American
cable industry. These revelations and Yardley’s right
to publish them set into motion a conflict that continues
to this day: the right to freedom of expression versus national
security. In addition to offering an exposé on post-World
War I cryptology, the book is filled with exciting stories
and personalities.
Herbert O. Yardley, one of the greatest authorities
on secret codes and ciphers in the 1920s, was inducted into
the NSA Hall of Honor posthumously in 1999. He is also the
author of The Chinese Black Chamber.
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